Single Payment cash is now starting to trickle in... (From Gazette & Herald)

Single Payment cash is now starting to trickle in...

Needles in haystacks are easy compared with finding a farmer with a Single Payment in his bank account, but I have heard from two lucky souls this week who are basking in their agricultural lottery win!

The first is a hard working young man from Bishop Wilton who rang me with great relief; the second is our Thornton correspondent who wrote this self-indulgent but happy declamation:

"Let joy be unconfined, raise the flag, spread the jam, fuel up the tractor, unlock the cheque book, and look the bank manager in the eye. The SFP has arrived."

Now for the sober facts - as at March 28, only 23 per cent of farmers had received their money, and these must be the simpler, uncomplicated claims, with only 13 per cent of the total money due to farmers paid out.

Johnston McNeil, the RPA chief executive, classed as responsible for all this mayhem, has been sacked but incredibly remains on his full salary of £150,000 per annum - now there's something that sticks in one's throat. I have been thinking for some time that the British Civil Service has gone from being the best in the world to the bottom of the heap and the RPA's performance has proved the point - all our European competitors have paid out their farmers with between 80 to 100 per cent of claims.

Northallerton's belated answer to the crisis is to employ dozens of sixth-formers from the local school to work on an evening helping to sort out the mess. If this Government has an ounce of political morality left it should do three things:

Immediately pay all farmers an interim 80 per cent settlement.

Pay interest on all claims outstanding since the end of December.

Sack the three ministers who apparently neither hear, nor see, nor speak any evil.

SP transfer deadline is extended

The deadline for notifying transfer entitlements was last Sunday, April 2, and many agents such as ourselves have been burning the midnight oil trying to complete the chain for which we have only been provided with some of the links.

Three days before the deadline expired, Lord Bach took pleasure in announcing that there would be an extension to Sunday, April 23. This seems to have the following effect:

If a farmer has bought or taken land for the season and wishes to claim entitlements, then the minimum period of notice required to the RPA has been reduced from six weeks to three weeks.

If for some reason the farmer is not able to get into possession prior to April 30 in order to qualify for the ten month period, then the notification date to the RPA becomes April 9 - this was prior to the Bach pronouncement March 19.

This is all pretty technical stuff, but important to those involved.

FVP authorisations

Those involved in the growing of fruit, vegetables and potatoes have been left even more in the dark than most.

Around 6,000 claimants have been affected by a calculation error to do with FVP authorisations and although these have now been recalculated to send out this week, it will already have forced many to make their cropping plans for 2006 without the knowledge of what they are authorised to grow.

Again, there seems to be no compensation or even apology for such incompetence.

SP5 forms for 2006

The new application forms for this season should be with you by April 19 at the latest, which will give four weeks at the busiest time of year to get the information together. There will be a lot of issues arising from the 2006 claims but here are one or two pointers:

Where your RLR maps are yet to be agreed, RPA advise that the farmer should show the field areas that he believes are correct and include a covering letter.

Where temporary divisions of fields are being done for 2006 these can be detailed on a clear sketch plan; and there is no need for professionally prepared plans.

Don't forget to put in the 2006 land use codes in column C8.

You must enter the amount of land area to be activated in column C10.

Details of the number or type of entitlements that you wish to activate should be shown in column E6.

Although there is something to be said for getting the job done, we still have six weeks to go and it may be prudent to take a rain check to see if there are any more gremlins in the system...

TB testing myths

We are fielding a lot of questions about the TB testing rules which have been introduced by DEFRA very prematurely and inadvisably. As far as I understand the position for Yorkshire farmers it is broadly as follows, but if you are in any doubt please check with the authorities:

The potential risk of TB in any area is graded by compulsory testing every one to four years.

In our area we are all on three to four-year testing regimes, which is low risk but in the South West, for example, there are a lot of one to two-year testing parishes.

With one exception, which I will explain later, animals that are over 15 months of age (and for those with my simple brain this does not include calves and stores under 15 months!) have to be TB tested before they move off the farm.

With consummate stupidity, DEFRA has not provided for any indication of a TB test to be marked on the animal's passport. All that appears to be required is for a vet to record the results of his visit.

This makes it difficult to identify individual tested animals.

However, tested animals and those from three to four-year testing farms can move quite freely on to Yorkshire farms without the requirement of any further treatment whatever. There appears to be no danger and no change at all in buying cattle from the South West provided they fall in one of the two above categories.

The only exception is where cattle over 15 months of age are moved off one to two year testing farms without being pre-movement tested; and in terms of Yorkshire this can only happen if you have got your beef fattening farm passed as an Exempt Fattening Unit (EFU).

The procedure for licensing an EFU is so complex that I know of only one in the county; but if you are interested I can point you in the right direction. The message seems to be that it is business pretty much as normal but we need to be aware that stock from the South West may have been tested.

There is a lot of unnecessary paranoia over TB at the minute and as usual the obsessive gold plating of regulations.

Here's a tale from the South West that beggars belief. Taunton Market, which is the biggest in the area, applied for an exemption to part of its premises so that it could sell non-tested cattle off one to two-year farms which would have some relevance as they could go either to an EFU or to slaughter.

As ever, DEFRA insisted on that part of the market being totally sanitised and locked up. In the event, at last week's market there were no non-tested cattle, but inadvertently 30 tested cattle were tipped on the wrong docks. Despite there being no danger whatever, the trading standards officer refused to allow them to be moved across to the right section of the market and the farmer was forced to take them home again with all the associated expenses and trouble. Why do we have to put up with such mindless officialdom?

Strike that never was

Having spent hours preparing for livestock to be marketed during this week when Unison were to be on strike, the union decided at 7.30pm on Friday night to go back to the negotiating table.

We then had another day of weekend activity to reverse all the former arrangements. One can only bite one's lip, but in the event Monday morning brought a good show of stock to York with a flying trade.

We followed suit at Malton on Tuesday; and if you have animals to sell at the moment you definitely should be in the live market.

Grave request

Frank Turner's second tale is about the time he was passing the churchyard one evening and heard the sound of a man lamenting in a clearly distressed state.

Being a charitable soul, Frank went across to comfort the man who, as Frank got closer, was heard to plead that someone should come back.

"There, there,'' said Frank. ''Who is it that you're missing - your wife, your brother or your father?"

''No,'' said the man. ''It's the wife's first husband!''

Updated: 12:53 Wednesday, April 05, 2006