OPINION: Stephen Carr doubts sheep sector optimism
My main farm enterprise is my flock of 1,300 North Country Mules and what a complete waste of time and money it is.
There you are: I’ve said it. Shocking to hear, isn’t it? Despite the fact that it applies to just about every sheep in the UK.
Let me go further. My sheep flock has been a waste of time since 2005 when the ewe premium was abolished. And, as the English Beef and Lamb Executive has pointed out, sheep have consistently been losing their flockmasters money for years, as the average cost of producing a lamb in the UK has spiralled from £68 in 2007 to £91 in 2012.
Of course, to say what I have just said is frowned upon by the great and good of farming. I am likely to be characterised as “negative”, “whingeing” or prone to complaining that “life’s not fair”. So I should quickly point out that the farm business of which I am a partner is in sound financial health. I like to think that we have maintained a robust trading position because the farm has been completely restructured since 2005 when decoupling took place. The large suckler herd that once boasted quota for 465 cows is all but gone. Marginal arable land has been laid to grass. The quantity of food my farm produces each year has declined markedly, with large acreages now subject to an organic High Level Stewardship scheme.
“I am likely to be characterised as ‘negative’, ‘whingeing’ or prone to complaining that ‘life’s not fair'”
But all these changes have left me with a problem: a substantial number of sheep to graze my organic HLS pastures which, try as I might, I have not found a way to manage profitably. We used to lamb in early March indoors, but to save money we now lamb in late April out of doors. We used to sell our Suffolk/Mule lambs as stores in late summer, but we now run them on and sell them fat in the late winter, or run the best of the ewe lambs on and sell them as tegs the following autumn. These changes have helped reduce losses in some years, but have certainly not produced a trading profit.
But why am I worrying? The future is bright for sheep farming because everyone is telling me so. In the past couple of months Ed Bailey, president of NFU Cymru, has declared himself “optimistic for the long-term prospects of the Welsh sheep industry”.
For Scotland, rural affairs secretary Richard Lochhead has confirmed that there were indeed “grounds for optimism” for Scottish sheep producers. And in England the slightly more cautious Ian Johnson, South-West spokesman for the NFU, says he believes that “there are grounds for optimism in the long term”.
Last month, this cacophony of long-term optimism was confirmed when sheep farming representatives from all the UK farming unions, along with union representatives from France, Spain and Ireland, gathered for a crisis “summit” in London. The first two headlines I read in the press after the meeting were “Optimism in sheep industry after summit” and “Sheep sector stays optimistic despite a tough 12 months”.
Crisis? What crisis? Apparently our wonderful product is in huge demand both at home and abroad. But they have been saying this for years with precious little result so, somehow, I begin to doubt it.
In the meantime, like most sheep farmers, I slog on with my production and brave another lambing.
But can I make a plea to all those industry leaders out there who keep telling me that there are grounds for optimism for UK sheep production? Please don’t.
Stephen Carr runs an 800ha (1,950-acre) sheep, arable and beef farm on the South Downs near Eastbourne in partnership with his wife, Fizz. A third of the acreage is in conversion to organic status.