Archive Article: 1999/10/15

15 October 1999

British food on march was superb

On behalf of myself, my husband and fellow farmers who joined the Bournemouth march, I would like to thank everyone especially the wonderful farmers and growers who provided such wonderful food for the barbecue.

If everyone in this country could have enjoyed the great British food we ate, they would never want to eat foreign rubbish again. British is best.

Sally Sadler

Careys Farm, Toddington, Cheltenham, Glos.

Recovery route missed property

How good to see such a positive stance being taken in the Route to Recovery feature in FARMERS WEEKLY (News, Sept 24). It had constructive comment for almost all sectors of farming. Almost all, because there was one notable omission – farm property. The omission is understandable in that it is the one area where there is at present little need to press for political change.

The route to recovery is there to be taken, whether one is a landlord, an owner-occupier or a tenant.

That stems from five essential factors.

First, the strength of the rural property market. This brings opportunities not just for the sale of surplus premises such as cottages and paddocks, but also for lettings whether for residential use or the commercial occupation of converted barns.

Second, planning authorities are tending to encourage diversification and are more open to individual proposals.

Third, the 1995 Agricultural Tenancies Act created a greater flexibility in the occupation of land.

Fourth, agricultural property continues to attract special reliefs from capital taxation and to offer important provisions for retirement.

Fifth, funds are available from both the UK government and Europe for a variety of environmental and development projects.

Farm incomes may have slumped to record lows, but the number of potential remedies is greater than ever before. The possibilities are almost endless: Diversification, development, renegotiation of leases, refinancing, restructuring, sub-letting, contracting, joint ventures, early retirement, and more. The opportunities are there, they just need to be identified and appraised properly. When implemented, they could make all the difference for the future.

Peter A B Prag

Consultant, Humberts Chartered Surveyors, 25 Grosvenor Street, London.

Rally marcher on the cover

Thank you for the support FARMERS WEEKLY gave to the NFU rally which took place at the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth on Sept 27 (News, Oct 1).

I have been an avid reader of FW since I first set out to make a career of farming in 1949. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was pictured on the front cover (Oct 1) with other marchers.

Derek Wareham

The Old Smithy, Eardisland, Leominster, Herefords.

Supermarkets steal our cash

Farmers are going through the worst crisis in living memory due mainly to factors outside their control.

In the publics eyes we are paid subsidies to support us.

In reality, the subsidies are taken from us by the supermarkets greed and by government regulations controlling production methods specific only to this country. We are meant to be part of Europe and the grand Common Agricultural Policy, so what is our response to all of this?

Nothing if the actions of the majority of us are anything to go by. Maybe a grumble or two here and there and a forlorn hope that it will get better in the future.

Why do the majority of us sit back and do nothing while our livelihoods are slowly taken away from us? It is not just the supermarkets stranglehold on the retail sector which is to blame. It is also our government which is intent on making us produce to strict standards and then letting consumers purchase whatever they want from wherever they want.

On top of all this some people blatantly wave their IACS cheque about without any consideration whatsoever to the less fortunate who have rents to pay or poorer land to farm.

Surely it is time to take radical action to ensure equal opportunities exist for farmers across Europe and to make the public aware of the fact that the supermarkets are bleeding us and them dry? Only then will we secure the future of this industry.

We have two options, curl up and wither or fight and survive. If we do nothing, then nothing will change.

JB Everatt

Manor Farm, Island Road, Garthorpe, Scunthorpe, Lincs.

Small farms are more efficient

For the past two decades, the Whitehall mandarins and some of the good and the great farmers with whom they lunch, have been influencing government policy to effectively destroy family farms. They feel the small and medium-sized farms should give way to large and corporate units.

To that end they have distorted CAP payments. The system was devised to create adequate food for Europe and also give a fair living for the continental farmer. The large and corporate arable enterprises have received £bns in excessive subsidies for the past 20 years. That has distorted land values and created very high input costs for all farmers.

So it is interesting to read that Sentry Farming has lost £1.4m or £18 for each of its 75,000 acres. This in spite of receiving many millions in subsidies year after year. Is it wise to let the countryside be abandoned to such wasteful businesses? I contend that smaller family run farms are more efficient, less wasteful and able to give better value to the tax payer. Modulation is a must.

Chris Redding,

The Grange, Hewish, Weston-super-Mare, Somerset.

Action over pig prices needed

Malton Bacon Factory base price fell recently by 3.5p/kg over an eight-day period.

I have read the action plan put forward by the chief executive of the newly formed NPA, Mike Sheldon. If he cannot do any better than witter about long-term suggestions "bringing together interested parties and risk management," I, and I hope many others, will not help pay his salary.

