SEPTEMBER 1981
A monthly column
remembering
days gone by
SEPTEMBER 1981
A GOOD month for many farmers – weather-wise, at least.
Conditions for autumn cultivations and drilling were ideal at farmers weeklys Easton Lodge Farm. It followed a bumper harvest, with Avalon the top-performing winter wheat at nearly 10t/ha.
British Sugar was predicting the earliest-ever start to the beet campaign, with the Spalding factory the first to open on Sept 22. But farmers werent so happy in Kent, where storms clobbered fruit trees. Other trees were under threat, with the wholesale disappearance of ash, beech, chestnut, oak and sycamore predicted. "The cause of this impending disaster is not a disease epidemic of dutch elm proportion – but the grey squirrel."
Visitors flocked to Stoneleigh for the Dairy Farming Event, where talk was of how three-times-a-day milking could lift margins without upping capital outlay. Such a system had its critics, with one researcher dubbing it a "last resort." "The unsocial hours are too high a price to pay for the extra production," he said.
The possibility of long hours was no deterrent to the young people trying to break into the industry. Share farming had a bright future, concluded land agent Richard Stratton. "It could break the deadlock between landlord and tenant and allow young people into the industry," he said.
If they could afford it. The Agricultural Mortgage Corporation and clearing banks upped the cost of mortgages by 2% to between 16% and 17.5%. Ouch.
Minister of Agriculture Peter Walker kept his job in a reshuffle – but Peg Fenner was appointed Parliamentary Secretary of Agriculture, a post she had held nearly 10 years earlier, acquiring the nicknames "Peg Prices" and "The Housewives Minister". Both of which are considerably nicer nicknames than many ministers have today.