The badger lives...for the moment?

It’s unusual to have a minister, who tells it the way it is, but Lord (Call me Jeff) Rooker invariably has something interesting to say…even if you can see the fixed smiles on the faces of his civil servants begin to sag slightly as their minister wanders dangerously off the path of righteousness and says something interesting into a microphone. More about Lord Rooker later but first my own failings.

I gave up biology at the age of thirteen, having to ditch it in favour of physics and chemistry, and history at what was then…in a more innocent age, called `O-levels’.

Sadly the glamorous world of animal science lost a razor sharp mind to the rather humdrum life of a radio journalist.

As a consequence I haven’t a clue whether it is badgers which cause the spread of Bovine TB amongst cattle, or whether cattle spread it to each other with badgers as collateral damage.

For farmers with cattle though the indisputable fact is that their animals are dying because of the disease… or more accurately because of the culling measures to control its spread. Just over fourteen thousand have been killed as a result of control measure in the first three months of this year alone. Ten years ago less than half that number were dispatched in the whole year.

And it costs money too. Last year about eighty million pounds to the taxpayer, and millions more to the farming industry.

The possibility of a link between badgers and the spread of bovine TB first emerged blinking into the daylight in the early nineteen seventies when a badger which had died from bovine TB was found on a farm in Gloucestershire, in an area with a high number of cattle infections, technically known as breakdowns. An extensive programme of badger culling followed in the area and bovine TB disappeared from there, at least for the next ten years.

There followed years of the kind of deliberations which make this country great… or not as some would see it. Inquiries, followed reviews which went hand in hand with investigations…. And then in the late nineteen nineties a trial was ordered to see what impact different culling regimes might have on the spread of the disease. The Krebs trial, overseen by John… now Lord Krebs, an eminent zoologist, involved splitting up areas where bovine TB was rife into three zones, known as triplets. In one zone all the badgers were culled, in another badgers were only killed where there were outbreaks of TB, reactive culling, and the third zone was used as a control where no badgers were culled.

The trial was seriously disrupted by the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001 when no testing could take place because of access restrictions to the countryside, and received another huge blow two years later when reactive culling was suspended because it appeared to make the problem worse by dispersing the sick badgers to other uninfected areas.

The Krebs trial or to give it it’s `Sunday Name’ the Randomised Badger Culling Trial was overseen by a group of independent scientists, the Independent Scientific Group ISG which was asked to analyse and draw conclusions from what information was available from the Krebs Trial. Under John Bourne a formerly Professor of Animal Health at Bristol University the ISG deliberated for nearly ten year, and concluded that although total or almost total elimination of badgers over a wide area might have a role to play in the control of bovine TB the type of local culls envisaged by farmers would result in the `control of cattle TB in a manner which is economically viable’

Just a matter of weeks after the ISG’s recommendations were published, Sir David King the government’s own chief scientist lobbed a hand grenade into the proceedings, saying badgers represented a massive reservoir of TB in the wild, and called for selective culls in areas affected by the disease.

Which is where it’s very useful to have a minister who actually has something enlightening to say, and my ears pricked up at this year’s annual general meeting of the National Farmers Union, where during a debate which he was actually chairing …. I can think of few other government ministers could pull that one off … Lord Rooker put his finger on the reason why it had taken so long to reach a decision on whether or not badger culling should go ahead.

Agriculture Minister Lord Rooker

He basically said… and I’m working purely from memory here, as I was busy dealing with something else at the time and only half listening to the debate… `Look guys… I know you’re desperate … I know you want a decision, but the truth of the matter if that ministers can only act one scientific advice where that advice is clear cut, and at the moment there are two eminent scientific viewpoints which disagree, and if we’re not absolutely certain about the science, the first thing that will happen is an application for judicial review… and then the whole matter would be dragged through the courts just prolonging the difficulty of actually tackling the problem.’

My apologies if I didn’t get the exact wording of what he said but I think that’s a pretty accurate reflection. And it was fascinating, perhaps the government wasn’t scared of the public reaction to a possible cull, it was the likelihood that it would all end up in the courts, and if there’s one thing that politicians hate more than public disapproval of their policies, it’s the judiciary telling them they goofed.

