David's Digest

Spring weather and CAP reform have combined to make a crop that was, until a couple of years ago, crucial to the profitability of eastern counties farms look very questionable indeed. A 37% cut in the EU price of sugar was the first blow. Many growers said they could not produce for the new price of around £20/t that will drop by a further £2 or £3 over the next few years. But most, in those regions that still have processing plants (two have closed since last year) decided to give the crop one more year, just in case it worked out OK. EU compensation for the lower price (even though it is supposed to be decoupled from production) would, in any case, reduce the risk of serious losses in the short term.
But crop establishment this spring has been dire in places, especially on strong land where it was impossible to create fine seedbeds. Most were drilled in late March or early April into land that was drying out fast after February rain. The anticipation was that even though some seeds did not go in onto moisture there would be enough April showers to make them germinate.
As we now know that did not happen. April, in Norfolk anyway, was the driest since weather records began in 1843. And although May was the wettest since 1843 (125mm on this farm) the rain came too late.

After five inches of rain in May I was getting a little concerned about whether we would have a few dry days in June to make some decent haylage for our livery horses. Sub standard haylage (or hay) is bad enough if you have to feed it to your own animals. It's much worse if you have to try to persuade other people to feed it to their horses - that is if the horses will eat it. If they won't you really are in trouble.
That is why, a few years ago, we turned from making hay to haylage wrapped in plastic sheeting as a more reliable quality feed for our customers. It comes fit to bale a couple of days sooner than hay, reducing vulnerability to changes in the weather. And most horses seem to like it better.
Anyway, we started cutting in glorious weather on Saturday; turned the swathe several times as the sun continued to shine through Sunday; paused until the cloud cleared on Monday then turned again; and today we (that is to say our contractors) are baling and wrapping what promises to be sweet and tasty horse feed.
To avoid vermin (rabbits mainly) biting holes in the plastic overnight we are clearing and stacking the bales behind the wrapper. And in case we see a tear we keep a roll of gaffer tape handy to seal in the quality.
Hopefully this wonderful weather will have enabled our hay suppliers to make some good stuff too and we shall be able to buy from them for those few horse owners who still insist on hay rather than haylage at reasonable prices.

It might surprise you to know that I am really quite domesticated. I regularly shop for food with my wife. She likes it because I usually pay. I like it because it keeps me in touch with consumer trends and retailers prices.
So, when I had an hour to spare in London yesterday I decided to pop into the new Whole Foods store in Kensington High Street. In the unlikely event that you have missed all the publicity I should perhaps point out that it is the first Whole Foods outlet outside North America, where there are 200 of them, and follows three years of assessment of the UK market after the owners bought the UK Fresh & Wild business.
I should say at the outset that the new store is very impressive. It's huge and features lots of organic products, but not exlusively so. The main entrance, for instance, featured Boyd's New Forest Strawberries that carried a LEAF logo. Whole Foods stresses that its suppliers are all identified and traceable and produce to high standards of safety and animal welfare. They also claim to source as locally as possible and to be concerned with the health of their customers.
That said there were plenty of exotic offers from around the world as well as luxury chocolates for those with a sweet tooth.

Our Open Farm Sunday afternoon was fairly low key as I intended it should be. We don't have farm livestock (apart from livery horses) and I judged that arable crops and conservation would have limited appeal to large crowds. Add to that the fact that we have been shorthanded recently with little time to prepare and a small crowd seemed more appropriate. So I restricted advertising to places I believed would attract the right demographic mix and numbers.
Surprisingly I got it spot on. Just under 50 people turned up with ages ranging from 3 to over 80. One lady had been a land army girl on the farm in 1948 and was there for nostalgic reasons. Local parents brought their children who were walking on farmland for the first time in their lives. An ex ADAS man (who had been made redundant several years ago but wanted to update himself on the changes since), some middle aged ladies, a couple of lorry drivers, a few teachers and so on, all of them consumers, made up the rest of the party.
We had a gentle stoll round some of the features I thought would be interesting and at which I had erected the special sign boards sent me by LEAF. I talked a bit and invited questions. Most were concerned with global warming, subsidies, and food safety. I hope I was able to answer them to the satisfaction of my guests. In any event they all seemed to go away happy and pleased with the experience taking handfuls of leaflets supplied by the Open Farm Sunday sponsors with them.

