DAVID RICHARDSON
DAVID RICHARDSON
It was a bad week with
almost every sector of
the industry under
pressure. First pigs,
then eggs and finally
the sheep have BSE
scare. Traditionally this
time of year used to be
known as the silly
season
I was privileged to attend the retirement party for Norman Coward. Held in the great hall at Midland Banks head office in the City, it was a gathering of the great and good in British agriculture.
The fact that so many made what, in some cases, were long trips to the Capital was a fitting tribute to a man who has earned universal respect during his years as head of the farming team at Midland Bank.
That applies whether you banked with him or not. He will be much missed, although I suspect he may pop up again somewhere. He is too young to retire completely and his particular skills should not be lost to the industry, particularly in its present state.
In fact there were a few good natured jibes about the timing of the retirement and the inevitable handover of a few problems to Norman Cowards successor, Steve Ellwood. This set the tone for many of the conversations I had during the evening.
You have been around for several years, one home counties farmer said, have you ever known a situation as bad as this?
And we went on to compare notes on most sectors of production. The only one we could think of which was not in trouble was potatoes, but they had a couple of bad years before this one.
I had shared a taxi to the event with a couple of chaps from the egg industry. They told me that the three biggest egg producer-packers in this country were losing about £500,000 a week between them. That cant go on for much longer, they said.
The pig trade is already in a state of what some referring to as meltdown.
The leader of one of the organisations representing the trade told me he expected a 25% fall-out of pig farmers within a matter of months. Another spoke of the news which hit the newspapers a couple of days later, that American pig producers had set out their stall to topple the Danes as the worlds biggest exporters of pigmeat.
Britains pig farmers will doubtless be caught in the crossfire. The industry is used to peaks and troughs, but not as deep nor as regularly as recently. If industry leaders, not prone to exaggerate, are right the worst is yet to come and there will be more casualties to follow Arthur Simmers Scottish disaster. The knock-on effects of that collapse was yet another topic of conversation.
That morning on the Farming Today radio programme and later on Today it had been announced that sheep may have their own strain of BSE, which may pose another hazard to human health. That this was based on historic tests on only nine sheep, none of which had BSE, was almost disregarded by the media.
Some at the Midland Bank party thought it was another story that would run and run. Others thought "food scare fatigue" had set in and it would die as quickly as the bone-in beef ban.
One industry leader said there were a number of reasons for the announcement that morning.
The first was that Prof Almond, who had released the story to the press, wanted more government funding for research and could think of no better way to persuade ministers than by starting another scare.
This was compounded, he suggested, by Sheila MacKechnie of the Consumers Association, who supported the scare because she was worried the Food Standards Agency might not be included in the forthcoming legislative programme.
Then there was the BBCs early morning ratings war with Chris Evans Virgin radio programme, which was in danger of toppling John Humphrys as most required listening.
Newspaper circulation battles combined with the silly season for news and the habit of editors to choose soft targets which could not bite back with writs were other factors which got it lots of attention.
The news that MAFF chose to ignore scientific advice to set up a database for cattle seven or eight years ago was still only a rumour.
There were a few people there who were smiling. They were the ones with substantial sums of cash (there are always some, even in the worst crisis) who circled, like vultures ready to pick up pieces of information to turn into profit.
Maybe they are courageous; maybe they are foolish. That judgement will depend on how their investments turn out. Perhaps their activities will become the foundations of farming empires which last for generations. That, after all, was what happened in the 1930s and some of those empires still survive.
Without the benefit of hindsight I wonder what the neighbours thought of what was happening at the time?
The saddest comment that evening was from the man who said his organisation, which represents a particular group of farmers, was buying groceries for some of its members because they could not afford to buy their own.
On the way to the exit I ran into the farmers weekly Editor. "Any chance you might be able to write something a bit more cheerful over the next few weeks old mate?" he asked.
The industry is
used to peaks and troughs but not as deep or as regular as recently. If industry leaders, not prone to exaggerate, are right, the worst is yet to come…