Food for Thought

Personally, I thought today was a run-of-the-mill kind of Tuesday. But according to a press release I have just received: "This is a great day."

The reason? Well, today is the launch of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board and the six sector companies who will decide how levy money is spent in the future.

It has been a couple of years coming, but the idea is that reforming the levy organisations will bring better value for money, more transparency and cut out duplication. As part of this all of the groups concerned will move to Stoneleigh, Warks in April 2009 and share a common site.

So it is really a 'great day'?

In truth it is probably a bit soon to make such a bold claim. It is still not clear exactly what changes will be seen at a grassroots level as a result of these reforms and it will probably take months before anything exciting can happen.

But at least the infrastructure is now in place to bring about change and DairyCo is already hinting that in time this could include levy cuts.

And if it - and the other sector bodies - can deliver what the industry needs, but for less money, then that has got to be a 'great day'.

Way back in the autumn of 2005, then Transport Secretary Alistair Darling announced new measures to make road fuels greener. The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, he said, would start in April 2008 and, by 2010, would require 5% of fuel sold at UK forecourts to come from renewable sources.

Last week, just three weeks before the RTFO was due to begin, pressure groups, including Oxfam and Greenpeace, ramped up their opposition, writing to the Department for Transport demanding a delay until a review of the sustainability of biofuels has been published.

Such groups have long opposed this technology, citing the impact of biofuels on food supply and prices, and concerns over habitat destruction and carbon release from ploughing virgin land. On their own, these objections are unlikely to throw the government off track at this late stage.

But things took a more serious turn when DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser, Robert Watson, had his say, calling for a delay until the results of a government inquiry into the sustainability of biofuels are known.

Prof Watson is no sensationalist. Ministers might well take note when he says biofuels policy may have run ahead of the science, and that some thinking time is needed to ensure the RTFO does not have the opposite effect to that intended.

The Welsh Assembly is understood to be on the verge of announcing a new TB control strategy - one that could include a cull of badgers within a limited area.

An announcement is expected mid-afternoon today.

Yesterday we had a major announcement on badger culling and shocked reaction to EU plans for compulsory electronic sheep identification – and Wales led on both fronts.

The Welsh Assembly announced that it is to test every one of Wales' 400-000-plus bovine and camelid animals for TB, ahead of any possible farm-specific culling of badgers.

Welsh farming unions have also said their members will be shell shocked by the EU Commission's determination to impose electronic identification of sheep (EID) from 2010.

Meanwhile, the Meat Hygiene Service is closing five regional offices to improve efficiency and embrace changing technology, saving £16m by 2011/12.

Today’s news is dominated by three items on animal disease – the Scottish government's decisions to pursue compulsory bluetongue vaccination; the Welsh Assembly's move to step up anti-TB badger culling; and DEFRA's phased bluetongue vaccination.

News is also emerging of a Gloucestershire farmer whose telehandler broke down as it crossed a main railway line yesterday, disrupting rail services. The incident follows a long-standing complaint with Network Rail over rabbit control.

I love it when I spot things like this.

Despite all their much publicised efforts to back British farming and connect customers with where their food comes from it seems some of Tesco's product development specialists could do with learning a bit about food to.

There can be no other explanation why Tesco's organic porridge oats carry a spendid picture of wheat ears!

So much has happened in the last few weeks I've neglected to get half the material I recorded in Africa out of my notebook.

So here's some more video footage - just to give a feel of what travelling through this tiny West African country feels like. The Gambia is a country of two halves and while crossing the River Gambia isn't quite as dramatic as the Congo or the Nile, it's still a rite of passage when visiting the country.

We relay expert advice on SPS form-filling in an SPS special feature and getting planning permission in our latest “So You Want To” article.

Profit is the focus of Group Arable Editor Robert Harris’s interview with Cereals 2008 event partner Velcourt, with plenty of talk about arable farming’s opportunities.

Contracting changes could be in for a shake-up if a new way of monitoring silaging operations takes off.

It's now two months since I set foot in Africa, as part of a trip with Concern Universal to look at how farmers in The Gambia were battling the effects of climate change and struggling against cheap imports. Both factors affecting UK farmers too, but much, much more devastating in a country as poor as the Gambia and with such a fragile agriculture.

BBC Local Radio expressed an interest in hearing about the trip, as my hometown of Marlborough has well-established links with The Gambia through the Marlborough Brandt Group, an effort set up in the early 1980's with the ethos that, as charity begins at home, international development begins at local community level.