The evidence of April's drought is as clear in northern Germany as it is in Britain. Most fields of winter barley feature two crops. The first is the one made up of tillers that survived the drought and will soon be ready for harvest. The second is composed of green tillers that have grown since the May rains and this will make for a mixed sample off the combine.
This was no surprise to members of the FW party touring Germany. Most have similar crops at home. They shrugged their shoulders and resolved to take the earliest crop when it is fit and hope to dress the green grains out in order to improve what will be an untidy sample. The recent sharp increase in values will help to pay for the exercise and reduce the frustration.
Generally, however, crops look very well over here. Winter wheats on good land obviously came through the drought pretty well. Rye and Triticale on light land survived well too. All have benefited from the rain since and the weather has continued unsettled while we have been here.
But perhaps the most impressive are crops of fodder maize, most of which are already a meter tall, and sugar beet whose leaves clearly met across the rows a couple of weeks ago and which do not feature the "hen and chickens" problems so common at home. German growers must have managed to conserve their seedbed moisture better than we did and achieved even germination. Beet growers on the study tour were rather envious. And most of the German farmers we have talked to are feeling more optimistic than for several years.

Maybe its the farms selected for the FW study tour to visit in Germany but almost every one seems to be producing energy or the commodities from which it can be produced. First there was the dairy farmer who turned his cow slurry into methane then burned it to produce electricity. Then there was the man who was crushing rape seed and selling the resulting oil to a refiner who converted it into bio-deisel. The cake bi product also still contained some oil residues and this was used for domestic heating. The same man had a couple of electicity generating windmills although he was less happy with them because the site chosen had turned out to have insufficient wind, despite having had a test rig erected for a few months prior to installing them.
But the most exciting and probably most successful example we have seen was the farm where maize silage was being used as a direct feedstock for the production of methane with no livestock involved. To us this was real groundbreaking stuff and it appeared to be working more
profitably and more reliably than any of the other alternatives.

We had been visiting farms in what used to be West Germany which had an average field size of around 20 acres (8 ha). Some, where the Code Napoleon that divides up farms into equal sizes as generations succeed one another, was still in use were much smaller. Suddenly without warning, for all traces of the previous border fence have disappeared, the fields got bigger. On several farms the FW study tour visited over the next few days field sizes were nearer 200 acres (80 ha) and clearly ideal for big, efficient machinery.
The people farming such holdings, many of whom had returned from the West to reclaim land confiscated from them by the former regime, admitted that the Communists had done them a big favour. They now benifit from economies of scale not available in the western side of the country where the removal of field boundaries is forbidden, as it is in the UK. Western technology had enabled them to increase production and yields and they were generally very pleased with life, especially as they watched the world price of cereals rising.
Moreover, most roads, houses and other buildings in the East have also been brought up to Western standards and there is only occasional evidence of how things used to be. The inhabitants of the East, or most of them for there is still significant unemployment in some areas, now enjoy the same or similar standards of living as those in the West.

Was it in February or March that the boffins at the Met Office announced that we were virtually certain to have another hot dry summer this year?
Whichever, as we now know to our cost, they could not have been more wrong. April, yes, it was hot and dry, as were the first few days of May. But after that the heavens opened and seldom seem to have closed since.
On this farm once it started raining we had 125mm (5 inches in old money) in May. So far in June we have had as much again. Some places in the country have had much more, of course, and the short term forecast is for further falls before the end of the month at the weekend.
What does this prove? I suggest it shows that attempting to predict the weather months ahead is futile. Forecasters find it difficult enough to get it right five days, let alone five months ahead. I think they should concentrate on greater accuracy in the short term and leave the long term to those who practice witchcraft. That way we poor farmers will not be tempted to plan on the basis of weather that is unlikely to happen.

The Norfolk Show was a resounding success despite the weather forecasters. Heavy rain during the weekend setting up was soon forgotten as it stayed mainly fine and attendance was estimated at around 95,000 over the two days.
As at many other shows this year there were near record entries of almost all classes of livestock and in spite of the torrential rain in some other area's of the country that caused a few unavoidable no-shows competition was strong among quality entries.
Perhaps this was a reflection of what Norfolk accountants, Lovewell Blake and Land Agents and consultants Cheffins described in a report released at the show as the increased "sex appeal" affecting farming in recent months. Higher prices for cereals in particular have certainly improved the mood of the arable sector of the industry and there was a buzz among the farm machinery stands. My own view on livestock exhibitors, however, is that they are proud of their stock and just love showing. In other words it is an absorbing hobby for many, whether they are making money or not. That's why farming is different from other industries and long may that continue.