February 2012 Archives

The world's oldest living sheep has died just one month before celebrating its 26th birthday.

It is reported that she fell off a cliff.  I'm not so sure. I wonder if it may have been a case of ewethanasia.

Have you met Royalty, up close and personal?  I have. 

Before you meet a Royal, you are briefed with a little list of do's and don'ts.  It is basic stuff like when to perform your curtsey (I do a mean curtsey since I took up yoga) and pronouncing Ma'am to rhyme with "ham" and not with "harm"

This is a pretty good idea.  It saves the respective Highness from being embarrassed/irritated about 200 times every day.

I am thinking about implementing a similar system for myself before people meet me for the first time.  Nothing too grand; I don't expect a salute.  I'm not going to be accompanied by someone wearing epaulettes. I don't expect you to pronounce Matt to ryhme with "heart" and not with "hat."

I'm just going to have a simple, little handout produced to give to new tradesmen that are about to deal with me for the first time.  It's a very simple handout.  It only says one thing

DO NOT EAT A YOGHURT WHILE YOU ARE TALKING TO MATTHEW

That's pretty much my only stipulation. I'm hardly Mariah Carey.  I'm easy going in other respects.  I don't care if you call me "Mate", "Chief" or "Boss."  I don't care if you insult my plumbing.  I don't care if you forget to put your trousers on in the morning.  I don't care if you pat me on the head and say that my hair is thinning (and should, by coincidence, a 28 stone Estonian wrestler comes looking for you afterwards, there will be no possible way of linking the brutal pummelling that you receive back to me). 

My ONLY request is that you don't talk to me while you are eating a yoghurt.

Yesterday, we had an electrician here to complete a new installation and you'll never guess what he did.  He broke the first rule of meeting Matthew Naylor.  He committed the cardinal sin. 

He only ate a bloody yoghurt while he was talking to me

I'm not sure why it annoyed me so much.  Surely his hourly rate includes more than half of his attention. Maybe it was the pot scrapin' that annoyed me. Maybe it's the ploppy, unbiteable consistency of  yoghurt. Maybe it's the down-right unneccessaryness of needing a farty few dairy-based calories in the middle of the morning. Where does he keep the spoon for goodness sake? In his toolbox? All I know, is is really got under my skin.

From now on we move to a zero tolerance policy on mid-morning, mid-working yoghurt consumption.  It's a one-strike and you're out offence.  Dismissal on the spot .

We have had some curious weather recently.  In the space of less than two weeks we have recorded temperatures of -16 and 17 degrees centigrade.

Three weeks ago we had a six inch covering of snow, now the land is sufficiently dry for crops to be drilled.

The land is alarmingly dry, in fact. This is why for the first time in a decade we are not intending to contract any of our potatoes this year.  The "guarantee" of a price which barely meets your cost of production is becoming very common in the potato world. 

My fear is that if we contract half of our average production but only get half of our average yield, then we will have inadvertently contracted our entire crop at a low price.  After the disastrous prices that we have received for some of this year's crop, I do not want to take the risk of selling even a single potato at a penny less than its market value.

I am not sure if we will regret this decision or be thankful for it but our land has never, ever been drier at this time of year and I can't believe that this will fail to have an impact on all of this year's crops.

Because of the dry conditions, this year we are applying fertiliser much earlier than usual.  Our new methods have made the task easier and have meant that we can reduce our costs.  We have already put a light, precision-placed top dressing on all of the flowers and I am about to start applying the potash to this year's potato fields. 

Muriate of Potash is the only nutrient that we apply overall now, this is to prevent the chlorine in it from scorching the plant roots.  My preference would be to precision apply it as Sulphate of Potash or Potassium Nitrate but the extra cost of using these mean that we only use them when we have to.  We don't use much Potassium anyway because our soil indexes are 3s and 4s. 

I have measured and marked out all of the fields already using GPS.  I have downloaded the information from the (excellent) Kuhn website to start calibrating the Kuhn spinning disc fertiliser spreader.  Today I feel like a proper farmer boy.

Despite the dreadful way that it treats me on the other 364 days of the year, today I think that technology is a wonderful thing.

I am a hypocrite; I went to the NFU conference yesterday despite saying that I was taking a year off these sort of events. 

I had a great day and met a lot of people that I enjoy spending time with but, as I suppose that I expected, the agricultural political scene hasn't moved on much since I last paid it some attention.  It's still a bit 9 billiony out there, a bit sustainable-intensificationy, a bit partnership-workingy, a bit more-from-lessy, a bit risk-based-approachy.

What is most interesting is that in 20 years of listening on the fringes of agricultural politics, I have never known a time when the government were so keen to allow the farming industry get on with their work.  Caroline Spelman's address was so complimentary that out of politeness to her we should really have wound up the conference there and then, put our boiler suits on and got on with the task of some real farming. 

Obviously this didn't happen.  Whatever the political background, lobbying organisations have to keep lobbying.  Some of the questions to the minister and the EU comissioner, particularly and memorably one from Mark Leggate, were phrased with such unnecessary pomp and aggression that they made me feel uncomfortable.  These displays do not present a great face for the industry.  We are being shown a lot more support these days and I hope that the NFU do not overplay their hand.

It seemed to me that it  it is equally important for the NFU to focus its communication within the membership to make sure that it has a body that it can represent with confidence and total credibility.  The farming community needs to deliver some clear and measurable reductions in pollution and some clear and measurable increases in the populations of farmland bird species if it is to justify and build upon the immense amount of praise and goodwill that it has created for itself. 

According to the National Ecosystem Assessment, pollinating insects are worth £430 million to the economy.

That statistic must have strirred you up, hasn't it?

If you are a conservationist you will probably think

"We'd better look after them"

If you are a Daily Mail reader then you will probably be thinking

"Wow, the insects are prepared to put in the graft to support their families so why can't the illegal immigrants and Abu Hamza?"

If you work for the Treasury you would probably look to tax pollen. Or to privatise national ecosystem services.

I don't think any of those things.  Hang on.  I think the first one.  Obviously I think the first one.  But my main feeling is overwhelming annoyance that we have got into the habit of measuring the natural environment in cash terms. 

It would be fun to write an article about the financial performance other species (I might do that at some point) but today I feel too seriously about the subject.

It would be interesting to look at the validity and accuracy of how this figure was calculated.  I guess, since it was given to the nearest £10 million, it hasn't been audited by an accountant yet.  

Anyway.  To get into questions about detail, accuracy and validity miss the central point.  Sterling is an utterly irrelevant measure of an essential process such as pollination; that it is like deciding whether or not you love your sister based on the length of her nose or how many times she has used a pelican crossing.

Financial calculations of this sort are not just crass, dopey or surreal, although they are all of those things too, they are dangerously misleading. 

Firstly, cash is not a constant value to measure anything against, it inflates and deflates and can be stolen or lost.  Secondly, when we put a price on natural capital, we are throwing it to the tender mercy of the marketplace.  We are allowing someone to decide whether or not they want it.  This is Thatcherism taken to a black and evil conclusion.

On this note, you will be thrilled to hear that the government has formed a Natural Capital Committee.

It will report to the Economic Affairs Committee (chaired by the Chancellor of the Exchequer) and will measure English natural capital.

Hoorah.  The coutryside is safe

What are we going to do about these potato fertiliser rates?  I'm in a right lather about it.  I've reached the stage where I'm stopping people in the street to ask their opinion.