Farmers bogged down as harvest stalls

It's August. It shouldn't be the month when the farmer showing you his crops warns you to watch out for yet another nasty puddle. Fields about to be harvested shouldn't require wellies. If anything this should be be the season for dust masks. This should have been a bumper harvest, but in parts of the country farmers are facing losing some or all of their crops to the miserable wet weather which has plagued this us this summer. Normally the Northumberland Coastal Plain is one of the top areas in the country for growing wheat and oilseed rape. Glen Sanderson (above) who farms near Morpeth should be in the middle of a bumper harvest. Last year he had one of the best years ever, and until a few weeks ago he was hoping for the same, now he's just hoping that the rain will hold off long enough to be able to get some of his crops in.

By now the barley harvest should be finished, oilseed rape should be started, and the wheat should be ripening nicely ready for the combines in the final week of August. The harvest is later here in the North than elsewhere, but it's good land and on a good year yields can match anything else in the country. The problem is getting the crops out of the fields. The oilseed rape was ready last week, but it was too late to harvest. The problem is that ground is too damp for the machinery, and the danger is that the crop could start `chitting' or sprouting. The oilseed rape seeds, from which the oil itself is extracted are tiny, and black, contained in slim pea-like pods. Those pods are now quite brittle and Glen Sanderson's worried that even a medium strength wind could blow them open and spill the precious seeds across the soggy earth.

The loss of this crop would mean thousands of pounds down the drain. To grow it it costs about a hundred and fifty pounds an acre, and with prices paid to farmers now falling the chances of making a profit on fields like this are fast receding. The wheat field down the road tells a similar story. The wheat stands proud and strong, but the grain in the ears turn to mush without much pressure between the fingers. It can be dried at a cost of about £20 per ton, but a lot of the quality is lost, which means that it's now only suitable for distilling into alcoholic drinks, or for feeding to animals. The money is in what's called `Milling' wheat. This field would normally find its way into the biscuit tin, but not this year. This means a loss of £20 a ton, and about £100 per acre.Some farmers have decided not to plant next year, saying the cost of fertilizer is too high to make crops viable, and it's better to farm nothing and collect the Single Farm Payment. The price of fertilizer has doubled in the past year, closely linked to the oil price. Glen Sanderson is more determined, declaring that farmers in the North and Scotland are tough, although maybe stupid to try growing anything in this climate, and he's determined, he'll be back again next year.

The Credit Crunch...Crisis or Opportunity for farmers?

It was an ill wind which was certainly blowing through Northumberland at the weekend! The rain which battered the farmers market at Hexham was relentless, and the mood could well have been just as depressed. These are not easy times for the food industry, a recent report from the consultants Price Waterhouse Cooper predicted that up to a third of people will cut the amount they spend on food by moving their shopping to a cheaper supermarket, and nearly half could cut costs by eating at home rather than eating out.

The first of those two propositions is now good news for farmers markets like Hexham, the second could be the silver lining in the cloud which was unleashing a flood of biblical proportions on the poor shoppers on Saturday. Some farmer producers think that they will actually be the beneficiaries of a shift towards home cooking. People can buy very good ingredients to cook themselves for half the price of a meal out.

While I was at Hexham I bought two organic sirloin streaks from Askerton Castle Estate which came to thirteen pounds. With vegetables, from Bluebell Organics and a few other bits and pieces the entire meal cam to about sixteen pounds. The equivalent, eaten out would have been forty pounds, at the very least, and there would be no guarantee that the steak would have been as good...or even the knowledge of where it came from and what kind of animal it was from. In this case Belted Galloway, which is in my somewhat amateurish opinion, one of the best looking and tastiest of our traditional breeds.

Another farmer who runs an organic milk business near Darlington, Gordon Tweddle at Acorn Dairy, says that despite having to increase his prices to consumers, business has held up very well. The key says Gordon is to talk to your customers, and explain why it is that you have to increase your prices. Basically people are sensible enough to know that if they want to have milk from animals of whose provenance they can be certain, and if they want local food, they will understand that this is the only way such food can survive.

These are not easy times for any farmer, especially those who are dependent on buying in feed....but as the co-ordinator at Hexham Farmers Market pointed out to me... if you're sourcing local ingredients, and you're selling just a couple of miles away from where you bake your bread, then your costs from Diesel, and distribution don't rise at the same rate as the supermarkets with whom you're competing, and so you stand a fighting chance of surviving.

The good news, I suspect, is that many of the people who regularly use farmers markets like the one at Hexham won't be hit by the credit crunch, because they don't have any credit. My suspicion is that many of the people who buy their food in this way actually own their homes outright, and many live of interest-rate related incomes, and might actually benefit from a rate rise.

Poultry slaughter under the spotlight.

