TALKING POINT
No longer committed to my pigs
The experts for some time have advised that in order to survive, let alone succeed, in pig farming farmers have to be committed. As the years pass, pig farming becomes more of a financial burden. For the first time in my 46 years I looked up commitment in the dictionary and was well educated. It advised thus: "Engagement that restricts freedom of action".
Surely, that breaks one of the fundamental rules of business. You must be free to act immediately, if something is financially wrong for whatever reason whether as an individual, or as an industry.
Traditionally, pigs were part of a mixed farm; if they were financially unworthwhile, they were cut; until supply came into balance with demand. Income from the other farm enterprises tides the business over and capital value is maintained.
Updated into modern day parlance, pigs should be part of a portfolio of investment. The other investments may be on or off farm or other income generated from working off farm.
Commitment takes at least two individuals or parties to trust and work hard for each other to make the commitment work. We pig farmers have neither commitment from government or the purchasers of our pigs.
I still intend to farm pigs but not be committed. As long as I farm pigs I have a duty to supply pigmeat that is wholesome and fit for human consumption but I do not have a duty to farm pigs.
My brain is now at peace and I am looking forward to the rest of life thanks to my new vision of how to farm pigs with sanity.
David Turton
Oast House, Egypt Farm, Rushlake Green, Heathfield, East Sussex.
Simpler to keep HLCAs
I have sympathy for civil servants grappling with the new area payments system for LFA stock-farming regions. HLCAs, we are told, are first in line to be transformed from headage payments.
The minister has stressed that sheep and cattle producers cannot be insulated from market forces by subsidies. But plainly an area payment scheme must relate to more than simply acreage. A flat rate with environmental top-ups has been mentioned. But with an infinite variety of topography, climate, altitude, soil types, and exposure, many wonder how a fair basis can be struck.
The only reasonable yardstick is the historic stocking density which, over generations, has been found to be in balance with the natural vegetation and in-bye resources.
If differential rates a hectare are to be introduced, an enormous job of assessing each and every farm will be necessary. And if environmental top-ups are planned, how will these fit with ESA and Stewardship tiers?
It would have been simpler to keep the HLCA system in place and fine-tuned it to meet new environmental criteria. It could be turned into an environmental premium or why not put all LFA farms into ESAs and redraw this effective scheme tailored for hill farmings needs?
It is a monstrous bureaucratic exercise to change a system of regular support payments. At present they provide farm balance sheets with asset value on which overdrafts and loans can carry farms through the financial year.
MAFF should consult more closely with organisations close to the industry before forcing through impractical ideas.
K A McDougall
Stiffkey, Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk.
Triangular tags badly flawed
David Cottons letter (Apr 9) hit the nail on the head with regard to plastic ear tags. Every cattle farmer in the country could write the same story. Any tag of a triangular design runs a high risk of being ripped out.
Like most farmers, I have stock with ripped ears. One calf lost her tag at a young age, so much was the damage to the ear, there was not enough left to replace the tag.
A much better tag was on sale in recent years. It was metal with the same clip device as a standard tag. On the top bar the design was circular, painted red or yellow, with black engraved letters and numbers. It was plain to read at a distance and had a much better life span than the plastic ear tag. I worry about the pain inflicted on the animal when the tag is ripped off taking pieces of the ear with it.
The people who approve plastic tags should remember that we have laws in our country to protect animals against cruelty.
Can you imagine the national outcry if we treated our cats and dogs in the same way?
George * Wilson
Bidgoods Farm, Woodbury Salterton, Exeter, Devon.
Making tags to stay put
In the first six months of our suckler calves lives, when outside they lost more than 105 of their primary tags. Perhaps more thought should be given to the shape of these tags as well as the size.
Making them smaller would help. Circular tags would eliminate, to a large extent, them getting caught up on wire fences and the like.
Mrs W D Darling
Hill Farm, Knapp, Taunton, Somerset.
Gallic guns – silent songbirds
G A Vigrass may be right (Letters, Apr 16) with his assertion that cars, cats and kestrels are the main culprits responsible for the demise of the songbird population in Britain.
He could have included a more readily identifiable category. One whose activities could be curtailed overnight: Those gallant, Gallic "sportsmen" of the Mediterranean seaboards, who refuse to observe a closed season on migrating songbirds.
