David's Digest

Any white Zimbabwean farmer still on his land today, Oct 1st, will be classed as a trespasser on state property. This looks like the final stage of Mugabe's land grab. When it began there were more than 4,000 white farmers. Today there are just a few hundred who have hung on in the hope, presumably, of some international intervention to rescue them. But beyond Gordon Brown saying he refused to sit in the same room as Mugabe, nothing has happened. Britain in particular, is guilty of neglecting our own flesh and blood and leaving the white farmers to whatever fate the corrupt Zimbabwean president cares to mete out to them.

When I first visited the country fifteen or so years ago, the productive, well managed farms were producing enough food and other commodities to satisfy the Zimbabwean population and still have plenty left over to export. Each farm supported many black families who relied on their employer for their food, education and healthcare. Idealists might have said the workers would have been better off if they had been well paid. But this is Africa and the workers lot was certainly no worse and probably a lot better than that of people in many other developing countries from whose labours Britain benefits every day.

It all went dreadfully wrong when Mugabe encouraged his government ministers and officials to take over the white owned farms. With official backing gangs of thugs drove white families and their black workers off farms. They looted the farm houses and stole the crops and the cattle. And the ministers took over the properties.

At breakfast in the Farmers Club in London this morning I spoke to an egg producer who supplies ASDA and Tesco's. Yesterday he had been to see ASDA buyers who had agreed to increase the prices he would be paid to just about cover his higher feed costs. This morning he was going to see the buyers at Tesco's and was confident they would agree to something similar. He was happy that he was being fairly treated and I was surprised and pleased for him.

The same cannot be said for many pig producers according to a senior pig politician I also met at the Club. The build-up of pig numbers on farms because of F&M restrictions is being made worse by increasing imports from Denmark and Holland who seem able to supply cheaper sides thereby improving retail margins. The highly developed and economical processing and marketing sectors in those countries is well known, of course. But they must, surely, be paying more for feed, just like UK producers, so how can they undercut the UK to such an extent? However they are doing it the situation on most UK pig farms is extremely serious and will get worse if prices don't rise substantially.

The third person at the Club with whom I discussed such matters was a senior NFU man who had just returned from the Conservative Party conference in Blackpool. On the train he had sat next to a prominent conservationist (who had also been there) who spoke of widespread concern among "greens" at potential loss of habitat as a result of the abolition of set-aside. The NFU man had explained the brutal facts about current lack of profitability of grazing livestock. F&M and now Bluetongue had wrecked the economy of production and now the high cost of feed was the last straw for many. He had asked the conservationist to try to influence the food trade to pay more for beef and lamb. Because if returns don't improve, he said, there will be no animals to graze our countryside and every acre of grass capable of growing arable crops will be ploughed. And that, he emphasised, would be far more serious for wildlife than the loss of a relatively small area of set-aside.

After the horrors of a wet harvest then delays to autumn work because of dry soils and hard clods its satisfying to see freshly drilled winter rape and cereals coming up and looking good. We may not yet have finished with slug and other problems and there is still a long way to go to harvest but the start of a new crop year always stimulates me.

Like many others this year we decided to min-till our autumn seedbeds rather than plough them. This was partly for economic reasons, partly environmental in that a lot less fossil fuel is used, but also because it kept the best soil into which to plant seeds on top and avoided turning over the summer saturated stuff beneath.

If ever there was a right year for min-till systems this has been it. The few fields I have seen that have been ploughed prior to drilling looked like liver - shiny and dark with blacker than usual furrows - and quickly dried into rock hard lumps that then had to be expensively broken down into a tilth. OK, min-till may not always be quite as tidy as burying trash with a plough but its paid off this year and as I say, the crops that are emerging after it are looking OK so far.

I was talking to this farm finance expert the other day. He spends most of his time visiting farmers and studying their accounts. I reasoned he must know more than most about the number of acres it takes these days for a farming family to make a living. So I asked him.

Its dangerous to generalise, he said cautiously, but here in Norfolk on Grade Three land with a typical arable rotation and no livestock I would estimate you would need a minimum of 1,500 acres (600ha) to be viable. If you have high overheads, like a big overdraft, a huge mortgage or a high rent, you would, of course, need more. But in such a case you would ideally want to increase in multiples of 1,500 acres to be able to run tackle and employ labour economically.

If you farm less than 1,500 acres (and we do!) its necessary to diversify to create other income streams to make up for the lack of acres, he went on. And if you do it well, the non core income can be more secure than that from producing commodities. That comment gave me a little comfort for we have diversified for years. But it also reinforced the need to either get hold of more land to farm (and land prices and rents continue to increase) or develop diversified activities further.

Does your advice hold good now that arable crop prices have increased sharply? I asked. Very much so, he replied. I am not expecting bumper farm profits in East Anglia this year. Do you realise that although the value of spot wheat is some £160/t, because of forward selling, the average achieved for grain harvested this year is likely to be under £100?

