I can't remember a wetter autumn than this year. Here we are in the "dry" east of the country looking at land drilled with wheat (well some of it - more on that later) with great puddles of water standing on top of high land. The soil beneath must be totally saturated and any fresh rainfall just stays on top for days before it can penetrate and filter down to the drains.
The trouble is there are still many fields of sugar beet to lift and I can only imagine the amount of damage the harvesters and trailers will do when they try to harvest them. There are also, as indicated above, many fields intended for wheat this year that have not been drilled. Frankly there is little prospect of them being planted. Maybe once it is realised how much winter corn has not been planted the price will respond a little. For once the land is as wet as it is now, lack of sun means it tends not to dry before the spring.
Its also a long while since we had significant snow in this area in November. We had five or six inches a couple of weekends ago and that left its contribution to soil moisture. Now its freezing every night. OK, we've all complained about mild winters in recent years and the need for a hard one to kill the bugs and the aphids. But as I sit here in the office wearing several layers to save on the heating bill I am feeling a little less enthusiastic about that idea and looking forward to April.
]]>When it comes to agriculture, which is also under Defra's remit, in case some ministers had forgotten, its actions are more reminiscent of moving the deck chairs on the Titanic. The Department may not yet have been fatally damaged by the iceberg of food shortages but it probably will. When it eventually capsizes and sinks we must just hope it doesn't drag our industry down with it.
]]>It sounded great, he said, in his gentle understated way. "They would fly me out to South Africa and they promised lots of time on golden beaches and they'd teach me to water ski. I was about to accept with enthusiasm but then I thought to ask the title of the programme. It was Celebrity Sharkbait. So I decided to gracefully decline."
That's the kind of self deprecating humour that has endeared the man to viewers and led them to vote for him despite his dreadful dancing. That and the fact that voting him off might mean they saw less of the gyrating and scantily clad Kristina, I suspect. Although I, of course, could make no further comment on that.
But noting the media furore over his dancing and the even bigger one over his resignation from the show it occurred to me how useful it would be to get that kind of publicity for farming. Could we, for instance, get Henry Plumb on the programme next time? He's got loads of anecdotes to entertain the viewers whether he can dance or not. Choose a partner with similar attributes to Kristina and he'd be well away. And I'm sure he could keep viewers on tenterhooks over whether or not he would stay the course.
Anyway, I leave the thought with the PR department of the NFU. I'm sure they'll take it seriously. Just don't make the mistake of getting Peter Kendall onto "I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here".I don't think he'd enjoy kangaroo's testicles.
]]>What a comfort it is to those of us from the gourmet classes to know this is happening. No class distinction here; our government, which prides itself on its concern for the welfare of blue collar workers, has not stinted in this protection of the aristocracy. Moreover it appears that it has found the resources for this groundbreaking scheme from savings made on inspections of imports of potentially diseased meat and other lethally contaminated goods.
Our Defra masters obviously have a clear sighted idea of the real priorities and are spending our money to benefit the most deserving sectors of society. Well done Hilary. Pass the port.
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It sounds to me like Mr King is preparing to increase his imports from around the world because he has located produce that is cheaper than he would have to pay here. This attack feels like the beginning of a PR campaign to persuade Sainsbury's customers its OK to import even more. Meanwhile, he doubtless hopes, it will help him enhance his companys' bottom line and perhaps his personal bonus as well.
Am I being cynical? Maybe. But no more so than Mr King, I suggest. For to come out with such an anti UK farmer statement as he did last week at a time when it is fast becoming necessary to produce more of the nations food at home to ensure long term security, is as cynical as it gets. And if he thinks African's are really benefiting from the trade he gives them he should visit the production areas to see for himself. Yes, most of the bosses are doing OK. But their prosperity relies, all to often, on the continued exploitation of workers.
I thought better of you Mr King.
]]>Before the event most commentators were predicting a cut of half a percent; a few said it might even be as high as one percent; only one academic said it should be one and a half percent, only to be ridiculed by the rest.
The implications of the huge (in banking terms) cut are that there must be a very torrid time ahead. The recession, in other words, is set to get deeper and wider and there will be lots of casualties along the way.
The NFU has rightly called for the cut to be passed on to farmers who borrow money. For the record I was being warned by a banker a couple of weeks ago that while base rates were virtually certain to come down, the rates charged by the banks would not alter much. In other words, if you have been paying one and a half percent, or two, or more above base rate when it comes down you will probably have to pay the same interest as before except that it will be at a much bigger premium above base rate than it was previously.