This week has been much exercised by chickens. Not how they live or are farmed... rain forests of newsprint and many terabytes of digital space has been taken up with that recently, but how they die. Following a very high profile campaign by the TV chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall there has been a significant increase in sales of free range birds in supermarkets.

You might remember that Mr Fearnely Whittingstall set up his own experiment where he kept one flock of birds in a shed, and another flock in free range conditions and compared the kind of lives the two birds had. One thing which perhaps passed unoticed, although it was mentioned in the programme, was that at the end of their lives the chickens, both fee range and shed reared, or broilers, met the same end at the same slaughter plant.

Now questions are being asked about whether the slaughtering process is as humane as it could be. If you're squeamish please look away now. This is how it works... The birds normally arrive at the slaughterhouse in crates, from which they are unloaded. They are then placed upside down into shackles from which they hang by their feet. These shackles move along a conveyor, in a fashion which is not dissimilar to a car plant. Upside down, their head is immersed in an electrified water bath. The chicken completes an electrical circuit; a massive current is designed to render the bird unconscious.

One of the concerns is whether this always happens, and whether some of the birds are only partially stunned, and maybe still conscious when they move to the next stage of the process which is where their throats are cut by a machine with a series of rotating knives. Death under this method actually occurs through bleeding.

The Farm Animal Welfare Council which advises the government has been carrying out an inquiry into the way that white meat species are slaughtered, and the first conclusions of the working group chaired by Professor David Henderson have started to emerge. According to Compassion in World Farming which was present at an open meeting addressed by Prof Henderson, there are worries both about the shackling and about the way that the electrical water stunning baths actually work, or sometimes don’t.

The worry which CIWF has about the shackling is that in some plants, according to them, the birds can spend several minutes in an unnatural position upside down before they are stunned. According to the lobby group this can be worse in some of the larger plants where up to a hundred birds a minute are killed and the actual killing lines can wind around the plant before the birds are stunned. CIWF says that not only is, being held upside down by their feet an unnatural position for the birds to be held, it can also be very painful as it can exacerbate leg and foot problems which may have been caused by the way they were reared.

There are also worries about whether every bird receives enough current to properly stun it. Every chicken is different, in size and electrical resistance, and this may effect how much current it gets. CIWF also says that sometimes by flapping their wings the wingtips of the birds actually hit the electrified water first, something which according to `Compassion' is very painful, and causes them to recoil their necks thus missing the stunning bath.

An alternative to electrical stunning is the use of gas. This is used to kill the birds, and renders the unconscious in the process. This isn’t a poison as we would think of it, but an inert gas such as Nitrogen or Argon which simply deprives the bird of oxygen. Dr Mohan Raj of Bristol University told me that when Michael Portillo, the former politician turned TV presenter made a programme about `How to kill a human’ hypoxia, or the deprivation of the brain of oxygen was probably the least unpleasant way to die!

This is in effect what is happening with gassing. The birds are put into a chamber which is then pumped full of either pure argon or pure nitrogen, which is, for the purposes of killing considered inert. A mixture of thirty percent Carbon Dioxide and either Nitrogen or Argon may also be used. The birds are deprived of oxygen and die. When they are unconscious, and the brain ceases to operate, they will continue to move, thrash around even, but this is purely a nerve response, according to scientists, the same as cutting the head off a chicken. One advantage of this system is that the birds can be killed without having to be removed from the crates in which they arrived at the plant.
There is some concern though within the industry that in the process of this automatic response, the birds can damage their wings, and this can reduce the value of the carcass. However the bigger stumbling block to the widespread use of gassing is the capital cost of the equipment, something in the region of hundreds of thousands of pounds to replace the existing lines. Fine if those lines are life expired, but beyond the reach of companies using lines with many years of life left. The change is happening though, and about a quarter of chickens, and most turkeys killed for food in the country are now gassed.

It will be interesting to see whether the concerns about how chicken live will be duplicated when the FAWC report is published this autumn looking at how they die. One problem is that by looking at the label it’s now easy to see how a chicken lived its life. It’s almost impossible to know how it met its end.

World Trade deals, no easy answers for farmers or governments.

I recently had the privilege of meeting a group of farmers from the developing world who sell their produce through a fair trade company to European Markets. They were not downtrodden, but they were acutely interested in the way that their crops are sold here, and despite the fair trade tag, there is still a massive disparity between what they receive and what we pay. In some cases they are also restricted in how much of their produce they are allowed to send to our supermarket shells by tariffs and trade agreements.

The World Trade Organisation talks which have just collapsed in Geneva were about liberalising markets, removing those tariffs which stopped farmers in the developing world from freely selling their produce in Europe and the USA. Some of those countries also had tariffs of their own which stopped imports from the highly developed, highly technological developed world flooding in and squeezing out low yielding subsistence farmers, or newly established industries.