That too gave me food for thought.

Outside in yesterdays pouring rain stood fifty or so pig farmers sheltering under umbrella's. As everybody who was anybody in the grocery business arrived at the Royal Lancaster Hotel in London for the IGD's most prestigious conference of the year the farmers politely handed each of them a flyer. The headline said "I'll be history by Christmas (and so will my competitiors on the Continent)".

The hand-out went on to explain, in extremely moderate language, that pig production costs had risen so much in recent months that every pig was making a loss of 30% of its gross value. We must be paid more, and quickly, or we will be forced out of business the flyer said - and pig farmers all over Europe face a similar situation. In other words, Mr and Ms Grocer, don't rely on imports because they won't be there either.

Later, in the Great Hall some 700 delegates heard speaker after speaker representing UK supermarkets express sympathy with the pig farmers. "We know we will have to pay more", was a typical comment that was often followed by, "but that does not mean we will give up trying to supply our customers as cheaply as possible".

Over coffee during one of the conference breaks I found myself beside a breakfast cereal manufacturer who also supplied some of the retailers who had been on the platform. "Well, the speakers seemed to be saying the right things about paying more", I volunteered. "Yes, the top men always do", came the weary reply, "It's the ones on the buying floor you have to watch out for. They still work by the same old rules as they always have."

I wonder if those buyers realise how vulnerable their pig meat supply base has become?

On this date twenty years ago we were expecting our first grandchild. The slight complication was that the potential parents - our eldest son and his wife - were living in Amarillo, Texas. My wife, Lorna, had agreed to fly out to help the new mother with the baby as soon as it was born. So, on Oct 12, 13, and 14 we were in frequent telephone contact with the US to stay in touch with any signs that the birth was imminent.

Late in the afternoon of Oct 14th, a Thursday, we had an excited call from our son saying - "labour has started". I quickly booked a flight for Lorna from Gatwick to Amarillo via Dallas that left early the next morning. I also booked her a room at a Gatwick hotel for that night and we set off in the car to drive the 140 or so miles from Norfolk.

We arrived at the hotel at about 10.00pm on the Thursday evening. I had intended driving straight back to Norwich where I was due to record that weeks Anglia Farming Diary TV programme the next morning. But it was an unpleasant windy evening and when I saw my wife had been allocated a double room I decided to stay the night with her and get up early the next morning to drive back to Norwich.

Its amazing the amount of sound double glazed windows designed to allow sleep while aircraft are taking off close by will do to mask all sorts of sounds. Lorna and I were blissfully unaware of the gale that had become more ferocious as we slept. It was only when I got up at 5.30am to prepare to drive home - and all the lights went out as I began to dress - that we realised all was not well outside.

There are few things I enjoy more than my early morning cuppa. The alarm goes at 5.45am. I roll over and switch on Farming Today, by which time my wife will have handed me a cup of delicious steaming tea, made with real fresh cows milk. A little later, in the kitchen, I have a bowl of cornflakes, also with real milk. Its what gets me going in the mornings.

When I stay in a hotel and the only milk available for making tea is UHT in a little pot that may have been there for weeks, I usually don't even bother. And the idea of eating cornflakes with UHT fills me with horror. No thankyou. Its not what I want to put in my mouth. And I suspect the majority of British people that still have taste buds feel the same way.

But DEFRA, in its wisdom (or otherwise) has issued a discussion document advocating we change our habit of using fresh or pasteurised milk to one of drinking UHT. It is in the interests of climate change, apparently, and in theory should cut emissions of greenhouse gases. How that can be I do not understand given that UHT has to be heated, cooled and packed in plastic.

Whether or not the calculation on greenhouse gases is true I will fight hard for the continuation of fresh milk. And if the future of the world depends on using UHT instead my only retort, and I do not mean it in a blasphemous way, is God help us.

Three weeks ago I was bemoaning the poor sugar beet crop we had just started lifting, predicting significant losses for growers and telling British Sugar they should, despite EU sugar reform and terms already negotiated, raise the price for next year if they wanted to secure supplies.

Well, it seems they read my blogs. Because yesterday news arrived that the price for this year will be guaranteed at a minimum of £20/t including any deliveries surplus to quota. For quota beet the expectation is that the average will be about £24/t. This represents an increase of almost £5/t compared with previous expectations. Furthermore British Sugar is considering issuing additional contract tonnage to replace what it has lost through growers not returning contracts.

Isn't it wonderful what can be done when there are alternative crops to grow that suddenly look more profitable than sugar beet? Notwithstanding all the restrictions imposed by Brussels that used to "tie their hands" the monopoly processor has found it possible to improve its offer even after last winters "binding" contract agreement. British Sugar has exploited the fact that beet has been comparatively profitable for many years and growers have had to put up with its take-it-or-leave-it attitude. Now the boot is on the other foot and it feels good.