Ironically as rumours of the government deciding against a cull start to circulate, so do rumours of possible legal action by the NFU. In the end the winners from bovine TB might turn out to be M’learned friends.

A Hunting here we go again?

Deep in the bowels of the countryside’s awkward squad something stirs. The Countryside Alliance is on the march again or at least taking to its 4x4s. Having declared that the Hunting Act of 2004 was the most useless, unenforceable discredited piece of legislation ever passed by parliament the CA is taking advantage of the change in the political wind to start the practical business of getting rid of it.

With the very real prospect that Labour might not win the next election, and that David Cameron might be heading for the kind of landslide which saw Tony Blair and New Labour swept to power in 1997, the Alliance has now set up a committee to get the act repealed.

The Alliance has always said it is `apolitical’ but it’s quite clear from what their members say that there won’t be many tears shed over the demise of Labour, as it will serve the hunting lobby’s purposes well.

David Cameron has promised a free vote on repealing the act if he becomes Prime Minister. It’s fairly safe to assume the outcome would be in favour of ditching a piece of legislation which is loathed by the Tory faithful and some `Blairites’ as a symbol of what is perceived as the New Labour class struggle, and one of the few victories for the old guard over the `Modernisers’.

However there are some fences to jump first. For a start the Tories will need a majority… not just because they will need to overcome any anti-hunting sentiment in their own party…although the prime supporter of a ban, Maidstone MP Anne Widdicombe is standing down from Parliament at the next election, but it will make sure the act is repealed without too much hassle. The other possible problem is that the Tories will be running around repealing just about anything they can get their hands on…and supporters of hunting will want their cause to be at the head of the queue.

They’ll have to mud-wrestle for this one with the Estate Agents who want rid of Home Information Packs, and the NIMBYs who want eco-towns demolished before they’re even built…Then there’s the small matter of the economy to sort out. It will be a busy first parliament. If there is a sizeable Conservative majority though, repealing the Hunting Act will be relatively straightforward and the House of Lords won’t throw up too many objections so it probably won’t take up too much parliamentary time.

One of the biggest difficulties, `politically’ over hunting is that it’s the kind of thing that makes the `New Tories’ nervous, and worry that they might be seen as reverting to their old ways. Appealing to the modern middle classes might not sit too well with packs of hounds and followers chasing the fox. The urban voters the Tories need to win over are still squeamish about the idea of hounds closing in on the fox, even if in many cities foxes have become a nuisance.

There is another problem too. During the campaign against the hunting bill there was some support for a `Middle Way’ option, where hunts would be licensed. This was fiercely opposed by a lot of hunts. The Alliance will be watching closely to see that the act is repealed with no strings attached.

Guerrilla Gardeners Go Mainstream

There’s a wonderful organisation out there, a group of people who were considered a bit bonkers at the time they started , whose mission in life is to turn roundabouts into flower beds. They’re the Guerrilla Gardeners . The idea is that in covert, night time highly-organised operations they'd grab an unused and unloved piece of land, mostly in urban areas and beautify it with flowers. A sort of Alan Titchmarsh in `Milk-Tray Man' garb.

It’s the kind of thing that councils should be doing, but these days in many places they can’t afford to. The reaction to the Guerrilla Gardeners was mixed – Many communities welcomed them with open arms, but some local authorities were decidedly sniffy, citing things like `elf & safety as the traditional reason for wanting this outrageous behaviour stopped. It's the kind of thing that gives elves a bad name.

A garden plot at Linthorpe Primary School in Middlesbrough

Now though the principle of grabbing any spare bit of land going has become `legit’, and is even being encouraged, but not for flowers. With food price inflation hitting 12% and petrol heading towards £2 a litre many people, and indeed those in authority, are looking for new and cheaper ways to feed the ever growing population. Urban Farming has become the buzzword these days, with a slightly Utopian concept that you can feed the cities from land within the cities. It harks back to the `Dig for Victory’ campaigns of the war years and the allotment movement which both preceded and followed the Second World War.

In recent times many of those allotments have been under threat. A friend of mine has just fought off a plot (sorry) to take away the allotments where she grows food, to extend a golf course. Fortunately the local council stepped in and protected the land. Not everybody has been so lucky. Over the past thirty years, something like two hundred thousand allotments have been lost in the UK.