In the press much of the blame has been laid at the door of the Indian and Chinese delegations, wanting to keep the right to protect their own agricultural industries from competition from the West. However there is some sympathy, amongst anti-poverty campaigners, for the stand taken by countries from the developing world against the deal on the table.

The trouble is that these talks weren’t just about food and farming, they were also about industrial tariffs, and the west wanting fewer restrictions on access to markets, something which according to the charities would be hugely damaging for the fledgling industrial sector which is fuelling the growth of many of these countries. Action Aid laid the blame at the door of the EU and the US for trying to maintain subsidies to their farmers, and resisting the efforts of poorer countries to protect their own workers, saying that in the end it was better to have no agreement than a bad agreement.

Oxfam too was critical of the EU and US saying the lack of a deal was a wasted opportunity, however in a statement the organisation’s International Director Jeremy Hobbs said “At a time when prices are volatile, developing countries were right to fight for the flexibility to defend their smallest farmers and ensure food security.”

In the US cotton farmers will still get their subsidies, and in the EU billions of pounds will still be paid every year to arable farmers who are seeing some of the highest prices for their crops for several years.
The big problem though is that farming isn’t a single entity. Whist the barley barons are doing very well at the moment, many livestock farmers face a desperate struggle to find the cash to buy the feed for their animals. And those barley barons are in turn looking very carefully at the cost of planting next year’s crop. They will want to know in advance that the price they will get will match the increase in the cost of the fuel and the fertilizer needed to grow it.

The level of subsidies in Europe is decreasing, but farmers say that without these payments some of their crops simply aren’t worth growing. The question is whether taking away those payments would actually make a big difference to farmers in developing countries. In some cases, perhaps it would.

Perhaps an increase in the price of wheat on the world market might help farmers in developing countries get a better price for the alternative they could offer. Where the lack of an agreement really hurts is where there is competition, for instance in cotton where US growers receive a subsidy. Action Aid says the continuation of this will be a bitter blow to African cotton farmer who simply can’t compete.

But tariffs and trade restrictions are not always one-sided. As we’ve seen with the market for beef, it isn’t only the developing world that puts tariffs on imports; sometimes countries in South America put their own restrictions on their own exports. Argentina did this out of fear that beef shortages at home, caused by massive exports, could stoke inflation in the fragile Argentine economy.

Maybe at the heart of this would be a better world without any tariffs or subsidies. The trouble is that these measures are often linked, inextricably to somebody, somewhere needing the vote of an elector. Perhaps in the end the world food market is just so volatile that there was never going to be an agreement in this round of the WTO talks.

But maybe perhaps at a time of ever rising food prices and potential shortages some of the tariffs will have to go, just to ensure that the Western World stays fed. The question then will be whether the West sucks out of the developing world, the food that farmers need to feed their families and their fellow citizens.

Sun shines on Countryside jamboree after last year's washout.

Sometimes it feels like there can be too much of a good thing, and at this year's CLA Game Fair at Blenheim Palace there was almost too much sun. Farmers will be absolutely delighted to see the sun shine on their crops, and the Game Fair organisers will heave a sigh of relief that this year's event fared better than last year when the soggy ground at Harewood House in Leeds meant a last minute cancellation. This year the sun shone from day one, as a hundred and fifty thousand people flocked through the gates. The Game Fair is a bit different to other countryside events, for a start there is no livestock, so it has survived the various outbreaks of animal disease in the past few years, and partly because of this it is one of the few countryside events on the summer calendar where dogs are welcome. The Royal Highland is one of the few shows with livestock which allows dogs. The reason given by most show organisers where dogs are banned is our old friend 'elf and safety', with worries that should the pouch slip the lead it could cause livestock to panic, resulting in visitors being hurt. At the Game Fair the blazing heat of the weekend this made the doggy water stops with their bowls and hoses more than welcome.

Amongst the hundred and fifty thousand visitors were the Farm Minister Lord Rooker and the Conservative leader David Cameron who is also a local MP.

The Game Fair is always a good place for unveiling policies; in the past the CLA has used it to launch a campaign to get restaurants to reveal where their beef comes from, this year it was the turn of the anglers. Perhaps feeling a little left behind the publicity generated by Hunting and Shooting, several of the organisations representing the four million people who indulge in Britain’s most popular pastime, are to merge to give a stronger voice to those who fish for pleasure. Several debates were held at the Game Fair about the proposal.

Those behind the move deny it’s out of fear that after the ban on hunting, fishing will be the next target for animal rights campaigners. This is more about getting their voice heard in government circles. In particular anglers feel they want more done to improve the aquatic environment in return for the money they pay for their rod licence. They want improvements to water quantity as well as water quality. This for instance would mean changes to the way that houses are built and the planning system to ensure that surface drainage from new developments is free of the pollutants which could damage fish… things like heavy metals, solvents and fats.

