Archive Article: 1997/09/06
A large number of growers were extremely stubborn this harvest. Despite harvest pressure, they refused to sell their grain at giveaway prices. Instead, they dug in their heels, filled every available cattle or machinery shed with wheat and barley – and waited.
As a result of their actions, the feed market stopped falling in August, then rose around £8/t from the bottom of the market. Which goes to show that although individuals cannot influence markets, the result of thousands of farmers working independently – making the same decision – has an effect.
Of that rise, £5/t was probably a result of farmer resistance to selling, causing a market shortage.
This harvest raises an awkward problem for someone like me, who has always argued in favour of Farm Assurance. Prices were only forced up because growers were able to use every possible facility on their farms to store grain.
Under Farm Assurance, the majority of these emergency stores would not be acceptable and the grain would have been forced onto the market.
Growers would either have been forced to sell at harvest for discounted prices. Or else, they would have pretended to do the right thing and then, when assessed for Farm Assurance, forget the alternative storage areas and only mention their proper grain store.
Already, cynical growers believe that large merchants support Farm Assurance because they see it as a way of reducing grower freedom and locking them in to contracts.
The grower-merchant relationship is becoming increasingly strained. Many growers who sold malting barley on forward contracts, at high prices, have found apparently good quality malting barley being rejected. Some of these growers believe it was the high prices, not the poor quality of the grain, that led to the rejections.
The problem of deductions and rejections is an annual dilemma. In many cases the grain delivered is not up to standard.
But this is not always the case. A Norfolk farmer gave me information about feed barley he sold to a merchant. The merchant sold it to a compounder. The farmer delivered the barley directly to the compounder and had deductions made against several loads for low bushel weight.
Finally, one load was rejected. The farmer took back the rejected load from the compounder to the merchant, where it was tested and found to be well within specification.
Then he took a sample of the grain and had it tested independently and by a range of different merchants. The same sample came back with bushel weight results varying from 60.8kg/hl (where it was rejected) to 64.25kg/hl.
Eventually the compounder admitted his machine was inaccurately calibrated and all the claims against the farmer were dropped.
But how many other growers supplied that company and suffered unfair deductions which have not been refunded?
Maybe, it is time for joint action again. Each harvest, a group of growers should each agree to take a dozen samples from one grain batch to all the purchasers in their region. The same batch would be tested several times and the results could then be put together – perhaps by the NFU – showing the different test results obtained from the different merchants, millers, maltsters and compounders.
Once enough results were gathered, a league table of results could be produced and published.
This would give all growers information they could use, if they suspected their merchant was inaccurately testing their grain.
It would help growers to decide where best to sell their grain. It would pinpoint the purchasers who were cheating growers – and the fear of bad publicity would encourage grain purchasers to be as accurate as possible when testing.
More joint action is the way to more farmer-power, urges
Suffolk grower, Marie Skinner.