September 2008 - Posts
You get the best invitations in this job. I had the pleasure this week of attending a ladies in agriculture lunch hosted by Coutts bank at their grand headquarters on the Strand. This was the first time they've organised such a gathering with some 40 women across all aspects of the industry present. Female farmers, breeders, food chain specialists,policy makers and entrepreneurs were given the opportunity to mingle and swap ideas in a relaxed environment.
As posh lunches go, it was a fabulous affair - champagne, stunning food and a grand archive tour of the head office. It was a great way to meet the female movers and shakers in agriculture and what an impressive lot. The guest list included Elizabeth Buchanan, the private secretary to the Prince of Wales on farming, environment and business, Christine Tacon, general manager of the Co-op farms and farmers Hilary Wood from Cornwall and Debbie Macbean MBE from Scotland.
Apparently, one third of the Coutts client base are women and the bank is very keen to woo and influence us. Keep the wooing going - it was wonderful.
The day ended as it started by sipping champagne in the equally glamorous venue of the London Hilton. The team from our website www.fwi.co.uk were wined, dined and applauded as we won a glittering prize for our online community building work with farmers. Farmers Weekly's website was up against The Sun and won the Online Community of the Year title in the UK Association of Online Publishers Awards. This prize is as much farmers as it is ours because it's you, the web users, who have made www.fwi.co.uk such a great place to interact, buy equipment, find a job,get up to date information etc etc.
Sorry about the bragging, but it has to be done..... the judges were impressed with the level of farmer involvement in the site from thousands of shared pictures, lively discussion forums and farmers driving news stories for both the magazine and the website.
The judging panel said: "Fwi demonstrated there can be a light hearted approach to a business to business site, providing social interaction and community tools relevant to its members and pushing the business media boundaries with its Muddy Matches dating service."
Well done everyone who has participated in our online community. If you haven't had a go yet, it's well worth grabbing a cuppa and setting aside a few minutes to take a look.
We've found two great new young columnists and bloggers for Farmers Weekly and www.fwi.co.uk. They are Lizzie Jennings, a first year student at Bishop Burton, Yorkshire and Rob Cotton, a second year student at Harper Adams, Shropshire. Both will be writing and blogging for us on life as an agricultural student and I think they will bring a fresh take on issues for the younger generation.
The average age of our magazine readers is about 59 years and online it's about 45 years so we are always anxious to attract younger people to our products and services. If we don't, we wil struggle to survive long term. So we are open to ideas on how best to appeal to a younger audience without neglecting the old 'uns....... all thoughts gratefully received.
If you've got sons, daughters or family at Harper Adams you may be interested in a picture gallery we are about to put up on www.fwispace.co.uk showing photos from their graduation ceremony held at the weekend.
Today, our Global and Markets Editor Philip Clarke has sent a press release to the national media warning that food prices will increase if the EU bans large numbers of pesticides commonly used in farming.
We are hoping to capitalise on increasing newspaper, tv and radio interest in food costs by alerting them to the Farmers Weekly Save Our Sprays Campaign and the likely repercussions on consumers if the MEPs give new legislation the go ahead. The latest independent research conducted by economist Sean Rickard at Cranfield School of Management is a powerful tool on our side. If anything is going to convince the Eurocrats to change their mind, it's the negative impact their decisions could have on shoppers.
The campaign is progressing well with over 1100 signatures of support - about 600 coming from the magazine readers, 400 from our web users and the rest from visitors to our stand at recent agricultural shows. We would always like more names added to the list before we present to the EU Parliament next month so please galvanise your friends and colleagues into action. The next few weeks will be critical. We will also be providing advice on how best to write to your own MEP - making sure they understand all the issues and hear the concern from farmers. .
If you have any ideas on how we can build up this argument further with the EU, then please reply to this blog. We have been disappointed by the lack of support from other farming media in Germany, Holland and France. Media across Europe, it seems, do not look upon campaigning in the same light as us Brits. The journalists over there feel campaigning is not their role and purpose. They believe lobbying threatens their independence and therefore they prefer to avoid it at all costs.
UK media of all shapes and sizes like to campaign a good deal to change opinion, build awareness or fight for injustices. Farmers Weekly has a long history of fighting for certain causes on behalf of its readers and long should that continue. We cannot have a strapline that says: "Working for Your Farming Future" if we are not prepared to get off our backsides and challenge those in authority when it really matters.
Here is the press release circulated to other media today. Let's see what take up we get.
PRESS RELEASE 11 September 2008 – for immediate release
Consumers to take another financial hit if new EU pesticides policy goes ahead
The price of potatoes will double, bread will go up by 9p/loaf, pork chops will increase by 40p/kg and a carton of milk will cost 3p/litre more.
That will be the consequence of new EU legislation which seeks to ban large numbers of the pesticides commonly used in modern agriculture.
