Farmer Focus: Store buyers hit by ‘tremendous’ beef price
James Playfair-Hannay © Angus Findlay Calving is almost over. As I write this article, we are heading to France for a wedding.
Travelling by train, the countryside is looking extremely well, as it should be at this time of year.
However, there are many bare patches, especially in spring-sown crops, both in England and France.
See also: Integrated beef schemes: What’s available and how they work
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The warmth and sunshine is such a contrast from last year’s damp and miserable conditions.
Livestock look exceedingly well and are worth tremendous values for sellers, but this makes for very challenging times for purchasers, particularly the buyers of store cattle.
Some people argue this is where the true values of livestock should be.
Margins are still very tight for the traders of livestock. Cereals, however, are a different proposition, and the trade/tariff deal with the US will not help the price of feed wheat, given the potential importation of bioethanol.
It will be very interesting to see the results of Baroness Minette Batters’ review into the profitability of farming.
She is more than welcome to come and visit us in an upland farming system in the Cheviot hills.
I have to admire the optimism (or stupidity) of our foreign-investor neighbour.
He is currently planting bare-rooted sitka spruce trees into arguably the driest farm in the Scottish Borders, in the driest spring since 1901.
Together with funding from the Scottish government, the stakeholders demonstrate ignorance and a total lack of local knowledge.
Scottish rural affairs secretary Mairi Gougeon has always said “right tree in the right place”.
This is very definitely “wrong tree in the wrong place”. It is certainly a very poor investment of taxpayer money.
At the Border Union Agricultural Society, we have just hosted our annual Countryside Schools Day at the Kelso showground with 1,100 primary school pupils, together with 50 exhibitors operating in the human food supply chain, and ancillary businesses.
It was a very enjoyable and informative day, with the children displaying much enthusiasm and interest.
The number of volunteer hours given by the local community to support this event is phenomenal.
As well as educating them about the production of the food that they eat, it will hopefully also stimulate the desire to seek careers in the rural sector.