April 2009 Archives

There is a consultation taking place to decide if farmers should have to notify neighbours before they apply agrochemicals to their crops.

While I agree strongly that farmers should be considerate to neighbours and transparent about what they are up to, I do not agree with compulsory notification.

When we have new fields or new neighbours on our farm, we try to introduce ourselves, explain that we are an Assured, LEAF Marque farm and we invite "the stakeholders" to come to our office to have a coffee and look at our records or audit certifications.  Normally this sounds sufficiently boring to put their mind at rest.  I think that this is a professional and civilised way to go about your business.  

If you stopped me in the street while carrying out one of your surveys, I would say that I cared passionately that my shoes weren't made by pre-teenagers in Asia (Good luck finding me, btw, I'm very rarely in a street these days).  My passion does not extend to requiring a weekly phone call from a Chinese factory manager to explain his HR policy.  I expect that the information would be available if I ever cared sufficiently to request a look at it.  Basically I place my trust in brands (and investigative reporters too I suppose) and would desert a manufacturer which had failed to live up to my expectations. 

Most people get irritated by unsolicited information in their lives.  There is nothing more annoying than a daily barrage of text messages, junk mail, pre-recorded telephone messages and cold callers at your door.  The majority get pestered because of the 5% of people who actually want this information.  Technology makes it too easy to share information and we need to be sparing about how much knowledge we send people. 

On our farm we carry out all pesticide handling and application pesticide usuage within the law.  My assumption, therefore, has to be that our practices are safe for the consumer, the neighbour and the operator alike.  If this is not the case, then there is something wrong with the regulations and they should be changed. 

Whay hey.  This week's Noos Revoo is here.

"Why is Caroline wearing a Victorian bathing costume?" you ask "Has her lace cap fallen off?" Oi, don't be so rude. I thought she was really good this week. I mean, I think she's really good EVERY week.

Plus, continuing the Upstairs, Downstairs theme, did you notice that Caroline was standing and Isabel was seated this week. Caroline's definitely a stander, isn't she? I think she looks more relaxed on the hoof. Isabel, however, seems more relaxed sitting down. It gives her a bit of gravitas. It's a bit Points of View - I love it.  9 out of 10 (and I'm a low marker).

Just £703,000,000,000.  That's how much our chancellor is planning to borrow on our behalf over the next five years. As a businessman, I was horrified at how little was done in the budget to tackle the financial mess that the country is in.

The argument he makes is that we must restart the economy before we tackle our debts.  I'm a simple man but this seems absolutely the opposite of what I would be doing if I were in his, unenviable, position.  Our economy was just a debt-fuelled bubble.  It wasn't driven by consumer need, it was driven by consumer "want" and, as it turned out, they didn't have the cash to live these dreams. 

The budget, as ever, favoured the borrowers rather than the savers.  It was a budget which punished prudence.  He is committing our currency to greater weakness.

I wouldn't leave Alistair Darling in charge of a fruit and veg stall for ten minutes while I went for a wee.  He should get the same treatment as the engineer who built our Case MXU135 tractor.  He should be Gaffer taped to a lamp post in Parliament Square with his trousers round his ankles wearing a T shirt saying "I just don't understand how to work a calculator." 

I have some reservations about suggesting that the week before the Young Farmers AGM but not enough reservations to amend what I have written.

After several busy months, we now have a quieter couple of weeks until we start harvesting summer flowers.  I am really looking forward to getting the farm very tidy, attending to some of the admin and management jobs that have been mounting up while I was sitting on a tractor and then, maybe just maybe, taking a few days away from Lincolnshire.

I have spent all day at my desk and sorted a pile of paperwork.  I also decided to get my body in order, I made appointments with the surgery, dentist and optician.

I knew it was yonks since my last eye test but I was suprised by the coincidence when the receptionist said "Tomorrow it will be exactly 20 years since your last test." 

I don't have pretty eyes but luckily they function perfectly.  I was telling my sister about how much I enjoyed the tests (which have changed very little in the last two decades) and I said that I was particularly good at the heavy glasses test where they keep adding extra lenses, like Buckeroo.  I said "She mananged to get loads of lenses on there"

"It's not to test how strong your nose is" said my sister.

We finished the potato planting yesterday.  We were later than we would have liked to be because we were waiting for a bit of extra seed to come down from Scotland.  My seed calculations are never very accurate.

The planting conditions have been superb throughout.  We only had two wet days and these were over the bank holiday weekend - Perfect.  Apart from a broken chain on the bed cultivator there were no technical hitches either.

It always makes me nervous when things run too smoothly, it usually means that there is a large crop to come and very low prices.  Hopefully the weather will now stay dry.  I would be perfectly happy if we only harvest 12 boxes of potatoes to the acre this year instead of the 24 that we did last year.  This, of course, is only on the strict understanding that every other potato grower only harvests 9 boxes to the acre.