Whether yesterdays increase will be enough to persuade growers who had already decided to give up growing beet next year or the year after to reverse their decision, only time will tell. It is, after all, a one-off arrangement for 2008/9 enabling British Sugar to revert to previous prices should the value of wheat and rape fall significantly. Meanwhile growers will enjoy the novel experience of British Sugar dancing to their tune rather than the other way round.

The sun was shining; the contractor was lifting sugar beet; the haulier was taking them straight to the factory; the plough was almost keeping up with the beet harvester and the rotary cultivator/drill combination was planting wheat into the freshly turned land. It was all very satisfying and I decided there was not much I could do to improve things.

So, an hour ago I picked up a bucket from the garage and headed for one of our conservation hedges. For many years it's been one of my favorite places for sloes and this year there were more than ever. I was able to strip them off the twigs by the handful. Yes, I punctured my fingers with a few thorns but thats par for the course. In less than three quarters of an hour I had half filled the bucket. I left plenty for the birds but thought I should stop picking as I already had more sloes than I could afford to buy gin for.

This evening I shall sort the leaves from the fruit, wash the sloes and put them in the deep freeze. After a few days they'll be ready to shed their juice into the gin in which I shall place them along with lots of sugar.

My recipe is incredibly simple. Fill each bottle one third full with frozen sloes, tip in a slightly smaller volume of sugar, fill the bottle with gin, scew in the top and shake up the mixture. Place the bottles on a handy shelf and every day for a month as you walk past, pause and shake the bottles. When the sugar is all absorbed and the liquid has taken on a beautiful red colour, decant, filtering out the sloes.

When we have guests to shoot a little of the hedgerow cocktail will be taken out to entertain them. The only other use I have for sloe gin, of course, is for medicinal purposes. I just can't wait to be ill.

It is with a great sense of sadness and personal loss that I record the death of my friend and broadcasting colleague, Anthony Parkin. He was 81. In the early 1960's he created the national radio programme On Your Farm and invited me to be its main presenter. We worked together for over twenty years and developed a deep and mutual respect.

He was a professional, a perfectionist, and a principled producer epitomising all that was best about the BBC in those days. He always insisted on putting a balanced view of any issue, whatever his personal opinions, which were strong on some things. He would have been a model for some of todays broadcasters who do not, apparently, observe the same high ethics.

He originated radio breakfasts, broadcasts that, by their informality, enabled top people in our industry to reveal facets of their character that might otherwise have remained unknown. The programmes were a bit like Desert Island Discs with bacon and eggs. And he became the Agricultural Story Editor of The Archers, a job he took very seriously and continued in early retirement until frustrations at the politically correct production team drove him to resign.

He came from a non farming family. His father was knighted for creating the Dock Labour Board in the troubled 1950's and he had a relatively privileged childhood. He served in India in the Army and then, quite late in life, went to Reading University and gained a farming degree. His first job was with Farmers Weekly where one of his duties was sub-editing A G Street. He used to tell me how intimidating it was.

It is almost beyond belief that it has taken so long for respected scientists to accept the need to control badger numbers. That feeling is exacerbated by the fact that TB in cattle has cost the nations taxpayers in the region of £1billion, never mind the losses and heartache suffered by livestock farmers. Let us hope that, finally, the government will have the courage to bite the bullet and do what is recommended. Although farmers will have to be prepared for the public reaction against killing what are seen as beautiful furry creatures.

Back in the 1950's and '60's a concerted campaign run by the Ministry of Agriculture assisted by local vets succeded in eliminating TB from Great Britain. Herds were tested on a regular basis and reactors removed and slaughtered. I was milking cows at the time and well remember the sense of achievement when we at last had a few clear tests. The main motivation was public health for it was accepted that infected milk had spread TB to consumers.

Then pasteurisation was virtually universally adopted for milk suppled to consumers - a process which eliminated the disease. Public health authorities relaxed believing the TB problem was sorted. They reckoned without the recent immigration into Britain of people from other countries whose standards were not as high as ours and TB infection in humans is now significant again.

The other change that affected livestock was the ban, in 1973, of badger digging and hunting. During the earlier campaign badger numbers were controlled by these practices and any TB problems had little influence on clearing it from cattle. But suddenly badgers had no predators. Their numbers increased exponentially; they lived much closer together and passed on disease to one another; and as farmers know to their cost, passed it on to cattle as well.

As regular readers of Farmers Weekly will know I am in the habit of leading occasional study tours to look at farming in other countries. For the last few years my wife and I have headed up two trips per year - one short and one longhaul. For 2008 we have made similar plans. A ten day tour of Spanish farming will begin on March 12th and a fifteen day trip across the mid west of America starts on May 18th.

In Spain we will spend the first few days with my friend John Shropshire who runs G's near Ely and is probably the biggest salads and vegetable supplier to Britain’s supermarkets. To provide all year round continuity for his customers John has acquired a substantial acreage near Murcia and he personally will be there to entertain us and show us round.