Although specific closed dates have even been decreed by the EU, the French government recently capitulated to its voter-laden shooting lobby, and abandoned the enacting legislation. It has thus made itself liable for hundreds of thousands of francs in fines every day. But as these will no doubt go the way of earlier "penalties" Brussels imposed on France, for illegal government aid to Air France and Credit Lyonnaise (and soon, no doubt, French pork producers). No one expects it will make the slightest difference.
It is just one more glaring example of the hopeless game of bluff and brag in which we find ourselves with the EU. All the winning cards are held by the other players.
Tony Stone
UK Independence Party Prospective Candidate for the June 99 European Parliament elections, 1 Home Park, Oxted, Surrey.
Inspectorates charge high
I read with interest the Powys farmers idea (Letters, Apr 23) for making money by setting up an Extortion Agency. Sadly I have to inform him that like many good ideas, someone has already thought of it.
The Dairy Hygiene Inspectorate charge £94 for 15 minutes unskilled labour requiring no specialist equipment other than a clipboard. Charges like these make even my vets and accountants fees seem reasonable.
E G Benney
Lower Penpol, Mawnan Smith, Falmouth Cornwall.
Big organic fees for small unit
On the vexed subject of farm assurance, I have just been shown an invoice from the Soil Association for organic certification sent to a part-time smallholder on a few acres of dreadful ground. He will be charged the same stiff fee as a large farm on Grade 1 with a turnover of £120,000 a year.
His inspection takes a maximum of half an hour. Large farm inspections can take a whole day. The fee is the same. The unfairness is palpable. His fee has increased by 60% from last year. He will almost certainly drop out of the symbol scheme. Group certification is only a fig-leaf to cover the nakedness of a misconceived fee scheme. No two separate holdings have shared aims or systems.
Not many years ago the SA nearly folded up but for the dedicated support of a handful of smallholders, gardeners and benefactors. It has now been hijacked by Organisation Man. Certification has all the hallmarks of a racket in which smallholders are now made to subsidise millionaires.
Eve Balfour would have been appalled, not to mention Fritz Schumacher. It wont be long before we find SA inspectors all running about in brand new cars at our expense.
It is to be hoped that a genuine grass-roots organisation such as the Henry Doubleday Research Association (HDRA) will now step in to rectify the deficiencies and unfairness in the current SA certification scheme so that small growers and large gardeners can obtain organic certification for less than £100 a year.
The HDRA recognises the need to put the interest of all its membership before those of its excellent staff.
Let it be remembered that the great bulk of organic production is in the skilled hands of millions of gardeners and smallholders and it may well only take another recession to drive this message home.
Stuart Pattison
Church Lane, Calstock, Cornwall.
Organic move is sound sense
How refreshing to read Mike Rowlands article (Talking Point, Apr 16) on organic farming.
As he points out, going organic makes business sense. A series of food issues, like GMOs and BSE, all mean that the phenomenal growth rate of demand for organic foods, currently exceeding telecommunications and computers, is unlikely to be a flash in the pan. It is rooted in worldwide concerns over food integrity.
Britain imports 70% of its organic produce, yet many supermarkets and consumers would like to source these products from the UK. Sound business sense indeed, Mike.
Douglas Parr
Campaign centre director, Greenpeace UK, Canonbury Villas, London.
Whos gaining in milk area?
Your Business Section (Apr 9) refers to the decline in the producers share of the retail milk price, and the apparent mis-match with retail prices charged on the consumer. As a small wholesaler/retailer, I can assure producers that it is not the doorstep delivery service that is making the extra profit. Indeed to the contrary.
The doorstep service is most certainly in decline, despite our best efforts. As a business, in order to maintain gallonage, we have to compete with the supermarkets. As a result discounting has had to take place. Once that doorstep sale is lost, it is lost forever. Sales based on polybottle packaged quantities, coupled with competitive pricing structures have proved successful. But there seems little enthusiasm within the dairy companies for such initiatives. The fewer outlets there are to market the product, the more intimidating the purchasing influence of the large supermarket chains. The result is further pressure on producer prices.
Someone, somewhere, is benefiting at the expense of the farmgate supplier. If its not the retailer and not as claimed the supermarkets, the finger of suspicion must point to the dairies and processors. Perhaps someone can enlighten a confused and sceptical small retailer.
Edward M Thomas
Llaethdy Hengaeau Dairy, Hengaeau, Llanfair, Harlech, Gwynedd.
