This Week in Farming: Mowing, investing and protesting
@ Tim Scrivener Welcome back to another edition of This Week in Farming, your one-stop shop for the best Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.
First, the markets (opens as PDF). You might want to lower your sunglasses in shock for this one – there’s finally been a drop in the beef price – but only by 0.6p/kg for deadweight steers.
Lambs also dropped back under the £7/kg mark, widening the gap on year-earlier levels, and wheat shed another £2/t to £163.50/t – a very poor price indeed.
Now, on with the show.
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Milk volumes hit record high…
Milk prices held steady for next month even as dairy businesses churned out record amounts of the white stuff. Farmers were further cheered by an early start to silage season.
Notwithstanding the small recent dip mentioned above, analysts have continued to laud the robust state of the beef market, with shoppers maintaining purchase levels even as surging farmgate prices feed through to the shelf.
Many milk and meat producers’ margins will have been bolstered by low grain prices in recent months and the wheat price edged lower again this week. But it is grim news for arable farmers contemplating values at or below the cost of production.
…as campaigners warn about food security
But it’s the actions of the government, as much as global markets, that continue to trouble campaigners, as the Save British Farming group held a meeting in London this week that warned of the nation’s increased reliance on food imports.
Separately, the NFU and a plethora of green-tinged rural lobbyists united to press parliamentarians to resist attempts to further slash the English farm budget.
However, the NFU also revealed it would not be exhibiting at this year’s Labour or Conservative party conference, the annual jamboree for political lobbyists and policymakers.
In my editorial this week, I ponder the prospects for the soaring number of lobbying groups, which are proliferating even as farmer numbers are set to drop.
‘Debt focuses the mind’
Whitelands Farm in Wiltshire is one unit where there are no plans to curtail food production, with the Sealy family investing £1.5m to secure the future of their dairy enterprise in the hands of Ed, son of Max and Vicky, who says “debt focuses the mind”.
“I wanted to give him a challenge, not something handed on a plate – when he’s 40, he can decide what’s next,” dairy farmer and business consultant Max told deputy livestock editor Shirley Macmillan.
Across in Carmarthenshire, that’s also the sum that Gethin and Eleri Gibbin are spending on a 50-point rotary parlour and new housing for their herd of 350 pedigree Holsteins.
They flung open the farm gate for the latest edition of What’s in Your Livestock Shed?
If you’ve got something to say…
As ever, our web pages have been a rich seam of farmer opinion, with some great offerings from our Farmer Focus and opinion writers – young and old.
Norfolk young farmer Fergus MacGregor explains why he is incurably attached to his Fendt 724 tractor – even when it sometimes breaks down – while Ewan McCracken from County Down in Northern Ireland contemplates the impact of short-term rentals on long-term investments.
Slightly longer in the tooth than these two gentlemen, regular columnist Will Evans uses his Will’s World column to explain the latest craze, courtesy of TikTok, of smearing one’s face with beef tallow for a better complexion.
On a more serious note, Farmer Focus writer Mark Stubbs extols the virtues of “walking the crops”, while Scottish Borders livestock farmer James Playfair-Hannay argues that there is “no downside to shorter mating periods” (for bulls and tups).
Who’s up and who’s down?
On the up this week are contracting prices, with member body the National Association of Agricultural Contractors forecasting an average hike of 5.7% across all jobs, according to its closely watched member survey.
The group also launched its latest farm safety campaign this week – with the powerful message “I am vital to UK agriculture – Stay Safe”.
Meanwhile, feeling gloomy this week is campaign group Farmers To Action who paid the Beeb in Southampton a visit “to show their anger over the failure of the BBC to cover the issues that are impacting farmers, their families and communities”.
I’m sure that’ll win them over…
Listen to the podcast
Don’t forget to tune in to the FW Podcast, with Johann Tasker, Louise Impey and Hugh Broom.
You’ll find it anywhere you listen to podcasts, or free to listen to on the FW website.