Farm Diary

I did not want to open the silage clamp for such a small amount of grass, as it would disturb the very good silage sealed up in there, and having calculated that cutting and baling this grass would cost twice as much as carting it and dumping it in the muckheap, I decided to throw it away.

It seems a waste, but the objective here is to get the grazing fields back into the rotation, and spending extra on silage bales I don't need and can't easily incorporate into the system does not make sense.

The challenge now is to work out how many acres we are going to need out of the second cut silage acreage, as the cows are grazing the initial fields very fast due to relatively small covers, but the grass is growing rapidly, and in a week's time they will be grazing huge amounts of grass again.

The reason of course is that the silage was all cut on the same day, where as grazing is in rotation and in theory one should have the same cover in front of the cows most of the time; once grazed these extra acres will also be in the rotation.

We have problems with milk cooling at the moment, as one of the compressors on the silo has broken down. As usual there is no spare on the shelf anywhere and we have waited the best part of a week in order to get a new one; it is amazing how things go wrong as soon as new equipment is out of warranty.

The remaining compressor has to work very hard in the meantime, and I can only hope that we are not shortening its life. The tank washer is not working properly either, and hopefully we can get that fixed at the same time; difficult to spot problems with this equipment when milk is collected at midnight.

Dairy farmers in Europe have been on strike! Over the last ten days, up to 40% of German farmers went on strike, withholding milk and blockading factories and distribution centres, in protest over falling milk prices. Milk prices in Germany have fallen to between 21pence per litre and 24ppl, and with rising feed and energy costs, farmers are making losses.

The strike spread through Austria and Switzerland, with Belgium and Holland joining in. The numbers in these countries were relatively low, but the blockades meant that much more milk failed to be picked up off farm.

The strike was called by the 'European Dairy Board', which consists of more radical groups from each European country, working outside the main farming unions. They are quite an extreme organisation, with our own 'Farmers For Action' led by David Handley, choosing not to join from the start; interestingly, the 'Farmers Union of Wales' are members of the EDB.

We have figures for Holland, where two million litres of milk was lost, with Friesland foods obtaining an injunction against farmers blockading their factories. The turmoil in Germany is far greater, with millions of litres of milk lost and not collected.

Farmers not on strike have had to throw milk away as it was not collected due to depots and factories being shut by blockades. This has turned farmer against farmer, causing real damage in relations and splitting communities, which will take years to repair.

The retailers have now increased retail prices and farmers will get an increase in price. The industry is worried that these tactics will be seen to have worked, and that further strikes could be called by the EDB.

Many farmers not involved in the strikes are supportive, as they do not want to see further divisions in the farming communities, which make for a very difficult situation indeed.

In the UK I am attempting to introduce better milk contracts between farmers and milk buyers in order to avoid such scenarios happening here. The shortage of milk in the UK is keeping the price at the right level currently, but we need to prepare for the future.

I see that Asda has attracted the wrong sort of publicity with the introduction of the 2p sausage! The tabloid press have been carrying out taste comparisons, an analysis of ingredients, and encouraging chefs to comment. With little pork and a lot of 'filling', the verdict is that this is not a 'British Banger'.

This was first published in the West Sussex Gazette June 11