Food for Thought

Posting by Poultry World editor Richard Allison

I popped into my local Sainsbury’s store near Farnham on Saturday for a chicken, as we were having roast chicken for Mothers Day lunch. One thing I noted while browsing the shelves was that there was not a single, whole free range bird in the store.

The only free range chicken was cuts, breast, legs and thighs. This is in line with media reports of booming free range sales stripping stores bare in the weeks following Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s TV programmes.

However, what was worrying was that the free range cuts were imported from France. Such is demand that retailers are being forced to look further a field, which will have serious consequences on the British sector if it becomes a long-term fix, as highlighted by the NFU.

So has the push resulting in consumers trading up to imported free range products inadvertently increase food miles and threaten British companies? After all, there was still plenty of high quality, intensively produced British chicken on the shelves.

Entrepreneur and former TV Dragon Simon Woodroffe held an audience spellbound at The Future's In Your Hands, an event for young entrepreneurial people in agriculture at the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester.

Stand by Your Ham - the pig farmers' version of the Tammy Wynette classic Stand by your Man is capturing the public's imagination. Newspaper reports and radio play have sparked interest in Farmers Weekly's video on YouTube and in the FWiSpace discussion forums. If you haven't watched it already - here it is:

When DEFRA first announced the likely cost of the bluetongue vaccine, farmers' initial reaction was 'ouch'! But now people have had time to think about it, views are changing. Because - let's face it - what's the alternative? As farmers on the FWiSpace discussion forums have said - paying 55p-98p a dose is cheaper than the cost of fallen stock disposal which can be £35/ewe in some parts of the country.

Farmers Weekly's Livestock Editor Jonathan Long says in the latest issue of the magazine that the matter of vaccination is an open and shut case. And rather than concentrating on the cost of vaccination, the industry should be looking at the value of it.

When you are busy ploughing the last thing you expect is for the the ground to suddenly collapse beneath you spinning you through 360 degrees and across two fields.

But that is exactly what happened to James Fletcher, who works for Chester-based contractor Mike Harley, as these pictures on FWiSpace show.

Quite extraordinary.

The pictures of the tractor which got caught up in a landslide in Cheshire are amazing. But it seems that they might be more extraordinary that I thought.

I've received an email this morning from a professor at Durham University who specialises in landslides. He says that he has never seen anything like it in the UK and he's keen to investigate what caused it.

It was champage all round as the great and the good said a hearty goodbye to veteran Tenant Farmers' Association chairman Reg Haydon at the Farmers Club last night.

Reg, almost 75, has been at the helm of the organisation since it was formed in 1995 and will be remembered with much genuine affection.

Reg Haydon and New TFA chairman Greg Bliss

Testament to his skills as a chairman and the high regard in which he is held in was the presence at the party of many of the opponents that he'd locked horns with over the years. The Country Land and Business Association was out in force and took some digs in Reg's speech in good spirits

The Conservative party's Jim Paice and Tim Yeo were also there but nobody from the government turned up - although Reg didn't seem to be shedding too many tears about that!

Reg is planning to enjoy his retirement in the world of racing. Asked how he'd cope with all the dodgy characters involved he said it would be no change to working with landlords!

The presenters of a daily radio farming programme in New Zealand have recorded a song in response to British pig farmers’ version of ‘Stand by your Ham’.

Hosts of The Farming Show, Jamie Mackay and his right-hand-man Bradley, have composed and recorded a Kiwi version called Stand by your Lamb.

For the past two or three years it has been possible to find out details of farmers' support payments under the Freedom of Information Act.

It is an issue that gets many farmers hot under the collar - although others do argue that as an industry we have nothing to hide so we shouldn't act like we do.

But this kind of information is about to get even more accessible. All recipients of European Union agricultural and rural development payments will be published in detail under new rules adopted by the European Commission this week.

By 30 April, 2009, the full name, municipality and, where available, postal code of every recipient will be published in a clear, harmonised manner on nationally-managed websites.

A search tool will enable the public to see how much money each person or company has received. Amounts will be broken down in direct payments to farmers and other support measures.

"This is taxpayers' money, so it is very important that people know where it is being spent," said Mariann Fischer Boel, Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development.

"Transparency should also improve the management of these funds, by reinforcing public control of how the money is used. Only in this way can we guarantee an informed debate about the future of the Common Agricultural Policy. This level of transparency is something both we and the European Parliament have been pushing for and we're glad we now have agreement on how the system will work."

Tesco is rumoured to be on the verge of announcing a 0.5p/litre price increase for the dairy farmers supplying it with liquid milk.

Watch this space...

Whether you are a householder or a farmer flooding is a nightmare. So imagine being flooded four times in just nine months.

You have to feel sympathy for this chap in Oxfordshire.