Banks, don't forget, have been nationalised or have had to refinance themselves with expensive money and are anxious to return to full solvency as soon as possible. As usual they will look to their customers to help them do it.
So, I wish the NFU well and very much hope that on the back of the relatively solid land assets owned by farmers they succeed in getting those rate cuts passed on. But I am not totally optimistic especially for the tenanted sector or for those who are particularly heavily borrowed.
Meanwhile, this morning in my post, I received a letter from my bank urging me to "make savings" by spending on some special offers of wine and so on that I did not want at cut prices. In another letter from the same bank in the same post I was reminded I could put five family names on my credit card. Needless to say both letters went straight in the bin. I do not intend to try to spend my way out of recession.
]]>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?
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>The piece then goes on to claim that pigeons have been "driven from the countryside by intensive farming" and attracted to urban and suburban gardens by bird feeders. If only!
The probability is that the 16,500 people who contributed to the survey were sitting in urban gardens as they did their count; that few, if any, of them actually went beyond the city limits to see what was happening on farmers fields. They then concluded, eroneously, that the increased numbers they were seeing in their gardens were refugees from farming systems.
Not only is their assessment demonstrably inaccurate (come and see for yourselves if you don't believe me) but they have also used it to take yet another unjustified swipe at our industry.
If the BTO and other bird agencies would like more pigeons in their city gardens and can find a feed to place on their bird tables that would be more attractive to them than my rape, I would encourage them to spread it around as widely as possible. Sadly, I doubt if that feed exists. For out here in the countryside we too have millions more pigeons and I would dearly love to significantly reduce their numbers.
]]>This year the harvest of the hedgerows is huge. You don't have to pick for long to get a bowl full. Which must give our local pickers even greater satisfaction than usual as they take advantage of the free food during the credit crunch.
But why do some of them leave their cars parked along narrow lanes restricting and delaying tractors trying to drill wheat? And when we workers try to access our fields through gateways in which other of their vehicles have been left why do the drivers behave as if we shouldn't be there and that their right of way greater is than ours?
So, despite my instinctive pleasure at seeing the pickers I am sometimes almost guilty of blackberry rage. If any of them read this I ask them, please, to accept that some of us have work to do and to park their cars accordingly.
]]>This must be one of the worst years ever for the slimy little vandals, which is hardly a surprise after all the rain. You don't even have to dig for them. They've eaten off most of the volunteer rape plants that grew behind the combine on some fields so it was clearly vital to spread slug pellets to protect the wheat seeds.
So, as with all the rape we have drilled this year, we have invested in Metaldehyde pellets on some of the wheat in the hope that combined with the rolling we can control the damage. It seems probable, according to our agronomist, that we will have to treat the fields again in a couple of weeks time.
He told us of neighbour who drilled his rape a few weeks ago and was then prevented from spreading slug pellets for a few days by heavy rain and had his entire crop wiped out. So the problem cannot be ignored.
Which makes the noises coming from water companies about Metaldehyde contamination all the more worrying. Apparently they are having trouble getting it out of water supplies and are calling for a ban on its use. Goodness knows where that would leave us if it happened.
But I understand there is growing evidence that most of the contamination is occuring in gardens and urban situations rather than farms. As often happens amateurs mess it up for professionals. But it does re-inforce the vital need for responsible use of the pellets on farms. As The Voluntary Initiative says "Always read the label" and do what it says.
]]>The first piece is the carcass of a dead pigeon preserved in red diesel fuel. It was the first casualty to be found attacking this years rape crops and was shot by me on Sept 14th with a twelve bore and a 28gm number 6 cartridge. It is entitled "Gottcha you b......".
The second piece on offer is a plaster cast of a rut in one of our harvest fields featuring the tread of a rare Michelin tyre and the unmistakable marks made by really sad stubble and a few sprouted grains, the whole decorated in a sticky dirty yellowy brown. I have named it "2008- a harvest to hate."
And the third item on offer during this unusual opportunity to acquire contemporary art of great distinction is a piece of genuine dung produced by a pedigree Friesian of my close acquaintance, moulded into an artistic shape and presented in a sealed surround of transparent plastic. I call it "Norfolk Bull sh-one-t".
I think you will find these items of peculiar and topical interest and irresistable. There will be a reserve price on each of £1m.
What am I bid?
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