Farmer Focus: Sue and Andy Guy

YOU CAN tell there are not many shopping days left to Christmas. The decorations are up in town and the farming press is full of Smithfield specials. Anticipation of the festive season is high here for several reasons.

The Dairy Farmers of Britain seasonality scheme rewards higher output in autumn and early winter. After seven-and-a-half years of building up herd numbers, we have finally broken the 2000 litres a day barrier. The increased production should mean we will earn almost 2p/litre more for milk produced in November. Good old Santa.

The downside of increasing output is forecasting the milk quota market or the need to invest in extra quota at all. As I write, milk quota is trading at more than 7p/litre to lease, or just above 13p/litre to buy. Neither looks like a good investment when the country has been behind forecast production every month so far.

It seems the single farm payment may be influencing quota price more than milk production. What a bizarre industry it is that is willing to spend future subsidy payments, in advance, on a licence to produce which, if forecast retirements are anything like accurate, may not be required at all.

The other early Christmas present is the IACS cheque, which arrived despite there being a query over the set-aside strip we claimed alongside the wood. We established the strip as a buffer next to the wood in 2002, but were unable to claim it as set-aside in that year because it was too narrow.

However, a rule change allowed us to submit it this year. The question arose because we described it as “natural regeneration” when it was, in fact, a planted ryegrass ley allowed to go wild. Anyway, we felt certain payment would be delayed because of the confusion and are pleased to receive the cheque on time.

With any luck, this Christmas should be affordable instead of being loaded on the credit card.