In the North of England there’s a different approach being taken, with the Urban Farming project set up in Middlesbrough under a series of events called DOTT 07. DOTT stands for Designs of the Times, and it’s all about community involvement. In the case of Middlesbrough more than two hundred and fifty scraps of land have been identified which can be used to grow vegetables... many of them small and unused.

The organisers admit that it won’t feed the people of Teesside, but it might get them thinking about growing their own. The quantity of food grown on an allotment can make more of a difference to the cost of feeding a family, and can go a long way to supplying the annual vegetable requirements for four people.

More than seventy schools in the borough are taking part, giving kids the chance to grow and eat their own food, and perhaps understand a bit more about how it’s done and the amount of work involved. And people in local neighbourhoods are being asked to identify patches of land which could be planted with vegetables. So the waste ground of Middlesbrough may be bringing lettuce to a salad bar near you soon, and it won’t be done by people creeping around at night either.

Making hay, if the sun shines.

It’s a new variation on scratch’n’sniff. Four Hessian sacks full of grass, and you have to pick the one you’d offer to the sheep whose heart you’d like to win. I picked the one which was made from lowland grass in an improved meadow.

The trouble is that in this context the term improved is roughly the same as applied to improvements in train timetables. All the flowers had been abolished as a necessary step towards a more efficient nutritional enhancement of the lives of sheep. In other words it does the job, but lacks soul.

The four bags of hay were part of an exhibition at St John’s Chapel in Weardale on the History of Hay-Time, along with some rather barbaric looking instruments, which preceeded the days of tractors, and, lots of pictures of Edwardian haymakers looking seriously over-dressed.

It’s Hay Time in Teesdale, well almost. Just a few weeks to go and the stunning carpet of colours which make this landscape so spectacular at this time of year will have been cut, turned, dried and baled into a food-store for winter. Weather permitting that is.

The North Pennines has a patchwork of flower rich hay meadows which are rare in the British Countryside these days. When it comes to the most valuable `species rich’ examples, there is just two thousand acres of them left in the whole of the UK.

And these meadows are a haven for some of the rarest plants in the land, such as Eyebright, Great Burnet, Bistort and Pignut and Lady’s Mantle. All of these were to be found in a field I visited with John O’Reilly from the Haytime project which is run by the North Pennine Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty team, think of an AONB as a sort of National Park `lite’. This gently sloping field close to the River Tees is a treasure trove of rare, precious and largely unspectacular looking plants which grow here and in very few other places.

The grass and the flowers grow here because the farmer is paid to take his sheep and cattle off this land at the end of March. The flowers, and the grass is then untroubled by teeth for at least three months before it is harvested. By the beginning of June, yellow, white, mauve and green jostle for the eye’s attention. By the end of July it’s gone, felled, and left on the ground to dry, being every day to make sure that happens.

But nothing ever goes smoothly in farming, and the curse of haytime is rain. Hay, as opposed to Silage is a dry feed. If it’s wet when it’s baled it can go rotten and could make the animals which eat it ill. So at the end of June and into July the farmers pray for sunshine, and have to move fast before it disappears, hence the old saying making hay while the sun shines.

Last year the North Pennines escaped lightly when the skies unleashed a torrent of water on rural England. However it seriously disrupted the haymaking. The result is that the farmers have to use other methods of preserving the food. Silage is moist grass which is sealed into either silos or wrapped in plastic, where it ferments; producing acid which `pickles’ the grass, and stops it rotting. Another variation in Haylage, a relatively recent innovation where grass with a moisture content of about 50%, as opposed to about 20% for Hay, is wrapped in plastic and partially ferments.

Anyway, what makes hay really important for conservationists and botanists is that in an ideal world, as the grass and the cut flowers lay on the ground drying out, seeds are released as the hay is turned, thus refreshing the meadows.

Infact in some places, hay from flower rich meadows is brought to `improved’ land and dried there in an effort to `un-improve’ or restore these fields.

So valuable are these hay meadows considered by conservationists that they lobbied long and hard for the government to introduce a system to pay farmers to manage them for conservation.

