Wind of change (From Gazette & Herald)

Wind of change

LAST week, I was doing a valuation in Norfolk and stayed with my son-in-law who produced a single fact sheet on the impact of the mid-term review (MTR) for arable farmers.

It was published by the National Farm Research Unit, and apparently covered more than half the national area of combinable crops.

There were the inevitable assumptions, such as wheat yielding 3.25 tonnes per acre and averaging £70 per tonne, but the conclusions of the study pointed to some potentially-radical changes to the structure of the arable industry, and I thought you might be interested in looking into this particular crystal ball.

Excluding the new single farm payment, gross margins were calculated for a range of crops before and after MTR:

Wheat dropping from £228 per acre to £138 per acre

OSR dropping from £187 per acre to £97 per acre

Set-aside dropping from £80 down to a loss of £15 per acre

The impact of these economic considerations will bring about a significant reduction in the area of combinable crops. It is thought that, post review, the current area of 9m acres will decrease to 7m acres, which is around 25pc.

With 25pc of the total arable land removed from production, there will be the inevitable knock-on effect on the number of combinable crop producers.

In 2001 there were 55,000 arable farmers and by 2007 this could drop to 33,000.

The most dramatic and potentially tragic effect is on the average farm size, which will have to increase, with smaller units failing to meet economic viability.

It is those smaller farms, and even larger farms on poorer land, that will not be able to produce high-enough yields to be profitable.

This analysis shows a slump in the number of farms with up to 250 acres of arable production - from 20,000 farms in 1997 to less than 1,000 in 2007.

Farms between 250 and 750 acres will halve, from around 40,000 farms in 1997 to 20,000 farms in 2007.

Conversely, larger units (over 750 acres) will actually increase to around 10,000.

I am sorry to be a Job's comforter but, for better or worse, our countryside is in for its biggest change in the last 100 years.

I am sure, however, that farmers and the real rural community will respond.

After more than five years, the Cattle Movement Service, set up by DEFRA, has finally had to admit it has been a fair average failure.

Over that period of time, there has gradually amassed hundreds of thousands of animals upon which there are queries, and of which there is no known keeper.

Farmers by definition are not book keepers, but they have done their best to struggle with the plethora of regulation surrounding traceability.

Despite warnings from my own auctioneering profession, DEFRA decided to set up the British Cattle Movement Service, with traceability based upon a paper trail of postcards to be despatched by the farmers.

Postcards, and applications for passports, are dispatched by post in which there is an admitted loss factor.

Combine the unreliability of the postal service with BCMS's refusal to acknowledge receipt of any movement cards and you have the recipe for today's disaster.

What they were told to do from the start was to adopt an electronic exchange of information which would require an acknowledgement; and combine this with acceptance of approved agents who could act on behalf of farmers to dispatch their movements and applications; like auctioneers. But you might as well have tried to win the Derby with a donkey for all the good it did!

Now we have been given official notification that we shall be getting a cattle statement which is a guestimate of what animals each of us has on our holding at the moment and what errors BCMS believes there to be.

Their excuse is they need to have an up-to-date snapshot of the cattle population. But the truth is that this is what they started out with - and managed to lose after five year's work.

If life under Labour was fair, we should at least get the same rate per hour and holidays as their own staff when we are doing their work for them!

Last year, in the aftermath of FMD, the Government, with great perception, grasped the idea that if there were no movements of animals then there would be no problem with traceability. After a while, the impracticality of the theory dawned and it settled for threatening to introduce a movement limit of 150 kilometres for any one journey from or to a market.

This would have meant we could no longer have brought in stock to feed from the great breeding areas around Carlisle, Hexham and the south-west of England.

After six months deliberation, DEFRA confirmed last week that the possibility of having the distance limit imposed has now been quashed, and ministers have accepted that they wont take the suggestion of imposing limits any further.

Members of the Game Conservancy Trust will have received in today's post a note about a new advisory package available for the conservation of the grey partridge which has declined so drastically in recent years.

The bird is now so rare that it is listed as a" Red Databook Species", and it has its own bio-diversity action plan.

The Game Conservancy Trust has been appointed a lead partner to try and achieve targets for recovery by 2010, and it is offering a special discounted advisory service for £250 a day to farmers and small estates.

If you are interested in helping, please contact Liz Scott, at the Game Conservancy Trust, on (01425) 651013 or e-mail lscott@gct.org.uk.

From last summer, the EU made it illegal for farmers to bury stock on farms, and the UK government promised to introduce a national scheme for collecting fallen stock. After many delays, January 1 was set as the delivery date.

You get no prizes, I am afraid, for guessing that the scheme is not in place, and yet I would be committing a criminal offence if I bury a dead sheep on the farm today.

We are now told that the national scheme is finally due to get off the ground next month, that is for cattle and sheep, but the pig and poultry men have apparently been excluded for the time being.

It does seem to me short-sighted that we don't account for the two species which are kept most intensively in our countryside, and which are thereby more exposed to disease outbreaks.

It may seem a long way from Thailand to Sussex, but chickens can fly even if pigs don't!

Forward on Tuesday were 91 cattle including 27 bulls and 14 cows; 1,102 sheep including 331 ewes.

Light steers to 119p from J Remmer at Pickering (average 100.6p). Heavy steers to 113p from R H Mason, Wold Newton (100.99p).

Light heifers to 131p from G I Marwood, Harome (105.9p). Heavy heifers to 129p from C Beal, Yedingham (98.6p).

Light bulls to 105p from P and I Beal, Settrington (98.4p). Heavy bulls to 107p from P and I Beal (97.8p). Black and white bulls to 92p from H W Ward & Sons, Kirby-O-Carr (81.2p).

Standard lambs to 140.7p from Oliver Brothers, Little Weighton (126.9p). Medium lambs to 134.1p from D Ulliott, Suffield (125.2p). Heavy lambs to 128p from S Barker & Sons, Harome (121.2p). Overweight lambs to 123.5p from P Judson, Coulton (120.2p). Ewes to £72 from I Rooke, Harome (£47).

Updated: 11:44 Wednesday, January 28, 2004