David's Digest

I know how important it is to connect to consumers - our ultimate customers - and to be patient with them when they fail to understand what goes on on farms. But I find this rather difficult when, as over the weekend, some of them dumped about a hundred worn out car tyres in one of our gateways.

OK, the yobs who did that dirty deed don't deserve to be described as customers and I should discriminate between them and proper people. But it does make relationships with the great unwashed that much more tetchy so that when, as I often do, I find walkers with loose dogs on our conservation headlands I have to bite my tongue as I politely ask them to put the animal on a lead.

We phoned the District Council yesterday and to be fair to them they have undertaken to collect the tyres and take them away to one of their dumps. But the cost of that will have to come out of local Council taxes and I ask myself why we should have to pay the cost of what amounts to criminal behaviour.

I'm sure I'm not alone in developing fly tip rage when this happens. And sadly its a regular occurance.

I have deliberately stayed away from blogging in recent weeks having reviewed my previous postings only to find that in most of them I was bitching about the drought. I decided not to post again until I had something more positive to say.

Well, I'm not too sure that time has arrived but we did, at last, have some rain last evening. This morning I tipped 8mm out of my rain pot and I suppose that's better than nothing. But I have since had an email from a friend in Dorset telling me that he had over 40mm yesterday.

In both cases, I suspect, the precipitation came too late to achieve optimum yields. It certainly did with us. Last week we went round every field trying to assess how much below budget it might produce. And yes, every field looks like it might fail to achieve expectations.

Some - the best - will be at least 20% down; others will do well to produce half the budgeted yield. But hopefully last nights rain has saved those poorest crops from total failure.

Sorry, I said I would try to be more positive and I have failed. But there again there has not been a spring and summer like this within living memory so perhaps I am allowed to mope.

It's ten weeks since I posted my first blog (this year) about my concerns over dry soils. I said I'd had a promonition about this being a dry spring and that we had drilled sugar beet early to try to make the most of what moisture there was in the land.

I'm pleased to report that those early drilled beet are looking far better than they deserve to at this stage. A regular and full plant stand emerged and the plants are now at least six inches in diameter. Some combining peas we drilled deep into what moisture there was a couple of weeks after the beet are also looking fair, although what they are living on I do not know.

Since that original expression of concern towards the end of March we have had about half a dozen periods of rain - but none of them have amounted to more than 1mm. A couple of hours after each the sun had dried the soil again and there was not enough in any of these spitting sessions to get down to the roots of anything let alone wash in the nitrogen we had applied.

Like I say, the peas and the beet look reasonable given the weather and so do the early drilled winter wheats. But we have three fields that were drilled with wheat after sugar beet were lifted and they look dreadful. Their root structures have not developed; they haven't tillered; they haven't got hold of the top dressing; and I fear the worst in terms of yield and quality. As I have often said - it one of the costs of growing sugar beet which is never fully costed.

Last weekend while friends in other parts of the country who had previously been equally worried about lack of rain had anything between three quarters of an inch and an inch and a half, we had 2.5 mm spread over three days. Neighbours on very light land report that some of their crops are dieing. Others are busy irrigating spring barley and anything else they can spare water for for the first time in their lives.

This is a serious situation and to cap it all the local pigeons are attacking the only crop in the district which is still a little bit succulent. Guess what? Yes, it's our peas! (Rude words deleted by editor)

I see from todays Telegraph that Defra has initiated control measures to stop the spread of parakeets in this country. Apparently they were released several years ago and numbers in the Home Counties are beginning to build up. If left to multiply they could become a major nuisance and do untold damage to crops. So they have to be controlled.

The RSPB has said they would prefer the birds to be re-homed, in other words caged. But if that proves too difficult they would reluctantly agree to them being shot. Here, for once, all those involved, including farmers, are able to agree on action to prevent a build-up of trouble. Glory be.

And if the parakeets in Britain are anything like the gallar's in Australia, they're all member of the parrot family, the sooner they are eliminated from the wild in the UK the better. I remember, many years ago staying with a farming family in northern New South Wales where these "ruddy gallar's" as the family called them were virtually destroying their maize crop.

They flew around in flocks and once they settled on the crop were almost impossible to move. As regular readers may remember I have a personal vendetta against pigeons that eat my rape and peas. Limiting the damage they do is bad enough but I am certain from what I saw in Australia all those years ago that parakeets would be much worse. So, go to it Defra and RSPB and don't stop until you've captured or killed the last parakeet.

OK, I don't post very often and when I do, for the last month or two at least, I probably come over like a one trick pony. But how much longer can this drought continue?

We have spring sown crops that are virtually gasping for moisture. The land is parched and although we have peas and sugar beet showing above the ground that actually look like they have grown a little if you compare them with a week ago, I wonder what they are living on.

The late drilled winter wheats look even worse. They haven't benefited from the second top dressing because there's been no rain to wash it in. And I daresay a lot of the N we applied has volatalised.

Old fogeys will tell you that its OK and that roots must be going down for whatever moisture is still in the land and that this will be good in the long run when it does rain. But how long is long? And will crops survive that long? And when it does rain, will it ever stop? 

The last time I remember a drought of this magnitude was later in the year of 1976 - and it was a disaster.

