David's Digest

As France takes over the Presidency of the EU today with the objective of persuading member states to ratify the Lisbon Treaty following the Irish rejection of it, as well as dealing with a bunch of other equally hot issues, not least among which is the energy crisis, its first major event is a food conference.

On Thursday France will host a major event entitled "Who will feed the World?". Speakers will include Agriculture Commissioner, Marrian Fischer Boel; the President of the European Parliament; Hans-Gert Pottering, French Agriculture Minister, Michel Barnier; French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner; Director General of the WTO, Pascal Lamy; and Director General of FAO, Jacques Diouf.

An impressive line-up, you will agree and the French are clearly taking the food crisis seriously. But what a pity all those people, who could have changed the policies that have exacerbated if not led to the problem, did not have the foresight to do so. They were, presumably, all listening to advice from political economists, all educated at the same kinds of establishments, all teaching the same misguided policies, which led them to recommend the exact opposite of what was required.

Doubtless the papers that will be presented will be studied exercises in self-justification to the effect that "it wasn't my fault guv". Whereas what is needed is an honest admission that they got it wrong and a willingness to change radically from their established path. But I'm not optimistic.

When our Countryside Stewardship Scheme ended after ten years we transferred to the Environmental Stewardship Scheme that succeded it. It's almost the same as the Higher Level Scheme and pays out a similar amount. In any case, you can't participate in ES and HLS, it has to be one or the other. The administration of ES is by Natural England.

The other day we had a note from the Eastern regional director of NE to the effect that there had been a hold-up in producing the latest version of the ES handbook and it would not be available until August. But don't worry, the note assured scheme participants, when it and the new annual forms arrive they will be easy to complete (we shall see) and they should be returned as soon as possible and in any case by the deadline of Sept 30 .

However, if we wished we could complete the old style forms to get them out of the way before August, which "is often a holiday period so may not fit in with personal arrangements".

Has he ever been on an arable farm?

Will someone please explain to me how it was that in the 1950's, when the badger population was much lower than it is now - because we hunted them - we were able, using the same tests as today, to eliminate TB from the UK cattle herd? It took us a few years of regular testing and a lot of infected cattle were slaughtered. But government, vets and farmers working together achieved it. And a disease that had been the scourge of humans as well as cattle (because not all milk was pasteurised then and people caught TB from drinking it) disappeared from our shores.

So, I ask again - if fewer badgers enabled the elimination of cattle TB then, why wouldn't it do the same today?

Idly browsing FWi this morning I came across a puzzling and potentially fascinating development. Chrissie Lawrence had superimposed an entry about dairy champions at the Great Yorkshire Show onto Matt Naylors normally crop based blog site.

Now, I'm not the sort of person to start rumours. But I can't help wondering what's going on. Is there something happening between the two of them? Are they using the blog site for trysts? Is this a cunning plan to add a little love interest for users?

I think we should be told.

I note that Mr Tony Cooper has recently been appointed boss of the Rural Payments Agency - a job he has been doing without the official title for two years. Can this be a reward for the fact that there are still Single Farm Payment cases unresolved for three years? That there are still underpayments, over payments, partial payments, disputes about maps and so on, some of which date back to the start of the scheme?

If Mr Cooper was really good enough to have his appointment confirmed wouldn't he have sorted out all the historical anomalies by now? And wouldn't he be confident enough to promise that this years payments would be issued by the end of the year rather than hoping they might be paid early in the New Year? 

Poor show that all this is, the truly guilty ones are those who dreamed up such a complicated system in the first place - the top civil servants of Defra led by Mrs Margaret Beckett who has driven off in her luxury caravan into the sunset of her political career with a whopping pension without so much as a backward glance.

Oliver Walston phoned me a few weeks ago. "Will you be growing sugar beet next year? he enquired. "Good question", I replied, "we haven't decided yet. We're still hoping British Sugar's offer will increase. Meanwhile we are hanging onto our unsigned contract".

Oliver said that was his position too and asked what were we going to do about it. I commented that I was getting to old for campaigning but would support him if he initiated one. In the event, as everyone now knows, he arranged a meeting of growers on a farm near Peterborough for yesterday morning. And yes, as promised, I was there.

About 300 beet growers turned up representing some 14% of British Sugar's tonneage. It was a vivid illustration of how much farmers care about sugar beet and how unhappy they are at British Sugar's attitude to pricing. Most there, I suspect, and certainly all who spoke, said they enjoyed growing the crop that had done them well in the past. But they were not prepared to grow it at a loss to feather British Sugar's already well lined nest.

A number pointed out that a base price of £24/t next year would probably be worth less than the £20 we received last year because costs had increased so much and were still increasing. Others told how they had reduced their acreage of beet last year and planted rape instead and significantly increased their profits as a result.

