Farm Diary - January 21 2009

WELL it's certainly warmer, but pretty blustery here this weekend. We've had some strong winds over the last week or so, strong enough to partially blow the sheets off one of our silage clamps at Ripley.

They are quite exposed on the hill; we thought that we had done a good enough job by generously overlapping the heavy green sheets, but they are nowhere near as good as a completely tyred clamp. We sheeted it back up and we have now clipped the sheets together. The maize looked as good as the day we ensiled it with no waste at all which is good.

I have had to bring some sheep on to my silage fields to eat off the surplus grass, which is now threatening to turn a nasty brown colour and form a horrible mat, which will be a nightmare when it comes to cutting high quality grass silage in May.

I needed a lot of sheep for a short period of time, but I realise that we will need to compromise slightly due to the cost of transport. We will therefore graze each area in turn, and maybe allow the sheep to stay a little longer on the last block, so that we all get a fair deal.

I will be more organised next winter, as once again the rant of 'climate change' had influenced me to think that the mild winters would continue, and I no longer needed sheep to graze winter grass growth, as it would stay green until the spring.

Gwenan and Jake are back from Australia, nicely tanned and bearing surf boards, snorkelling kit, a bull whip and a didgeridoo! They have had a holiday of a lifetime, with Jake driving tractors at Max Jelbart's farm, whilst Gwenan was fascinated by the rotary milking parlours, and the innovative ways the have of doing things.

Frank Tyndall spent many days showing them around various dairy farms in Victoria, including the Macalister Demonstration Farm which he is responsible for.

They spent a lot of time in Sydney with Elin (our eldest daughter who lives and works there) Christmas day on the beach etc, and the three of them flew to Tasmania for a week, back to Sydney for New Year celebrations, before flying North to Brisbane and then driving back to Sydney in a hired motor-home, calling at various beaches on the way.

I am now being quizzed on 'our' way of doing things, and I can see some developments in the coming years, which will include the way we milk our cows, the way we feed our young stock, lack of proper handling systems, and so on.

They were quite happy with things as they are before they went! Mind you, when I went on my Nuffield scholarship in the early nineties, I came back and changed everything. 'Gone mad', was the expression I remember.

There's been a lot of media attention on the Pesticide Bill over the last week or so. This is a complex issue, as EU member states were asked to move to a hazard based assessment of pesticides, which was voted through by a very large majority.

Farmers now face a ban on a small number of very important chemicals, but it is unclear how long it will take, as there are derogations which can be applied for, which could extend their use for a further 5 years or more. The biggest impact will be on the horticulture sector, who have no alternatives for these chemicals, with potatoes another crop that could suffer.

Chemical Companies are now charged with developing alternatives in the next five to ten years, which sounds generous, but in reality is a very short time-scale indeed. The vast cost and time-consuming task of getting new chemicals registered will be a challenge, and of course these companies are looking to develop new products all the time, and it isn't as if they are suddenly going to miraculously discover new products.

To give you some idea of how tough this new legislation is, alcohol would not qualify as a spray chemical due to it being both carcinogenic and mutagenic, yet a few of us throw it down our gullets on a regular basis!

The big problem as I see it is that this could mean less production in the EU, and therefore greater imports from other countries where these tough rules are not in place. We are forever being disadvantaged in the UK, by products such as pig-meat reared to lower standards imported and putting our farmers out of business.

It is essential that if a country or a trading block, take the initiative at considerable cost, that protection is then offered, to make sure that there is no disadvantage. Many environmentalists in their quest for utopia do not give a damn about the consequences; that seems to be someone else's responsibility, as they simply move on up their agenda.

Much to their chagrin, GM crops are now more likely to come on the agenda, which is the sensible way forward. Fewer sprays will be used, and GM has the potential to maybe plug some of the gaps created by the ban on these chemicals. Hopefully the proposed third runway at Heathrow will give us space to properly plan how we go about feeding people, whilst the 'greenies' are otherwise occupied. It is important that proper consideration is given to the best way forward.