Tyre damage is a deep concern
The letter from Valtra Tractors (Apr 23) concerning wheel compaction, was on the right track but did not dig deep enough.
Id like to point out that: "The all-important depth of 20/24cm," is not enough for cereals. In a dry year, they need to penetrate 100cm if they are to avoid drought stress during the critical grain filling period.
Damage to the soil profile, caused by combines and loaded trailers, that are not on LGP tyres, as well as hard tyred tractors, will cut cereal yields by 2-3t/ha in a dry season. The worst offenders are the Biomass Terrigator spreaders.
To be sustainable, the energy value of the products which leave the farm – crops, milk, meat and wool – has to be replaced. FYM is only half the answer. The billions of supermarket trolleys of food, in the form of human waste, also have to be replaced.
Unfortunately, the biomass contractors who use five-wheeled Terrigators, who could offer sustainability, do more damage than good. They have a tyre-deflating switch in the cab, but, to increase output and save time, do not use it.
The one exception is in the Oxford area where compaction is taken seriously. In our area, Thames Water, the piping to the tyres was removed in 1997 and last autumn the driver did not use the deflate facility.
Everywhere that Terrigator went had to be mole ploughed to reinstate a good soil profile. Tractors on hard tyres, whether 5t or 8t will cause subsoil compaction below 24cm on clay soils, even under dry conditions.
George Scales
Cobblers Pieces, Abbess Roding, Ongar, Essex.
Role of humus in soil health
I refer to your article, "It all starts in the soil" (Livestock, Apr 23). Independent Soil Services is the only UK company able to offer the complete Albrecht soil audit and we have been using the soil balancing techniques with great success in the UK for the past four years.
It is important for farmers and growers to understand that not all soils react in the same way and that the analysis should show the potential of the soil with the biological activity level.
The article suggests that a 5% humus content is necessary for a well balanced soil. There are few laboratories in the world that can measure humus and you certainly would not get 5% of your soil as humus.
Organic matter is not humus, but active humus is important for plant growth and should be measured. I have studied the Albrecht method, both in Australia and the USA. There is much more to a healthy soil than will be shown in a standard Albrecht type test.
But the principles are sound and I agree that if you get your soil right, the crops will be right and the animal that feeds on the crop will be right.
Robert Plumb
Managing director, Independent Soil Services, Hall Farm House, Back Street, Gayton, Kings Lynn.
Still waiting for an apology
In response to R Leachs letter (Apr 23) "Is this a record?" I can only speak from our experience.
We apply to BCMS for cattle passports each fortnight. The applications are listed, courtesy of a precise computer program so no animal is more than 14-days-old when a passport is requested.
Due to the electronic scanner being unable to distinguish between the number 7 and the letter T in our herd prefix number, several passports had to be returned to be corrected.
One particular passport is significant. The calf was born on Oct 18 1998 and the application made on Oct 27, well within the 45-day time limit. However the initial passport contained the above incorrect herd prefix number for the dam and was returned with corrections.
The second passport issued contained the incorrect ear tag and the date of birth which read a whole year earlier at Oct 18, 1997. That passport too was returned for correction, along with a covering letter which crossed in the post with a less than friendly letter from BCMS dated Feb 4, 1999. This letter acknowledged the receipt of the original application on Nov 2, 1998, and accused us of making an application outside the deadline and assumed that we may own further animals which fell foul of the rules.
It was accompanied by the threat of legal action, fines and possible imprisonment.
The BCMS hotline was more than hot when I phoned to suggest that, before letters of this nature are sent, BCMS should get their computers talking to each other to check whether a re-issue is being processed thanks to a problem that lies on their own desks.
Eventually a corrected passport was received but we are still waiting for the written apology.
Iris Bray
Pool Hall Farm, Menheniot, Liskeard, Cornwall.
BCMS passport – a record?
Since the inception of the BCMS I have, to date, made one single application for a passport. The passport received was correct in all respects. This must be a record.
C E Wormleighton
Craignich, Isle of Lismore, By Oban, Argyll.
Thumbs up for ACCS wreckers
With so much opposition in the farming community to the assured combinable crops scheme, I was pleased to read that a group of midland farmers have started a campaign to wreck this silly, bureaucratic and badly run scheme. They intend to set up a scheme which is sensible, cheaper and less bureaucratic, capable of verifying all production standards to satisfy the consumer. Incidentally, I have never met one person outside the farming community who has ever heard of the ACCS.
