David's Digest

It was probaby too much to expect, in the middle of the biggest financial crisis for nearly eighty years, that the Prime Minister would take the opportunity in his Cabinet reshuffle to give food production the priority it deserves.

Instead, by down-sizing Defra and putting Ed Miliband in charge of climate change and carbon footprints he has once again elevated the environment above food security. I do not deny that the Miliband portfolio is an important one. Indeed I wish him success with it on behalf of myself and all who come after me, although like weather related ministerial posts of the past it may well turn out to be a poison chalice.

But food security is of at least equal importance and is, of course, related to climate change. If Gordon Brown had been paying attention over the past few years, or if his advisers had kept him informed of the building world crisis of food security, he could, in his reshuffle, have made changes that began to take the urgent actions needed to promote domestic food production at least to where it was in the early 1990's.

As it is, by leaving Hilary Benn in charge - a man who has never in his mind stopped being Overseas Development Secretary - he has missed yet another oppportunity to correct some of the mistakes of the last ten or twelve years.

Defra's own statistics prove how irresponsible it was, earlier this year, to refuse to cull badgers. TB is spreading, not only among the UK cattle herd, which is expected to have over 40,000 cases this year with the number of herds affected up 19% on last year already, but among other animals and humans. And diseased badgers are irrevocably and clearly linked with the spread.

 Cattle farmers and the NFU are once again calling for a cull - in the interests of their cattle, of course, but also to stop TB infecting pets and people. There is also the increasing costs of compensation paid to farmers whose cattle have to be slaughtered. The credit crunch must surely make officials more careful with taxpayers money.

Rumours have been rife since the decision not to cull that Hilary Benn had been ready to go ahead with the only logical policy of reducing badger numbers but that he had been influenced by senior civil servants to change his mind because of their perceptions of public opinion. If his staff knew anything about farming he would be right to take their advice.

Sadly Defra's corporate image is like the blind leading the blind. Its about time they had some advisers and ministers who actually understood what they were doing. They had one in Jeff Rooker who had taken the trouble to learn about our industry. Now he's disappeared, probably in disgust at what he left behind. What a tragic mess.

The economy has collapsed; the price of wheat has halved in six months; the cost of fertiliser has more than doubled and it looks like next year will be a financial disaster. On top of that the value of my pension fund has been slashed and I shall probably have to go on writing for Farmers Weekly until I am 95 (only a few more years). I'll try to stick it out if you will. But in general not the brightest of prospects, you'll agree.

But look out of the window; walk into the garden; drive round the farm. Have you ever seen such wonderful autumn colours. Gold and brown and shades of red light up the countryside and living where we farmers do we have the first and best sight of such beauty. You can't live on the view. But it makes austerity a little easier to bear.

Professor Richard Goodwin of Cranfield University has this week published a RASE sponsored report on the state of soil health. He says that wet summers over the last few years and the passage of heavy machinery have together damaged soil stucture. He suggests climate change will bring about more of the same and that this will lead to permanent damage to soil stucture.

There is undoubtedly some truth in his analysis. Soils have been saturated several times in recent years and damage must have been done as farmers have been forced to enter wet fields to harvest crops. It is also true that drainage has been neglected since grants to help fund it came to an end. There are wet patches in many fields that would have had attention by now if the grants had continued.

But to say the nations soils are all deteriorating  and will soon become unproductive seems to me to be an exaggeration, especially just after a harvest that, by universal consent, produced record yields.

Yes, of course our land would benefit from a dry time during which to sub-soil and break up pans and those patches of wet land need to be re-drained. But I really don't believe we are facing the scale of national disaster Prof Goodwin alleges. Indeed his main motivation seems to be to attract more funding for his specific sector of research into soils.

Again, I don't deny that that would be desirable. I am on record as calling for more funding for research into all aspects of agricultural production. Its just that I feel the emphasis of this report was a bit distorted and too negative.

I ran into John Torode, presenter of MasterChef, restaurateur of Smiths of Smithfield and President of the RASE at the Farmers Weekly Awards last week. I heard him speak the following day at the EFFP conference. There's no doubt he knows his food and furthermore is a strong advocate of that produced on British farms.

In my view he's an inspired choice as next years RASE President. In his own words he's a rough, tough Austrailian, so different from many of the toffs who've preceded him and at the sharp end of the food trade. His huge four story restaurant is, by all accounts, highly successful using only home grown ingredients. And his blunt, uncompromising approach might well shake up the RASE more than its organisers currently realise.

The other thing I liked is that he apparently reads Farmers Weekly every week. So, how can he fail to make an impact?