I have been enjoying David Richardson's reports back from the study tour that he is leading around Zambia.  It sounds like a fascinating trip.  Today he wrote about a Zambian Princess.

This makes my own life seem rather dull.  I haven't met a single exotic princess all day, I've had our annual stocktaking valuation and (since my car was being serviced) I've been driving around in a bottom of the range, moss-coloured Volkswagen.  The sort of car that your Grandad would choose. 

So to add a bit of pizazz to the blog, I've decided to feature a glamorous African of my own. 

 We have almost finished potato planting and the I sold the last of the daffodils and switched off the coldstore yesterday.  We have had a very busy Spring with less staff than usual so we are all starting to feel tired.

I have also been busy working on the house and garden at home at nights.  To say I look haggard is an understatement, I look like the lovechild of Sid James and WH Auden.  (Sorry, that's rather a gruesome twosome but you can bet they would both have been up for it. Eh, Sid?  "Ack, ack, ack" ).

This morning, however, I sprung out of bed at 5.00am put some shorts and trainers on (I know, I know) and went for a 30 minute run.  I was back, showered and had made a fruit smoothie before Farming Today started.

This is so weird it has even suprised me.  I feel as if I have been possessed by Mr Motivator.  It's all good though, hopefully it will kick start my brain and get me writing something interesting on here again.

The government has announced to the media that it intends to offer subsidies (or support payments as some farmers prefer to hear them called) for electric cars.

Business Secretary Lord Mandelson said: "When people see the electric car - the speed, the lack of noise - they are going to fall in love with it." Someone throw a bit more green goo in his face please.  The thing about electric cars is that the electric needs to come from somewhere.  Gas, Coal, Oil, Nuclear? 

This is a classic example of government intervention disrupting a perfectly-functioning market.  The announcement that they are maybe going to offer these payments in two years means that potential car purchasers may defer their spend.  Instead they should be buying the best currently available NOW to help manufacturers to evolve.

If you want to know exactly how far behind the game this government are, read this

My friend, Linz, called yesterday to tell me that he had just heard a man describing living in South Lincolnshire as "the best thing since chalk and cheese."

Sad old do about the Royal Show being cancelled, eh?

It is intriguing that the Royal Hort. Society's shows (Chelsea, Hampton Court, Gardeners World etc) continue to do so well while the Royal Show has struggled for years.  Not that I believe that blame can or should be apportioned now  The show has failed to evolve and the decision to wrap it up is a courageous one, perhaps it should have happened a while ago.

I'm a big fan of tradition as a rule but agricultural clubs and socities have a rotten habit of clinging on to the wrong traditions.  Men on quad bikes in bowler hats does not a good day out make.

I understand that the society wishes to focus its efforts on more high-mided activities concerning science and the advancement of the industry.  This is absolutely correct in my opinion.  The Royal Show was very broad and shallow in its appeal and in many ways UK farmers have already won the PR battle.  The challenges now are to largely to improve our yields, lower our costs and to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and artificial compounds.  I wish the RASE every success with its new goals (and let's face it, Torode wouldn't have been of much use with these anyway)  

Tim, Piglet and I met up at Farmers Weekly Towers last week to record a couple of episodes of the Pure Tilth podcast.  We have a new guest presenter this time for you.  Hopefully these will all be edited and up on the website soon; I'll tell you when they are obviously.  I can't remember what we talked about; it was the usual waffle.  I seem to recall that someone used the word "schlong" and that Tim did a impression of a Chinaman which all right-thinking listeners will consider to be racist.

While I was there, justice was served. I was hung out to dry on my own petard by the deputy news editor (and Mouth of the Wash muse), Caroline Stock Cube for the "constructive advice" that I give on her weekly performance on "the Noos Revoo." She made me present the bloomin' thing this week.  I was suitably crumby and will keep my fool mouth closed in future.  Piglet also starred and he was a complete natural.

A nearby field sold at auction last week.  We would have liked to have had a dabble but in the end we couldn't justify paying anymore than £6500 an acre so we didn't even bother going to the auction.  In the end the hammer fell with a price tag nicely over £12 000 an acre.

There were several serious bidders at the £10 000 per acre mark.  A couple of years ago fields around here sold for £6000 an acre if they had a good land agent and a tail wind.  It looks as though things are changing, which is ironic because farm profitability is even crapper now than it was then.

I guess that as the economy melts (and the government prints money), land is the best place to invest cash.

As ever, this land will seem cheap in a decade.  My nephews will ask me why I didn't buy it when it was so cheap and I will have to admit that "I was never a good farmer I'm afraid, boys"

I've done one of those absences again, haven't I?  We have been planting potatoes and harvesting daffodils and I've been doing extreme gardening during the lighter nights and I've actually had a social life and blah, blah, blah...they're reasons not excuses, OK?.  Anyway I'm back now.

Or should I say, I'm Bach.  I've become strangely obsessed with Baroque classical music since we last spoke.

I'll fill you in an entry at a time, it's just better that way.