Impressed with quality of youngpeople ready to enter profession

It was a very good cut, with a further 1,000 tonnes of grass silage clamped; it will all help offset the very poor maize yield this year. Stocks of silage overall are adequate, but this is the most expensive maize we’ve ever made, given that the growing and harvesting costs are the same for a ten tonne crop as they are for a twenty tonne crop.

Temperature has fallen sharply in the last fortnight, and with the hour turned back this weekend, winter is on its way.

I gather that spring in Australia has started nice and wet, and with their spring calving herds mostly calved down by now, production is in full flow. Frank Tyndall tells me that the unprecedented downpours over Queensland when we were out there in March, has indeed found its way to the mouth of the Murray river, in South Australia (thousands of kilometers away) which is now flowing for the first time in many years; big country Australia.

We are busy ploughing up the maize ground, leaving the soil over winter to weather.

We find that our seed-beds are much finer, and moisture retention is also better when spring cultivations are kept to a minimum.

We have less manure available these days, as it is all put in the anaerobic digester, but the solid part of the digestate is ploughed in the maize ground.

All cattle are in apart from the in-calf heifers, which are coming inside as they approach their calving date, and the young heifers also out grazing at Tillington.

The sheep are grazing off the few fields not cu for silage last week, as we get the grass under control for the winter; setting he farm up for next spring.

I had the pleasure of visiting both Harper Adams agricultural college and the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester last week.

The purpose of my visit was to talk to students about agriculture, the role of the NFU within that, and their prospects, hopes and aspirations.

I was impressed with the quality of young people coming into the industry, and the diversity of interests. With agricultural student numbers rising each year, things are looking up, and given that there are so many jobs and vacancies, the future looks good for all of them; especially in the times we find ourselves, where agriculture is one of the few industries where there are as many jobs as there are applicants.

As this country re-adjusts its priorities, and the financial straights we find ourselves in bring us back to basics, agriculture has a much more prominent place in the scheme of things than it once did, where Margaret Becket famously commented that we are a rich nation, and we can buy any food we need!

These young students have a bright future; agriculture and the food industry, increasingly technical and sophisticated in general, need bright young people to take it forward.

George Osborne, Chancellor of the Exchequer made his long awaited statement last week to the House of Commons, and we now know the scale of the ‘cuts’ which we have all talked about for so long.

Defra suffered just about the heaviest cut of all, again not unexpected, and we await the effect of those cuts as Ministers and their Civil servants continue to work on the detail.

What we do know, is that it will mean tough times ahead, and as the budget is slashed by 30 per cent (over £700 million), let’s first of all spare a thought for those 8,000 people who are going to lose their jobs. The full extent of the cuts is far from clear, but there will be cuts to administration, flood-defence, the axing of ‘quangos’, but environment schemes have fared rather better than expected, although I suspect that everything there is not as it seems.

I always enjoy the statement ‘Front line services will not suffer’; a military term, which shows how silly it is to pretend that all is well at the ‘front line’, when dramatic cuts are made to the support and supply systems.

The ‘front line’ is far from being in good shape if the fuel, food and ammunition lines are cut! Front line services will of course be affected, and Defra will be no different to other departments in this.

There are some good things that will come out of this reform, such as the reform of the Environmental agency and Natural England, two large and expensive bodies which have become hugely beurocratic, lost focus, and have become involved in policy making and lobbying, which quite frankly was never meant to be part of their remit.

We should experience less regulation and red tape, which stifles progress and entrepreneurial spirit, and small government, should mean light-touch government, interfering less and facilitating growth, upon which all this depends.

If there is a gamble here (and many believe there is), it’s about growth; without growth in the economy, this will end in tears.

Some further bad news for farming is the prospect of many small holding County Council farms being sold, the cost of disease being ‘shared’, charges for other services such as cattle passports, bTB testing charging being a possibility, and most worryingly, how Defra will cope with losing so many staff and getting to grips with all this.

Concern has been expressed over the lack of clarity from Ministers, and the sense that they are a long way from having the answer to the cuts, which are real.

The National Audit Office has for instance stated that Defra does not have a sufficiently robust grip on the finances, in order to introduce disease sharing costs with the industry. There is a long way to go before we know how hard this is all going to be.

Meanwhile, in France there are riots! Why? Because there is a suggestion that the retiring age may be lifted to 62 years.

Students, who have yet to carry out a day’s work, queue up to express ‘outrage’ that they will not be able to retire at 60!

I suspect that they will have to work longer than that, and as everyone adjusts to life that has simply become unaffordable, we should expect to see a few more cobble-stones thrown at police.

We are hoping to drive down to the Dordogne this weekend – if petrol is available over there.