Pig farmers need to press the government and retailers to label all pig meat clearly, to ban all sub-standard imports and to remove any BSE-related costs from our industry. Action is needed now. In fact I suspect that pig prices are going to fall further so that the end of pig farming in the UK is imminent.

F Henley

Green Farm, Soutfield Lane, Seaton Ross, York.

Does union care about pigs?

On Sept 28, Sainsbury advertised in the Daily Express unsmoked bacon – 300g/£2.79 – buy one, get one free.

As a pig farmer I was pleased to see that this was British bacon, but startled at the price; £2.79/ 300g equates to £9.30/kg. Even with a "buy one, get one free" deal it is still £4.65/kg.

During September we were paid 76p/kg for bacon pigs, so someone in the chain between farmer and housewife is making a significant profit at our expense, as well as cheating the housewife.

I forced myself to watch Countryfile week last Sunday in the hope that the NFU leader might ask the farm minister what all pig farmers would like to know – why there is no help for the pig industry in any shape or form? I was shocked when he totally ignored John Cravens lead to ask such a question and discussed poultry instead, not wishing to ruffle the ministers feathers with a difficult question on pigs.

As a former NFU member, I suggest it is time for a complete shake-up of the organisation. The leadership needs to get out of bed with Labour, stop leading the industry like lambs to slaughter and start fighting like lions.

E Kime

Ivy House Farm, Minting, Horncastle, Lincs.

Farmer co-ops are the tops

I agree wholeheartedly with Richard Whitlock of Sandy, Beds (Letters, Sept 24). Farmer co-operatives are doing sterling service to the industry. I just cannot understand why farmers trade wholesale produce any other way. There are some excellent co-ops on this island and we must remember collective marketing gives strength to a product. Co-ops are, in the main, controlled by farmers who can check that any profits made are being reinvested to benefit members rather than shareholders or greedy directors.

S Watson-Bowen

Dunplowin, Upton Magna, Salop.

Taking a stand against ACCS

I spent a considerable sum of money altering and adapting buildings, lighting and recording systems to comply with the requirement of the Assured Combinable Crops Scheme. Earlier this year, after paying a cheque for £250, I was inspected and found to have satisfied all requirements.

I am now requested to make a further annual payment based on the hectares planted for the year 2000 harvest. I consider that request to be premature and inappropriate, as myself and most arable farmers have certainly not completed plantings for the next harvest. In a difficult season it is quite the norm to amend plans perhaps at the dictate of the weather.

I am now engaged in trying to market my grain from the 1999 harvest. One would have expected, being a member of ACCS to have been entitled to expect some sort of premium over growers that had not bothered, or were not able, to meet the criteria of the scheme. That is not the case. Marketing of most, if not all farm produce, cereals included, is difficult in what is best described as a collapsed market. Growers are having to cut input costs to the very bone. I cannot justify using more fertiliser, fungicide or growth regulator, unless I can see a benefit. How can I consider it prudent to continue membership of the ACCS?

Although I feel it ethical to maintain the standards previously achieved, I have decided reluctantly to discontinue my membership. If and when it is apparent that the scheme is no longer a commercial nonsense I shall re-join and lend it my full support.

GR Dixon

Old Hall, Sunk Island, Patrington, Hull.

Why no cut in scheme costs?

Growers will now be receiving invoices for their subscription renewals for the Assured Combinable Crops Scheme for the 2000 harvest. Many like myself are likely to be very disappointed that there has been no reduction in subscription levels since last year.

When the scheme was set up it was indicated that subscription levels would be reconsidered and it was intended to reduce these depending on the rate of take up of membership. ACCS now has, apparently, 8400 registrations covering over 4m acres of crop which certainly has exceeded the expectations of the sceptics and, no doubt, initial ACCS budgets.

The justification from ACCS will doubtless be that they have a three-year contract with the administrators. However, commercial experience should tell them that contracts can be renegotiated. If it is pointed out to the administrators that if they are unable to offer a significant reduction in their charges and they are unlikely to be asked to tender for the next contract, that will no doubt focus their minds.

A further justification may be that ACCS intend to enhance the scheme with more inspections, more stringent regulation and record keeping and a larger organisation to support the increased bureaucracy.

I am a firm advocate for farm assurance and my motivation for support for ACCS was that it was to be an industry initiative to pre-empt the imposition of more costly regulation by MAFF and the supermarkets.

I hope the directors, who now find themselves in receipt of a very considerable cashflow, will remember these original objectives and seek every means to limit the financial burden on growers who have suffered 45% plus reductions in their business income since the scheme began.