Here's a podcast of the interview on BBC Radio Wiltshire.

Here are some of the key articles that have appeared on FWi over the past week – including a first drive of New Holland’s T6080 tractor (includes video footage), the risks of more modulation through the CAP health check, a farmer’s eye view of a McDonald’s processing plant and full listings of livestock anti-parasitic products.

Weighing in at under 6t, yet packing 155hp, we provide a first drive report on New Holland’s T6080 tractor (includes video footage).

Bovine TB – the bane of dairy farmers across the nation – is being targeted in Wales. We relay the latest developments as policies start to shift. There’s also evidence that scrapie could be passed on to lambs though ewe’s milk.

A SILENT tsunami of food shortages is sweeping the world. And it could have an overwhelmingly greater impact on world trade than the much-hyped credit crunch.

As this wave of food price inflation moves around the world it is leaving riots and shaken governments in its wake.

Nobody is immune. In poor countries meat and vegetables are being foregone, so a bowl of rice can be bought. In developing countries health care spending is cut, so families can have three meals a day. In developed countries consumer spending is under pressure as food bills take more of the household budget, reported The Economist last week.

FARMING needs entrepreneurs. It always has and it always will. It depends upon their ability to cope with the unexpected and quickly exploit new opportunities. Without them it would lose its vibrancy and ability to deliver so many benefits to modern society.

So Defra’s Fresh Start initiative, launched in 2006, deserves support. It aims to help a wide range of people develop business skills in the farming sector over an 18 month course programme. Judging by the end-of-programme gathering at Hadlow College in Kent last week, it is succeeding.

Gordon (Brown)’s hastily convened gathering of the great and good from the food industry could have big implications for farmers.

Before the meeting had even taken place the 10 Downing Street website signalled that biofuels were in the firing line.

The UK needs to be “more selective” in its support of biofuels, taking greater account of impacts on food prices and the environment, it signalled as news of the summit meeting with scientists, supermarkets, farmers and aid agencies started to filter out.

Funnily enough, there is a level of scepticism in the farming community about Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision to hold a food summit.

The meeting is yet to take place, but FWiSpace forum member Jacobus has got his own ideas about what has prompted it and what is likely to be said.

Here's a taster:

There's no doubt about it, those Filipinos and Bangladeshis who have had a hard day queueing up for their rice rations will be able to sleep easier in their beds tonight, secure in the knowledge that Flash Gordon has been holding a 'summit' at Number 10 with the supermarket bosses and Peter Kendall.

Fresh from a triumphant visit to the USA, where he took care to avoid confusion with another contemporaneous visitor by not wearing white and by not being chauffeured around in a gas guzzling 'Flash Mobile', Gordon feels that he is at the height of his powers.

Look how his last budget 'simplified' the tax system by abolishing the lower rate band and forcing lower income families to pay more tax and apply to join the benefit culture to claim it back in tax credits - too bad about the 5.3 million workers who don't qualify!

The canteen in Farmers Weekly Towers decided to celebrate St George's Day in style with a special menu of food.

It was a nice thought and I am told the food was pretty good. But we can't help wonder if they rather missed the point looking at the sign below....

Is St George now the patron saint of Britain?

In a week of sunshine and showers, farming has had its fair share of good news and bad.

When Gordon Brown called a Food Summit to tackle the global food crisis many hoped for some significant signals on prices paid to farmers. They should have known better, the summit yielded warm words, but little of substance. The challenge now is for the NFU and others to use the raised awareness to drive home the fact that low prices drive low output.

That's the phrase used more than once at last night's Real Food debate at the first Real Food Festival at Earls Court.

The charge was that all the "side issues" such as GM, food miles and the like are just that. The real deal is much bigger and according to food miles guru Tim Lang a suite of eight fundamentals need addressing as a whole not in part.

But what alarms me at debates such as these is the middle-classness of them.

One delegate ventured to suggest that food quality issues (of the type discussed last night - in other words trying to define what 'Real food' means...you get my drift) aren't just the preserve of the wealthy but the poor too. But I'm not sure I agree. A lot comes down to price.

It's all very well to talk about the importance of reconnecting people with where their food comes from...but to what purpose?

Farming makes another of its appearances on TV tonight and the signs are that it won't be pretty.

Our Daily Breads screens on More 4 at 10pm and looks at modern agricultural practices across Europe.

There's already been some discussion on FWiSpace.