In 1987 Environmentally Sensitive Area Payments were introduced to stop the loss of these habitats. Under the agreements farmers were required to remove their livestock from these fields by the end of March, the meadows could not be cut until the end of July, and artificial fertiliser was banned.

Although the schemes went some way to revitalising the upland meadows, farmers found them inflexible and the ESA agreements are now coming to an end. They are to be replaced by what it so endearingly called the Higher Level Scheme. The idea is that you, the farmer, draw up a series of nature conservation measures, and you agree them with Natural England who will then pay you money for implementing them. The first problem, which has apparently now been solved was that there wasn’t nearly enough money to fund the same level of conservation as before under the old ESA payments.

Now the difficulty lies with staffing. Because all of these `Higher Level’ agreements are individually tailored to each farm, the staff input is much higher, and there aren’t enough staff to go around. There is a real fear amongst those trying to halt the decline of hay meadows that farmers will find they have to wait to get onto the scheme, whilst they’re losing money on unproductive meadows which stand empty of stock for long periods of time, and go back to the old flower-free ways.

The worry is that if the species rich hay meadows are lost, they’re lost for good.

Where there’s muck there’s a way to survive the fuel crisis

A bit like the gruesome orange `You’ve been Tango'd’ advert. A harsh reality has crept up behind the petrol heads, and is busy slapping them about a bit. The oil price has gone through the ceiling, taken the lift up to the 16th floor and stepped out onto the terrace at the top of the building….and however strong our powers of persuasion it ain’t coming down.

This is what makes a press release from the Soil Association especially interesting. It says farming must break its dependency on artificial means of restoring the fertility of the land.

Organic agriculture eschews artificial fertiliser. Artificial fertiliser is hugely energy hungry - something approaching 90% of the cost of producing ammonia based fertilisers is made up the cost of the energy used in the process. This often comes from natural gas, but the price of natural gas is very closely aligned with oil. In the past year the cost of most artificial fertilisers has doubled.

Organic farming does not use these fertilisers, so ergo; organic farmers don’t have the added expense of these inputs into their farming system.

There is a problem though. With most organic arable systems the yields of the crops fall. That’s fine when cereal prices are generally low and growing organically can generate a premium…. However with the world price for wheat and other cereals at near record levels, it can be worth farmers renouncing their organic status to grow crops conventionally increasing the yields, and trousering the extra.

This in turn means a serious shortage of organic animal feed. One farmer I recently visited in Cumbria found the problem was getting so serious last year that she bought a small piece of arable land, converted it to organic and is now growingbarley, quite a courageous move so far north.

In the current economic climate it should pay dividends and she’s hoping to be quids-in.

In terms of the organic system this is only really feasible on mixed farms where the animals provide a natural fertiliser which can in turn be used on the crops.

It’s often little help to organic pig and poultry farmers who often have small units, and very little space, or suitable land to grow feed.

For those organic farms which are self contained, and have a complete farming system within the same unit, something which goes to the very core of the organic movement, the oil crisis could be very good news, but for others who have to buy in feed, the rising price will hit hard.

Nor is organic farming immune from the other impact of the rise in oil price. The cost of harvesting the crops, using oil driven machinery, or the distribution costs, which again are oil-based.

What the advocates of organic farming will be hoping for is that the stratospheric rise in the oil price, and the consequent rise in the price of artificial fertiliser, will make non-organic farmers think very carefully about their dependence on these inputs, and maybe cut down on their use. If that does happen the real challenge will be to find ways of keeping the yields as high as possible to feed as many people as possible, with lower inputs.

For commodity farmers the next few years could be uncomfortable, but only because the old certainties, have gone out the window, and they may have to re-learn some of the old ways of farming where nature and its healing powers replace the nitrogen quick fix from a fertiliser bag.

Get orrf my beach….

An open access sign holds up the sky in County Durham

I don’t know if you’ve noticed the sky falling in? I haven’t and it’s frankly quite disappointing. It was due to happen on the 20th of September 2004 with the introduction of the right to roam, or Open Access as it is correctly titled.