According to leading industry magazine Farmers Weekly, without these crop protection products, food output throughout Europe will drop significantly, driving food prices even higher.
That is why the magazine is running a new “Save our Sprays” campaign, to “keep farming productive”.
“At face value, banning pesticides from the food chain may seem like a good thing. Certainly it is an ‘easy win’ for MEPs keen to get re-elected,” says Farmers Weekly’s Philip Clarke, who is managing the campaign. “But on closer inspection the plan is fundamentally flawed.
“First and foremost, we are concerned at the effect the proposals will have on food availability and the price of food to consumers.
“Independent research by the Cranfield School of Management, obtained by Farmers Weekly, shows that, should the European parliament succeed in banning 85% of current pesticides, then the price of cereals would have to double in order to make up for the drop in output.
“For consumers, that would mean a 9p increase in the price of a loaf of bread, 3p/litre on a carton of milk and 40p/kg more for pork chops. According to the Cranfield study, the price of potatoes would have to double.”
Historically, food is still relatively cheap, absorbing less than 10% of average household income, explains Mr Clarke. “But food price inflation is already in double figures and for the poorest families, who spend over 30% of their income on food, any further increase will have a devastating impact.”
Members of the public are therefore being urged to write to their MEPs to register their concern, and to sign the Farmers Weekly e-petition at www.fwi.co.uk/sos which will be presented to the European Parliament in October.
For more information on this story please contact:
Philip Clarke, European editor at Farmers Weekly
020 8652 4921 philip.clarke@rbi.co.uk
Mike Abram, deputy arable editor at Farmers Weekly
020 8652 4086 mike.abram@rbi.co.uk
NOTES TO EDITORS
1) The legislation going through Brussels is the revised EU Directive 91/414 on pesticide approvals. It is about to receive its second reading in the European Parliament.
2) So far the EU Commission has not conducted a full impact assessment. MEPs are therefore being asked to vote on something they don’t yet know the effect of.
3) An assessment by the UK’s Pesticides Safety Directorate shows that, under the EU Commission’s proposals, 15% of current pesticides would go. But under the European Parliament’s version, 85% would be lost.
4) Independent research was conducted by well-known economist Sean Rickard at The Cranfield School of Management and is available at…
5) The current “risk-based” system of pesticide approvals already builds in large safety margins for farmers, consumers and the environment.
One of our fwispace regular users TeslaCoils has challenged us on the selection of FW's barometer farmers. He asked: "Do you vet your barometer farms? They seem never to have any problems and always have the best yields for the least effort. Either that or they are liars"
Well, they are certainly not liars. I'm not sure whether TeslaCoils has been reading enough of our barometer farm reports. The are all vetted before being offered barometer farm status and there's no doubt that they do have their share of problems and frustrations.
Take a look at the tale of woe from barometer farmer Ian Bird at Catchgate Farm, Castle Eden near Hartlepool and you'll see what I mean. The piece is also written up on page 50 of FW's September 5 issue. The poor guy has not only had the worst harvest he's ever known but has had to battle with a combine breakdown at the same time. Previous harvest spotlights may well have been more upbeat because two weeks ago and before we were not in the dire situation we are now with the weather.
The criteria we use for choosing barometer farms is tough. Firstly, they all have to be good farmers who have either been recommended to us by others in the industry or who have passed the Andrew Blake test. Andrew is our very experienced senior arable reporter who runs this section of content. He sets extremely high standard and he's a hard man to please.
Barometer farmers have to be business minded and prepared to give us their time to update readers and users on what's going on with their farm. We need an honest account - warts and all. It would completely defeat the whole object of having barometer farms if they always reported a perfect picture of life on the farm and consistently came up smelling of roses. What would be the point of that? In order to do a fair job for readers, they also have to represent a cross section of arable farms in size, location and focus. Overall, they should epitomise best practice in agriculture.
So it's not that surprising then that our barometer farmers are sounding like they've coped pretty well with this awful weather. We would have expected them to have found solutions to the problems. Our overall impression of this very difficult harvest is that it is impossible to generalise. Different parts of the country have had different experiences with the weather. Yields generally have been good for those suffering less with constant rain. I've just had a conversation with our columnist Stephen Carr who is based in East Sussex. He tells me that the micro climate in the south east has led to huge variations for farmers just down the road from each other. From parish to parish, there have been big differences in the way farms and farmers are coping.
Some of the harvest success stories are not just down to the weather. Good judgement calls on when to cut and making sure you have enough capacity to cut it all must have a lot to do with it as well. Some farmers in the south east, for example, have had years of relying on three dry weeks to cut and have organised their combine capacity around that. This year, with the weather so unreliable, two weeks of cutting was all they really had to work with. In East Sussex, there are still acres and acres looking untouched and very sad. It's a disaster for many.