One of the most disturbing things I have read is that the NFU has used £56,000 of its funds to help set up the controversial ACCS. I think this is dishonest knowing that 75% of its members were opposed to it. It has a lot of explaining to do otherwise it will lose the respect and support of its members.
I back the Midland farmers and I know members and non-members of the ACCS do also.
Best of luck, they deserve the support of all the farming community because we must stop these ACCS zealots from trying to dictate our every day farming operations.
E Bell
Wingland, Terrington St Clement, Norfolk.
US beef poses BSE threat
After the awful cost of the BSE fiasco, particularly with regard to the lives of innocent people, how can the government allow the import of beef from the USA without verifying that it is free of BSE?
I addressed a farmers convention in Minneapolis on Dec 10 last year where I said that if anyone in the audience treated their cattle with organophosphate pesticides they would experience BSE in their herds. The relationship is still denied by MAFF but supported by an increasing number of UK vets.
Afterwards, I was approached by a gentleman who identified himself as Dr Jon Paulson, a veterinarian with a conscience. He said: "I have treated 250,000 head of cattle with OPs and we have BSE, but it goes under another name – Downer Syndrome. Dr Paulson also told me that he was ill due to OP poisoning.
During my stay in Minneapolis, I learned that the first case of nvCJD in the State of Minnesota had been confirmed in a Minneapolis hospital. I am also given to understand that several cases of the condition have been reported in Utah and Colorado.
On 8 Jan, a Mr Kimball was interviewed on the BBC Radio 4s Farming Today. He was introduced as being the director of the Food Safety Institute in Washington DC. Mr Kimball said that he and his institute were taking the US government to court for hiding the fact that they had BSE in their herds.
There can be no justification for this government allowing the import of US beef, when our own has been rendered so much safer.
Alwyne Pilsworth
A P (Consultants) Ltd, Woodside, Wobeck Lane, Melmerby, Ripon, North Yorks.
Assurance views are misleading
The views expressed in Mr Dalrymples letter (Apr 9), about farm assurance are misleading. Although ABM may have wished to have been accredited by Jan 1999 it is not in our gift to specify when accreditation will be awarded.
Under EN45011, accreditation is granted for particular certification activities. ABM has lodged a number of applications with the United Kingdom Accreditation Service which has responsibility for accrediting certification bodies.
In February an application was made by FABBL/ABM for accreditation through UKAS to EN 45011, the European standard for product certification. Under the UKAS rules, a scheme has to be inspected under operational conditions.
This is being done. So there is no question of standards failing to meet recognised requirements.
We expect the scheme to pass its inspection. The protocols under which FABBL and ABM operate were set after rigorous discussion with all links in the beef and lamb production chain and meet the food safety and farm assurance requirements of all concerned.
The inspection body is also expected to be accredited to EN 45004; the standard for independent inspection bodies. That assessment is being carried out by UKAS.
In addition ABM and FABBL have striven to ensure that ABMs inspection requirements are delivered at an affordable price, while still ensuring the robust assurances that customers demand.
We agree with Mr Dalrymple that unaccredited verification and assurance is inadequate. EN45011 and EN45004 have become international benchmarks for the food industry. That is why ABM and FABBL are committed to delivering an accredited scheme for beef and sheep production at the earliest opportunity.
We agree with Mr Dalrymple that no sensible farmer would pay £85 – or 85p – unless he is certain of getting value for money. And, that means a credible farm assurance system. The chain of assurance being created by FABBL and ABM will do that. It will provide confidence to our customers at a price which is fair to farmers.
Jamie Lindsay
Chairman ABM
Dr Ian Frood
Chairman, FABBL, Farm Assured British Beef and Lamb, PO Box 165, Winterhill House, Milton Keynes.
Wool price fall easy to predict
I read with interest the comments (Letters, Apr 23) of Ian Hartley of The Wool Board concerning the likely drop of 40% in the price of wool. If thats the forecast, the actual percentage drop will no doubt be even greater.
However, "Its an ill wind that blows nobody any good" and we breeders of Wiltshire Horn and Polled Wiltshires (Easy Care) have been advocating the virtues of woolless sheep for many years. In 1979 I wrote that "the price of wool in real terms is falling steadily while the costs associated with its production, such as shearing, fly dipping, etc, continue to escalate. It will not be long before wool is regarded as a weed!"