I seem to recall that the exact timetable for the countryside’s descent into hell consisted, in the first wave, of oiks blundering around accompanied by a synchronised display of falling into potholes. This would be closely followed by a second wave of raves… with all of these unwashed young people being smelly, and taking their `Class As, and their Es’ listening to their boom-boom music…. (actually if either Plastikman or AGF had been on the bill I'd have been down there with the kids myself)

This would then be followed by a rearguard action of Gore-tex wearing storm-troopers rambling across the countryside leaving sheep traumatised by being exposed to the fashion crimes of the middle aged.

I gazed at the sky, but it stayed firmly in place… eventually the sheep lost interest… that’s how sheep are…. dying is the highlight of the average sheep’s life.

Infact the biggest complaint from landowners seemed to be that not enough townies were coming out to trample the countryside and put money into the tills of teashop and B&B owners.

Undaunted by militant apathy, the hoards of barbarians have set their sights on another target. Having fought the battle to roam on mountain, moor, heath, down and common land….they’re fighting on the beaches next. The open access principle is to be extended to the coastline of England – all of it. In effect a linear footpath will be created thousands of miles long, hugging the coastal curves, and despite the fact that the government says that private gardens and parks will be exempt, landowners are not happy. For a start they won’t be compensated, and secondly the masses may well be allowed to wander onto previously private beaches. Then there are claims that lots of properties will be devalued. Would this be `devalued’ as in - property prices are tumbling anyway?

As with the previous open-access proposals the landowners aren't overly keen on the great unwashed traipsing across their land and they certainly don’t want them on their private beaches.

Would I want people wandering around next to my garden, with their noisy children and their vile mongrel dogs?

Well actually they do. Fifteen yards away from where I’m sitting, directly outside my front gate is a very heavily used footpath, what was, in medieval times, the main road from our village to the next. On sunny days like today dozens of people will walk along it, with their dogs and their children, and in the winter they might even wear Gore-tex. Am I bovvered? No actually I’m too busy watching the sky to see if it’s fallen in yet. Of course if the hoi polloi are let loose on the waterfront, goodness knows what will happen then.

I remember doing some interviews about this issue last year, and at that time it was actually very hard, if not impossible, to find anybody in the North of England with coastal land who was themselves bovvered, perhaps they’re just chilled and sky-gazing like me.

Time to take that woolly jumper off

It’s the hottest day of the year so far, officially today has been declared summer. But if you’re a sheep then life can be pretty hellish if you haven’t had your short back and sides…

This is the time of year strapping lads pose the usual question of ….`Been anywhere nice on your holidays then…’ to a succession of ladies, and a few gentleman who pass through their impromptu salons.

The trouble is that there aren’t really enough of these ovine barbers to go around, and any farmer who finds a good reliable contract shearer is best advised to treat them with love and care, to cherish them.

Like so many jobs on the land shearing isn’t that well paid… unless you’re really fast at it. But you have to be fast and careful, it’s bad form to remove the leg of lamb whilst the sheep still needs to use it. But even then the pay is only about £1.25 per animal and you have to do about 30 an hour to make decent money.

Traditionally much of the work has been done by gangs of New Zealanders, but since some sections of the tabloid press declared that all foreigners are bad, and all they want to do is come over here stealing our women, taking our jobs, and destroy our culture, HMG has been getting sniffy about Johnny Foreigner doing just that. Last year infact there was a proposal to increase the paperwork burden on these peripatetic `wool-dressers', although fortunately the government saw sense and withdrew the plan. Hostility to migrant workers is having an impact on farming, and especially food production.

The result is that crops go unpicked, as those who can come here without limit…i.e. the Poles and the Hungarians find they can now earn much better money at home, don’t have to leave their families and don’t have to live in a dilapidated caravan in the arse end of Herefordshire for months on end, and have a friendlier welcome from the locals.

Meanwhile with the pound crashing through the floor compared with other currencies a summer spent in Britain relieving pommie sheep of their wool isn’t that attractive, and there are precious few UK youngsters who fancy this backbreaking work.

So there’s a major drive by the British Wool Marketing Board to get home-grown talent trained up. As farmers get older and their offspring are exploring less arduous lines of work, the situation’s getting pretty urgent.

When the sun’s out you can just take your jumper off…. If you're a sheep, that’s not an option… you have to get someone to do it for you, otherwise you’ll just have to find a shady tree to sit under, and hope that the flies don’t attack you and lay their eggs in your wool and give you sheep scab.