Like you, we are getting seriously worried about this harvest. The FW team is completely preoccupied with the challenges or, should I say crisis, the wet weather is presenting for farmers. It dominates our working day as, I'm sure, it does every grower.
Some of the FW journalists have family farms and so are grappling with the issues in the field and then reporting on them at the same time. We have been using our barometer farmers to keep us up to date and give you daily assessments of how its going overall in your region and across the country. It's a mixed picture. For many in the south west and north, for example, it's looking like a disaster in terms of yield, quality and drying costs. See harvest highlights (or should it be harvest lowlights) in pictures, stories and forum discussions. There you can access information about how much is left to cut; how the harvest is progressing and moisture content details.
When is it going to stop raining?. The forecast for this weekend is once again dire with severe weather warnings in some parts. I heard that the forecast for East Cornwall was that it would rain everyday in that area for at least another week. Our senior arable writer Andrew Blake has just heard from a neighbour in Wiltshire that he still has 1000 acres of wheat to cut and it's still pouring there. The only slight glimmer of positive is that most of the crops Andrew has seen in the county seem to be standing reasonably well given the battering they have had.
We are trying to put together more meaningful round-ups of what's going on around the country and will do a proper assessment of the full impact after this weekend's downpours. But keep us posted if you hear of anything noteworthy concerning the harvest or want to be included in next week's roundup. The more comprehensive we can make our coverage the better for everyone.
Farmers Weekly is supporting British Food Fortnight (Sept 20 - Oct 5) and if you want to know more about how it is promoting to retailers, consumers, caterers and schools look at the following:
A 'Want to buy British' service enabling the public to see at a touch of a button what British produce is available in the supermarkets - people can search by product or by supermarket, see which supermarkets are selling the most British produce and use the information to ask their local store to stock more British product ranges. Accessible via top right hand corner of www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk The new 'Buying British' information service that for the first time in one place, provides consumers, retailers and caterers with everything they need to know about buying British food including what logos to look for and information about regional and seasonal varieties. For example: General info: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/general-information/Beef: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/beef/Lamb: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/lamb-and-mutton/Pork: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/pork,-bacon-and-ham/ Chicken: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/poultry/Dairy: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/dairy/ The 'Why it is best to buy British' film, courtesy of FW!: Accessible via home page: www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk School resources on: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/teachers-take-part/ - see in particular the downloadable 'Putting the Ooo back into food' resource packs and the contact details for accessing help from our network of 9,000 chefs. The 'How to take part' pages:For consumers: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/take-part/For retailers & caterers: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/retailers-and-caterers/For public procurement: http://www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk/blogcategory/public-procurement/
I had lunch today with someone who had so much energy and drive she made me feel quite lazy. Her name was Alexia Robinson and she is the founder and organiser of British Food Fortnight, which runs from September 20-October 5, Alexia is a bit of a one woman human dynamo. Now in its seventh year, British Food Fortnight has grown into an impressive national promotion for all that's great about British agriculture and food thanks to Alexia's enthusiasm.
Every year, more and more shops, pubs and restaurants take part, all enjoying the commercial benefits that participation brings. Over a 1000 independent shops, 200 medium sized retailers, five major supermarkets, five of the largest food service organisations and four major pub groups regularly run promotions. BFF's website www.britishfoodfortnight.co.uk receives 5.8m hits and media coverage is seen or heard over 300 million times during the year,.
It would be easy to knock an event like this organised by a one women operation that lasts just two weeks and has virtually zilch funding. But it's a start at trying to communicate positive generic messages to the consumer about British food by mobilising communities to use BFF resources and it is influencing at various levels. Alexia's campaign includes retail, catering, education and a media programme. In schools alone, she is encouraging children to learn to cook with British food and inviting volunteer, professional chefs from around the country to get stuck into the classroom and educate. One of her sponsors Kenwood is even supplying kitchen and cooking equipment for schools that get involved, which is ironic as Kenwood is no longer a British owned company, it's Italian.
BFF has good support from a few isolated British farming organisations and an army of passionate individuals like FW Farmer of the Year John Geldard but, she would hate me for saying this, the scheme is not well supported by British agriculture. We have to ask ourselves why? In fact, retailers, caterers and schools back BFF better than British farmers.
Isn't it about time we had a more coherent plan to promote British farming and food better to the public? Rather than relying on the goodwill and enthusiasm of a few people, wouldn't it be so much more effective if we had a national campaign that rolled out through the year and marketed a fresh, dynamic image? This takes money and organisation but we have all this in the form of the AHDB (the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board) that oversees all the levy groups. It might take some bashing of heads to get agreement on a way forward particularly as there's so many factions involved, but where there's a will, there is usually a way.
Where efforts have been made in the past, such as the tv ad campaign with Beefy and Lamby, it seems to have delivered big benefits to the meat sector. British Food Fortnight does a great job given its size and scale but a bigger concerted effort is required. What do you think?