The merger of the Angling Conservation Society, the National Federation of Anglers, the National Federation of Sea Anglers, the Specialist Anglers Alliance and the National Association of Fisheries and Angling Consultatives is likely to get the support of those involved in the sport. Infact these different bodies have been mulling over the idea of merging for almost a century. Now it looks likely to happen. A final name for the new body is yet to be decided, but for the moment the campaign goes under the banner of Angling Unity. Could I suggest `Worm Drowners Inc?’

Where’s the beef? - Farmers urged not kill `Cash Cows'

A couple of years ago the full horror of the Australian drought was brought home to me when, at a food trade show in Paris, the European representative of Meat and Livestock Australia told me that many beef farmers in affected areas were sending perfectly good breeding beef cows for slaughter to be eaten because there simply wasn’t enough water to keep them alive.

Now it seems that some farmers in the UK are sending their breeding cows to be slaughtered for meat for a very different reason. Because prices are so high, they are getting much more money than they would ever have anticipated, and they’re cashing in.

A good `suckler’ cow could have as many as ten calves during her lifetime, although seven or eight is nearer the norm for traditional breeds, falling to five for the commercial breeds. Until recently when beef from animals over thirty months old was banned from the human food chain these animal had to be processed under the Over Thirty Months Scheme…the OTMS, when they reached the end of their productive life. The sum paid for these animals, which were simply killeds and incinerated was small, maybe reaching two to three hundred pounds per head.

Now, with restriction lifted, older cows being sent for slaughter and which can be eaten, are getting as much as eight hundred pounds each according to the National Beef Association, the NBA, which is throwing its hands up in horror at this development. It believes the early killing of prime breeding stock depletes the supply of heifers and steers to eat which will be born in the future….and warns this is a bad move when the future is looking ever rosier for beef farmers.
OK, this might seem a bit strange, an organisation representing farmers actually predicting that prices will rise, and now is not the time for retrenchment or profit taking. But the NBA is probably right, world population isn’t going to fall, and there will continue to be an inexorable rise in the consumption of beef in the Far East. Add to that a reduction in the land area available for livestock in South America because soya or sugar cane is actually more profitable than meat, and such optimism makes sense.

However a big question mark hangs over all of this in the strength of the consumer economy in Europe, and particularly in the UK. A beef farmer with whom I talk regularly told me the other day that he firmly believes that if the economy continues to falter, in a few years time meat will become a weekly treat, not a daily staple.

The other big problem is that the price that farmers are getting for their beef may be rising ever faster, but so is the cost of producing that beef. This could wipe out any of the benefits from higher prices, so some farmers may see some sense in cashing in their `cash cows’ now whilst they can still make a fast buck.

For the consumer this could mean facing much higher beef prices five years `down the road’ when the supply of beef dries up, not just from European farmers but also from parts of the world, i.e. South America which were traditionally seen as an alternative when UK beef producers started asking to be paid more.

Small Abattoirs - Update. Hope for operators.

Just as news of a change to the way abattoirs are charged for the supervision of the Meat Hygiene Service, MHS, was announced, one of slughterhouses affected has sent me news of another possible change to the inspection regime, which might help to reduce the level of these fees for the smallest slaughterhouses.

At the moment an Official Vetinarian (OV) has to be present to inspect the animals before slaughter... ante mortem, and supervise the removal and disposal of specified risk material, the SRM, which is thought to be at most risk of carrying the prion whch causes BSE.

Under the new system, which the MHS says would only be practical for the smallest plants, the vet would still check the animals prior to slaughter. They would then leave and allow the killing and dressing of the carcass to take place handled soley by the abattoir staff. Later in the day the OV or a Meat Hygiene Inspector would return to check that the relevant parts of the animal, categorised as SRM had been removed and stained to show they are unfit for human consumption.

The new system would only apply to Pigs which can't get BSE. With the execption of those animals requiring testing for the disease Trichinella. Sheep, goats and cattle aged under thirty months. The latter three are thought to be a lower risk than cattle over thirty months of age.

Abattoirs would be given permission to work under this new system on a case by case basis, and would have to meet rigorous standards first, but it's the kind of approach which will be welcomed by the industry. Not least because according to a discussion document, the procedure which is called `Cold Inspection' is designed to make the operation of the MHS more efficient, and cut the cost of running it. Hopefully for the operators of these plants this will also mean a reduction in the fees they are charged as MHS staff will have to spend less time supervising them. Although those in the more remote parts of the country wonder whether inspection teams having to make two separate trips will save money above the same single vet carrying out both the ante and post mortem examinations.