FIRST this week, a red alert warning about a team of clever fraudsters who have dreamed up yet another way of beating the system – if only they would apply their intelligence to promoting legal business the country would be a great deal richer.

This story concerns a Yorkshire farmer who has been conned out of £100,000.

The scam starts with a phone call to the farm purporting to be from his bank telling him that there have been certain unauthorised transactions, and requesting that he phone the helpline on the back of his credit card.

The farmer phones the helpline and somehow the fraudsters manage to manipulate the technology so that they remain on the line and instruct the farmer to transfer £50,000 into each of two holding accounts, which they assure him will safeguard his funds.

When the farmer phones his bank later in the day for confirmation, he is told it has all been a big con and he has little chance of getting the money back.

Forewarned is forearmed.

 

Be prepared for crop rule

We are still being drip-fed information from Brussels about the BPS regulations, which come in to force on January 1, 2015, and this week I downloaded a 15-page commentary from our Valuers’ Assocation, giving an updated interpretation.

For most farmers with an arable enterprise it is the regulation on crop diversification that will give us the biggest headache. The basic thresholds for crop diversification are fairly simple: 

• 10ha or less of arable land provides exemption

• Over 10ha and up to 30 ha – at least two crops

• Over 30ha – at least three crops

Even this decision is not as simple as it sounds because we need to understand what “arable land” is. It is certainly includes cropped and fallow land, but there is still a bit of a question mark over temporary grasses and agri-environment land.

Having overcome this hurdle, the next question to be answered is what is a crop?

It is officially defined as “a culture of any of the different genresera in the botanical classification of crops……”

So we have separate crops for the traditional cereals of wheat, barley, oats etc, and in addition the main designations cover maize, beans, peas, sugar beet, OSR, potatoes and other specialist crops.

We need to be aware that it is the sowing done this autumn, as well as next spring that will form the Crop Diversification for BPS 2015.

This necessitates an early assessment of the farmers likely 2015 “arable” area to ensure there is sufficient number and coverage of crops.

Time marches on and with seed and fertiliser to order you will be well advised to start the planning process; and my firm as I am sure with many others, has produced a simple calculator to give a rough and ready answer.

The final joker in this new pack of BPS cards is the requirement to leave five per cent of arable land as an Ecological Focus Area (EFA). This is similar to, but not the same as, the old “set aside” as it is not confined to taking land out of production. There are a whole set of options from which member states can choose in order to achieve EFA status and as yet our Government has not spoken out. My message today is that we all need to address the issue and get our act together before we get in to this year’s harvest.

Dredging starts on time Keeping the Prime Minister’s promise to commence dredging by the end of March, the machines moved in on Monday.

Following the fanfare of trumpets, the Environment Agency pronounced its intention to remove 400,000 tonnes of silt from the Rivers Tone and Parrett. It seems strange to me that after being dragged kicking and screaming to the dredging table, the EA’s chief executive issues an opening statement that “we are committed to dredging”.

As to why it has taken 20 years to reach that conclusion, the rest of us in the countryside remain bewildered.

I did see an interesting comment from one old farmer on the internet this morning who remarked that when ditching, he had always been taught to start at the outlet and work back up the drain; and yet the EA appear to have commenced dredging in the middle of the river.

 

Lamb trade optimism

With hoggs scarce and new season lamb not yet on stream, trade in the market is very lively and running well ahead of the deadweight competition. Averages are running well over £2/kilo meaning that the weightier animals add up to more than £100/head.

When trade is bullish like this, there is no better place to sell than the live market.

I can therefore safely and strongly advise everyone to use their local livestock auction which hopefully will be Malton or York.

As to the prospects for the new season, there is a good deal of optimism.

Trade inevitably is governed by the law of supply and demand and our main supplier, New Zealand is turning ever more towards China and the Eastern market.

Strange to relate but this last year 13 per cent of our own exports went to Hong Kong.

Apart from New Zealand, our other major suppliers in Australia and Ireland have both reported falling production.

So despite being a relatively expensive product, the prospects for lamb this year look pretty good.