This month Roger Evans discusses his thoughts on the farming buzz words of the moment; sustainability, rewilding and diversification.
There have always been buzz words in farming, but now there are more than ever. Two or the buzz words in current use are sustainability and rewilding.
I dont have a clue what the first means. How is your farm sustainable if what you produce is worth less than the cost of production? This is a particularly relevant question for egg producers and pig keepers, and milk could be heading the same way.
We are in a cycle of cheap food. Cheap food will help to bring inflation down and the present Government needs to bring inflation down in order to get re-elected. Its a short-term view but beware.
As regards rewilding, I dont know whether to laugh or cry, but I much prefer to laugh. For a farmer, getting off a tractor to open a gate will be a thing of the past, and unless he is particularly sprightly the wolves will get him.
Your present gate will probably be some sort of electric beam that you can drive your tractor through.
Looking on the bright side, the wolves will probably kill all the beavers as well.
Obviously I cant put a time scale on this, but we could see packs of wolves roaming the streets where the pickings are easier, such as children on their way to school. Until that sort of thing happens wolves will enjoy a protected status.
The big news now is that the government intends to turn the UK into a sort of park. How you do that if at every turn you are confronted by a dangerous wild animal? This clearly hasnt been thought through.
At present there is plenty of cheap food around the world, but there wont always be. Natural disasters and competition will see to that.
Not that it matters, just as long as the Government get re-elected at the next general election. After that food security will kick in and there will be yet another change of agenda.
But there is another buzz word. This word bothers me. Its diversification. If this word is in common use, and it is, it means that farming isnt paying.
I know that diversification works for some people but it wouldnt work for everyone. For example there are four dairy farms down this road. If one of these put in a milk sales point it might work, but if they all did it wouldnt.
I have to be very careful how I write this next piece. If this person could be identified by what I write there could be repercussions.
I know a farmer who diversified. He devised a fresh meat product. It wasnt niche or unique but he was the only man in that area who was producing that sort of product.
When he started out he sold some at farmers market, some to the trade, some went for export. He sold it where he could, but his financial commitment was increasing.
He was approached by a local supermarket who said they would take all his production just as long as he didnt sell it anywhere else.
This supermarket is one of the big chain ones, if I mentioned their name you would know it immediately.
He jumped at the chance to supply them, he thought his life would be so much easier and simpler. 12 months later things werent so good. He had to put in fresh product seven days a week. At the same time he had to take back all the product that was not three days old and was unsold.
They paid him every six weeks.
I never asked him what he did with the product that was three days old but I bet he sold it to the trade and I also bet that he was glad to get rid of it. Never a way to make money.
This is all very complicated and it takes a mathematical genius like me to work it out. In my mind everything of his that they sold they had their money in three days. But they had his money for another six weeks.
If you are going to diversify just be careful; wolves come in all sorts of disguises. Theres no need to rewild with wolves, they are already here.
Wherever we live we are all probably familiar with large scale potato growing. If the weather is dry they operate 24 hours a day. So for the time it takes to clear a given acreage the local peace is shattered by the sound of tractors.
The aspect of this that most of us see is the sight of huge trailer loads of potatoes being carted away by tractors. These trailers and tractors are usually driven by young men whose job it is to drive as fast as they can lest, heaven forbid, the machine that does the lifting should have to wait.
These young men usually drive with one hand. This is because the other hand is clutching a mug or a mobile phone. If you couple this with he fact that the trailers are just as full as they can go, if the tractors have to swerve at all, then it is inevitable that some potatoes get spilt onto the road.
I know of an isolated village where some of the residents became aware of this. So they park their cars in selected places, so the tractor drivers find themselves driving one handed through what is in effect an elongated chicane.
One resident picked up enough potatoes to last the family 12 months!