Forgive me saying "I told you so". The motto of the Australian Wiltshire breeders is: No wool, no work, no worries.
Iolo Owen
Bodorgan, Anglesey ateal@easynet.co.uk
Exporters costs dont add up
Farmers Ferry is quoted as saying (News, Apr 16) that MAFFs plan to reform arrangements for veterinary inspection of animals before export will add £189,000 a year to exporters costs.
That is over five times higher than the governments own figure. MAFF estimates that the new system will add about £37,000 a year to exporters costs, or just 5p a sheep.
How have exporters come up with a figure so much greater than MAFFs?
I am, moreover, dismayed that some in the farming community are opposing proposals designed to prevent the export of unfit and unhealthy animals.
While MAFFs plans are welcome as far as they go, they will do nothing to address the main problem – what happens to the animals once they get to the Continent.
Compassion in World Farming recently trailed British sheep being taken all the way from a staging point in Belgium to an abattoir in southern Italy.
The 2000km journey lasted 30 hours.
If travelling time from Britain to Belgium is added, many of these animals will have been transported for well over 40 hours.
Journeys of such length are totally unacceptable but will still continue even after MAFFs proposals have been put in place.
Peter Stevenson
Political and legal director, Compassion in World Farming, Charles House, 5A Charles Street, Petersfield, Hants.
Were greens unpatriotic?
I enjoyed Tebbits cartoon (Apr 23) showing the English farmer and his family enjoying all those English delicacies for their St Georges day lunch.
But what was in the unlabelled dish of greens? Surely not brussels sprouts?
Lawrence Wright
Middle Campscott Farm, Lee, Ilfracombe, Devon.
TALKING POINT
THE Americans were right. When EU farm ministers emerged from Brussels negotiations, the CAP reforms they had agreed were described by Dan Glickman, US farm secretary, as the status quo.
That seemed unfair criticism after two years of hard work by the commission and significant price cuts across most commodities. But after the EU heads of government meeting in Berlin produced a watered-down and delayed package of reforms, Mr Glickmans summing up is hard to contest.
The Berlin summit has kept CAP within its budgetary limits and secured French support for the reforms. However the cost of the compromise has been a package which is devoid of meaningful reform and lacks any vision for the future. The deal has extended the reign of an outdated and unpopular (among non-farmers) policy and ensured that producers spend the next six years relying on a system in continual flux for half their income.
Oh, to be a French farmer and enjoy the certainty that large subsidies are a birthright and that the concerns of taxpayers and the world trade agenda of all the other EU industries are nothing more than an inconvenience. The French model of agriculture, of supported prices and protected markets, has been preserved more or less intact.
In its Situation and Outlook for Cereals, Oilseeds and Pulses paper published in July 1997, the Commission assessed the progress of the McSharry reforms and highlighted areas for further change.
These problem areas fell into four categories including. Those were: Complexity of the CAP, inconsistencies such as the same "high" intervention prices for all cereals, poor public image and the risks of imbalance as rising cereal production faced static domestic consumption and limits on subsidised exports.
The Berlin deal addresses only the last of these problems. In addition, a CAP budget held at existing levels for existing member states will not pave the way for Eastern expansion of the EU. Of all the stated objectives for Agenda 2000, the only one that may be met is the ceiling on subsidised exports of cereals which the EU is committed to under the GATT Uruguay round. That has been achieved by including a set-aside rate of 10% for the next six years. With only a 15% intervention price cut, internal EU cereal prices may continue above world prices.
The methods which in the past have been used to deal with surplus production: subsidised exports, or greater use of the intervention system, leading to subsidised sales out of intervention, are no longer available. So to control surpluses set-aside has been increased.
The increase in set-aside rate, suggests that attempting to meet trade commitments was the one constraint which EU leaders felt they had no choice but to meet. But if it scrapes within the requirements of the GATT talks, the Berlin package of CAP reform leaves European agriculture in a much weaker position than the Brussels deal would have done when it comes to facing the next WTO round.
When new trade talks begin, Europe will be seeking greater access to world markets for its manufactured goods and service industries. Achieving that and defending its own markets against imports of everything from bananas to banking services will be more difficult given the limited scope of this CAP reform.
The rest of Europes industry will find that impossible to take. Sooner or later European farmers will have to face more open markets and more competition for customers at home and abroad. Without the support of a stable, forward-looking CAP, that sounds like a threat. With it, it could be an opportunity.