To add insult to injury, the grain buyers are still sourcing non-assured grain and blending it with assured grain with no price differential.

Growers may like to consider informing ACCS that they intend to withhold subscription payments until more reasonable charges are offered.

AJ Coleman

Lower Norton Farms, Norton, Sutton Scotney, Winchester, Hants.

What is point of grain quality?

I have just received a renewal notice for my ACCS membership. I am wondering if anyone could give me good reason for spending £350, of the banks money, to continue my membership? When I joined two years ago, I told my sceptical friends that we must all join because our customers were concerned about how our food was produced. After all, I was also a member of FABpigs, because I could not sell my pigs without quality assurance.

Two years later, I watch the supermarket trucks thunder along the A14 eagerly bringing in yet more supplies of quality offal-fed, stall produced pigmeat. And I realise how far sighted and progressive I was to embrace quality assurance thus ensuring that the supermarket barons would loyally buy my produce.

Surely, I must continue my ACCS membership, if it can do the same for my arable enterprise as FABpigs has done for my livestock unit. Then, all my business worries would be over because I wouldnt have a business to worry about.

My miller tells me he would love to buy my quality assured milling wheat, but the wet wheat harvest dropped the Hagbergs so he will have to import some nice quality assured foreign wheat. Never mind I can always sell my ACCS feed wheat to the FABpig industry. Hang on a minute, are there any pigs out there?

Adrian Taylor

Clattercote Priory Farm, Claydon, Nr Banbury, Oxon.

Agriculture is some sandwich

We were told in a recent article in The Times newspaper, that our industry has been dragged down to the economic importance of "sandwiches" in the past few years.

That may be the case when measured in £s but to misquote Churchill, some sandwich, some filling! Without this industry there very soon would be neither bread nor filling!

However the story indicates just how economically unimportant agriculture is rapidly becoming to the country.

Sadly, MAFF along with many others only sees its role as managing the decline of this industry. Its up to us within the industry to address that decline and evolve a strategy for the future. Nobody else is going to do the job for us.

Michael Seals

Springfields Farm, Foston, Derbys.

Processing co-op not the answer

Nearly every farming paper I read seems to contain an article suggesting that the way to the promised land for dairy farmers is to form a co-op and get into processing. Certainly, it sounds easier than ostrich farming!

The main reason that the price of milk is low is because there is still something like 10% over-capacity in the milk processing sector and the supermarkets are playing one processor off against another.

Creating more processing capacity will not help the situation because processed milk still has to be sold on an over-supplied market. Perhaps buying up some existing processing capacity would make more sense.

Since the price of milk reached its peak, about £600m/year has been knocked off producers milk cheques. During the same period dairy companies have increased their profits by £42m/year equivalent to 0.45p/litre. Not the sort of figure to get your bank manager excited.

Many producers have been asked to find considerable sums to help finance a processing co-op. Given that the average age of milk producers is in the late 50s, I hope they are not investing proposed retirement funds. I also suggest that before parting with their money they are given the true facts and dont get over-ruled by emotion. I cant help feeling that if all milk producers discarded 10% of their milk for 12 months it would be a far cheaper solution.

Neville Doel

Hayleaze Farm, Crudwell, Malmesbury, Wilts.

Bad old days of milk return

The government has accused Milk Marque of monopolistic practices. That is despite MMs selling methods being largely dictated by government. Despite trading less than 50% of UK milk. Despite the major buyers being a handful of strong national, or multinational, companies.

If one of those dairies has now withdrawn from negotiations with its principal suppliers co-op, and instead is offering the farmers price cuts (temporary, smaller cuts if they leave their co-op and sell direct) where is the balance of power now?

When the MMB was scrapped by the last government, assurances were built in to prevent the bad old days before the board existed. Then dairies told farmers on the last day of the month that their milk would not be collected unless they accepted a lower price.

In the third week of September UK dairy farmers were informed of price cuts, from Oct 1. Is that any different?

Berkshire farmer

Name and address supplied.

MM – murder or suicide?

Murder by the state, or is it suicide? What kind of blarney has persuaded the government and Milk Marque that 19th century solutions are going to be appropriate for the new millennium?

Splitting up into three competing co-operatives while all around processors and retailers are merging into ever-larger units is defying economic gravity. Cries for investment in vertical integration are mistaken; it is too late. My family took that road 75 years ago. You dont see supermarkets investing downstream, only sideways. They stick to their last. Ex-farm milk prices have fallen by more than one-third in five years, while retail prices have remained constant. Who then are the beneficiaries? Governments might be expected to put consumer interests first. The Competition Commission seems to have been hunting the wrong quarry.