Despite forecasts of significant rain a couple of nights ago, here in Norfolk it was very limited indeed. On Thursday morning at 8.00oclock I tipped 3mm out of my rain recorder and by that time the clouds had passed over. Since then nothing and the freshly drilled crops, having had only a slight freshen up from the precipitation are crying out for rain again.

March was one of the driest on record and it doesn't bode well for decent crops if we don't get a significant fall soon. The latest forecast speaks of an unsettled week to come. But seven days ago it said almost exactly the same and we need more than the odd light shower.

It is, of course, far too early to start talking about poor yields at harvest time. But a few more weeks of this and that will become a reality not just a fear.

The experts said, some time ago, that we could expect longer periods of rain and drought and not so much mixed weather. It seems they may have been right and its a cause for growing concern.

When I was a boy we had a saying on the farm that March dust was worth a guinea an ounce. In other words if the land was dry enough during the month to get all the crops drilled yields should be pretty secure and the farm should be OK for the rest of the year.

Well, there's been almost too much dust this time. There were clouds of it when we were drilling the harvest peas the other day and although I think we managed to plant the seeds into what moisture was there under the surface and rolled them in straight behind the drill I am still concerned about the possibility of a droughty spring. We had one last year and remember what that did to grain yields, hay prices and the like

I've had this premonition about another dry one all month. Indeed I mentioned it a few weeks ago on my page in FW and there's been no rain since to suggest I was wrong. March came in like a lamb and looks like going out like one too. I'd almost rather it went out like a lion, like the other old saying suggests. It only goes to show how unreliable those old saws are. Unless, of course, we get a good wetting before the end of next week.

As Emily Padfields posting today makes clear, the farmers of Denmark feel the same way about their government as many of us feel about ours. Four hundred of them drove their tractors into Copenhagen the other day to protest about their representation in Brussels and over tightening regulations on water quality. They have had enough and decided to demonstrate their anger to say so.

It makes the forthcoming ten day Farmers Weekly Study Tour of that country, starting on May 16th, even more timely. We shall be visiting and talking to large and small farmers and politicians across the three main Islands and hearing their views on current problems.

We shall visit one of only two bacon factories left in Denmark; looking round an Arla Dairy; inspecting a bio energy plant; walking round a fruit farm and pack house and visiting the headquarters of all the main institutions of agricuture who operate out of one building in the middle of Copenhagen, and much more.

Before we leave we will go to the birth place of Hans Christian Andersen, tour a couple of magnificent traditional estates with castles as well as superb management and have dinner in the famous Tivoli gardens. Altogether a well rounded tour that will be enjoyable as well as instructive.

There are a handful of places left, so if you would like to join us please contact Jill Lewis at Field Farm Tours without delay. jill@fieldfarmtours.co.uk 

One of the most surprising things the FW party saw in Morocco was a traditional cattle ranch. There in the rolling hills of the Atlas mountains was a 25,000 acre ranch running the best looking beef cattle we saw during the entire tour.

It had been set up in 1970 by an American as a demonstration unit for Moroccans to follow. The original owner had chosen three breeds from which to create a suitable hybrid for the conditions. Santa Getrudis from Mexico; Brahman from India and Beef Shorthorn from Britain. The hybrid, which has long since stabilised into a distinct breed that needs no further crossing is a bit like a South Devon in colour and shape but with a small hump on the shoulder that obviously came from the hot weather breeds.

The farm carried about 3,600 head of cattle including the mother cows, 150 bulls and the calves from two previous breeding seasons that were kept in a beef lot similar to those found in the US.

They were slow maturing, typically taking three years to reach slaughter condition but they lived almost exclusively on grass and silage with no concentrate. And the land was cheap so the economics were probably OK.

The ranch is now owned by a banker based in London, we were told. Yet more surprising evidence of the links between Morocco and Britain. But sadly Moroccan farmers have not copied the American example. Most other beef  cattle we saw on our travels looked like the sort of animal suitable for burgers. These ranch cattle were the only ones that looked capable of producing juicy steaks.

I have referred in passing in other postings to Morocco's Green Plan - or Maroc Vert. It was introduced three years ago and is being enthusiastically persued by all the institutions of agriculture in the country.

It's being promoted as a domestic response to Morocco's need to import much of its food and the fact that 80% of the county's land area is arid or desert. But, of course, it is also a response to the developing world food crisis and an attempt to improve food security.

One of the best examples of this witnessed by the FW Farm Study Tour was at the city of Fes. The Chamber of Agriculture there was highly organised and its officials were only too happy to share with us what they are doing.

Crops grown in the region around the city include cereals and legumes as well as olives, top fruit, vegetables and capers. But only one seventh of the land is irrigated and this limits potential to increase yields and efficiency - which are among the objectives of the plan.

The Chamber officials told us that the average yield of wheat in the area was just 2t/ha but that the best farmers who used fertilisers and crop protection chemicals achieved 8t/ha. Predictably their ambition was to raise the average and they hoped it could be achieved by culture change - as well as by the intorduction of more irrigation from the state funded reservoirs built virtually every year.

Clearly the officials were pre-occupied by the problems they were having in changing the culture of small farmers who were resisting change. They laid on a magnificent reception for our party and questioned us on how we would tackle the problem. Maybe they thought we must have faced similar difficulties after the 2nd World War. We put forward a few suggestions and promised to think further on what might work in this very different country.

They certainly deserve to succeed given their determination and enthusiasm.