You might think, with looming world food shortages and resulting inflationary prices in the shops that EU officials in DGX11 would be preoccupied with thinking of solutions to avoid a deepening crisis. But guess what - some of them have found time to tell this country that acres must be banned. Only hectares remain as the official measurement and acres should never be mentioned again.

Last week colleagues of those who ruled on acres, presumably, were arguing (again) about the shape and dimensions of vegetables, apparently, confirming that it is an offence to sell carrots that are curved too much or are forked, with similar nonsensical regulations for other roots and fruits.

Do they not understand the extent to which they destroy their credibility and authority over important matters by coming out with such stupid and unnecessary statements? Acres will disappear of their own accord once people (like me) who grew up with them have passed on. Until then, while being fully aware of how many acres make up a hectare, I shall continue to think and use the measurements with which I feel comfortable.

And as for throwing away good food, whatever its shape, is not only daft but also irresponsible given the problems mentioned above. So, get real you lot in Brussels. Leave unimportant matters alone and concentrate on the real problems facing food and farming.

You should inject more humour into your blogs, said my friend. That chap Matt writes nonsense most of the time - about his batchelor life, his flowers, his new tractors, his adventures on the internet. And he gets a lot more response than you.

Well, I'm a serious sort of chap. I don't know too many jokes. And I only feel really driven to blog when I am angry about something. I'm fairly angry at the moment. But because its a hard luck story maybe users will find what follows amusing. If not I will just hope for sympathy.

I went to Ireland last week to recce a study tour I'm planning to lead there next year. Before I went I visited the dentist because I'd had a niggling ache in a wisdom tooth. I'll prescribe anti-biotics to take on your trip, he said, but if it doesn't get better it will have to come out.

Suffice to say it didn't get better and I spent most of my time in Ireland taking pain killers beteen bouts of agony. (I hope you're finding this amusing).

Fortunately I was accompanied by Jill Lewis of the Agricultural Travel Bureau who makes all my travel arrangements. Given my discomfort I asked her to drive. We travelled along beautiful coast roads, amazing countryside and through pretty villages.

In one of these there were a series of speed bumps. Jill failed to notice the first one and hit it at speed. The car bounced and I bounced with it. As I fell back into my seat I felt my back go. I now had two areas of my body in considerable discomfort and the pills hardly touched them. (This is hilarious, isn't it?)  

Having been a dedicated sugar beet grower for most of my life I do not consider myself much of an expert on oil seed rape. Moreover the problems we had keeping pigeons off the crops last winter (not always successfully) persuaded me that yields might be disappointing and income below budget.

Well, we managed to get about half our acreage combined by last evening, when we ran out of fit crops just before it rained, and I am agreeably surprised at the results. According to the yield monitor on the combine most of what we have done so far, all of the variety Astrid and all under 9% moisture, has yielded between five and six tonnes per hectare.

I gather from other FW correspondents that this is quite respectable. Maybe its because we have grown it on land that has not been cropped with rape for many years. Certainly it indicates how hardy the crop is despite sustained predator attack. Like I said, we still have half the crop to harvest. But if it does as well as what we've done so far I shall be satisfied - particularly as we sold most of it forward before the price dropped.

It also hardens my feelings towards growing many sugar beet next year at prices currently on the table. Good luck to the NFU in the re-opened negotiations. But I shall not hesitate to drill more rape in a few weeks time if a significant improvement in the British Sugar offer is not achieved.  

I was wondering what to write about yesterday's collapse of the Doha Round of the WTO but Matt, in his The Longer View, has beaten me to it. I really don't have anything to add to what he has said about it at the moment so I happily refer you to his comments.

I do, however, have a view on the recent destruction by eco terrorists of the GM potato trials on a field near Tadcaster in Yorkshire. I met the Leeds University scientist in charge of the trials at a conference a few weeks ago. He was a hard working and genuine researcher whose main aim in life was clearly to establish the facts on the trials he was conducting.

I think he had a premonition of what might happen to his plots. He was concerned even then at publication of the location of the trials and hoped the anti GM brigade would allow the crop to reach maturity so he could publish the truth - whatever that turned out to be.

His reaction to the destruction of the trial - that it was Luddite and akin to the burning of books that did not co-incide with Nazi philosophy in the 1930's - was understandable, given his frustration. It has been criticised as being too harsh. But what the critics really mean is that it was politically incorrect. For who can seriously fault the professor's reasoning.

If the trials had proved that GM potatoes were resistant to cyst nematodes that are costing UK potato growers £50mill/year to try to control with chemicals they would have provided yet more evidence that this technology should be adopted here. And the ability to use GM crop varieties like those grown on some 120mill hectares around the world last year would have provided an incentive and a more level playing field for UK farmers to support any fresh attempt to re-establish talks on free trade.