John Jenkin

Agricultural Consultant, 5B South Cliff Tower, Meads, Eastbourne, East Sussex.

Milk co-op beats adverts

The principles of advertising are quite simple: To get a return on your investment you need to either increase sales, or increase the price your customers will pay (preferably both).

UK dairy farmers cant increase their sales due to the quotas and if anyone thinks that the dairy companies are going to pass on any price increases they may get from the major retailers, they have not yet grasped the fact that the dairy companies have gained total control of the wholesale price of milk. Farmers have no free market to sell to.

Many farmers have been supporting generic advertising because they feel that we must do something. I put it to you that the "something" we should be doing is to invest in co-op-based processing so that we can sell our products to the retailers. Then advertising may actually pay.

I strongly urge all dairy farmers to vote against this tax. The only people sure to gain from it are those collecting and spending it.

Andy Clarke

Seamark Farm, Haighton Green Laane, Haighton, Preston, Lancs.

Too much glitz at dairy event

Although I congratulate the RABDF for staging a successful European Dairy Event, I came away with a single disturbing observation.

Manoeuvring through the busy trade stands under the covered area, I could not help noticing how many of them presented themselves in an excessive display of success. A lot were expensively constructed with bright lights, technological wizardry, colourful advertising and teaming with colour co-ordinated staff offering hospitality – all very welcoming to the beleaguered dairy farmer visitor.

But I wonder if this gave the right impression of an industry in crisis? It begs the question whether the supply industry is taking too much out of our recent meagre returns? Perhaps a more subdued and sober approach may have been more appropriate?

KC Grimsdell

Sycamore Farm, Raveningham, Norwich, Norfolk.

Foxes spread neosporosis

I read with interest your report from the Nottingham Cattle Fertility Conference on the significance of neosporosis as a cause of cattle abortions (Livestock, Sept 17).

In the report, transmission by dogs was cited as the possible missing link in the neosporosis life cycle.

I believe that foxes are more likely to be the main vector and the increase in their numbers has resulted in the high rate we are now seeing of neosporosis-related abortions.

John Bullock

Church Farm, Cotton, Stowmarket, Suffolk.

Subject G-Lime to thorough test

We were intrigued by the introduction of a new form of agricultural lime, G-Lime (Arable, Oct 1).

This product is described as granulated, compressed ground limestone, with the granules formed from limestone particles smaller than 100 microns. Granulation would give it the clear advantage of being spreadable by a farmers own spreader. The main reason for our interest is the claim that it is six times as effective as normal liming products, but that it costs approximately six times as much.

I would like to question the manufacturers claim that the fineness of the particles making up the granules give rise to this enhanced effectiveness.

The effectiveness of a liming material in raising the pH of a soil is related to application rate, fineness and neutralising value. G-Lime is made of ground limestone, and therefore the neutralising value will be between 50 and 55%, which is the same as other freely available and much cheaper products on the market.

A very fine ground liming material should provide fast correction of low pH because a relatively greater surface area is exposed to the soil in the short term.

However, slightly coarser grades of material will be subject to weathering and shattering and will therefore become fine over a period of time.

Therefore, very fine ground limestone is a quick release product, while slightly coarser grades or screened chalk, could be considered slower release products. Our own experience of spreading very finely ground limestone flour is that its effectiveness is relatively short lived, particularly where there is a fluctuating water table in the soil, allowing it all to be leached out in a year or two.

I have no doubt that Lafarge Redlands product will work, but my doubts are related to the claim of six times the effectiveness of alternative products.

The only way of properly assessing such a claim is to compare this product side-by- side with other liming materials over a period of at least five years, and on a range of soil types.

Mark Gillingham

The Courtyard Partnership

No evidence on G-Lime claim

As self-confessed lime suppliers and spreaders we read the article on G-Lime with interest (Arable, Oct 1).

Although we value FW reporting on industry developments, we were concerned that the article on G-Lime contained little supporting evidence for its claims.

The lime industry uses particle size and neutralising value (NV) to quantify lime quality. Conventional ground lime has to have 40% particles below 150, not 20% as stated. On further research, the NV of G-Lime is 54% the same as many ground limes.

Also no figure is allowed for the remainder of ground lime above 150. Admittedly, that takes time to become available, but does do so giving a slower release which enhances good soil management and therefore needs a value attributing to it for fair comparison.

So it is with renewed enthusiasm we go out to sell ground lime, after calculating its value against G-Lime.

Andrew and David Dutton

Ivy Cottage, Yorton Heath, Shrewsbury, Shropshire.