Gwyn Jones Farm Diary: EU agreement a big step forward in doing business

After battling with Blue Tongue over the last year again, with far more losses this time, many farmers are now worrying about the knock-on effect to the spring. The virus affects fertility and there are real concerns in both the sheep industry and suckler beef sector, that there will be another hit when it comes to lambing and calving in the spring. We will know more as farmers start to scan their animals later this year.

To add to everyone’s worries, the Shamonda virus has arrived form Europe. Again, this disease is spread by biting midges (Culicoides) and has been found in Powys, Wales, Northern Ireland, also in Shropshire, England. It has been picked up quickly, showing that APHA (Animal Plant Health Agency) are on the ball, and farmers have been alerted and will need to monitor their stock for any clinical signs.

Control of bovine TB on the other hand seems to be gathering pace as a new scheme is put in place by government which for the first time seems to be popular with farmers. This is part of the government’s commitment to eradicate bTB by 2038 and a new board has been announced for 2027. Most farmers know that the current official skin tests for bTB are not good enough and blood tests have shown that there is a distinct possibility of infected cattle being missed, leaving a reservoir in the herd to re-infect. Hopefully this can now be tackled and that will be a game changer in eradicating this disease.

Milk prices are in the news again for the wrong reasons. At this time of year things are usually steady after an increase in the late summer trough and its steady as she goes. This year, due to increased supply the processors are easing back prices in order to send some signals to farmers. Freshways on the other hand have slashed a whopping seven pence per litre off its price which has really upset the apple cart.

This price cut takes effect from the 1st of December, and this sort of savage cut will take £150,000 off the income of a 250 cow two million litre farm. Arla is also lowering its price by a far more moderate 0.45ppl in order to put this into perspective. There could be more pain in January if supply continues to be strong, and if markets remain weak. Milk production is a volatile market for those supplying processors who are affected most by the commodity markets, or prepared to act viciously to curtail oversupply.

There could well be further cuts in January as cheese processors battle with weak markets and are currently struggling to keep paying farmers well. Cream prices are also quite low which affects the liquid milk market. It was the cream price which triggered the Freshways shock, as they had increased their milk price by a massive 6ppl for October, which seemed very high at the time and has only lasted two months.

Huge excitement last week over the EU agreement and the summit later this month. We understand that most of the work has been done, some horse trading of course and everyone is a winner or loser depending on who you talk to. There are no shortage of opinions, but I think everyone agrees that the deal we had with the EU was a bad one for us and for them and that since Brexit, the Conservatives had no plan after exit, any more than Farage did and we have simply not capitalised on any opportunities.

We have certainly suffered the downside and there was plenty there. We have also been shown that the end of red tape and other silly promises were worthless. No one does red tape like Whitehall, and we have had more since Brexit than we ever had before, which was one of the major complaints. Those of us who were involved when we were members of the EU saw how Whitehall gold plated pretty much everything with the politicians blaming the EU. That myth has now been blown out of the water.

British food standards have pretty much aligned with Europe since we left as have many things, given that it is our largest trading partner by far. However, having this agreed will allow us to export to Europe easier and cheaper. The ‘not for EU’ labels which appeared following the dreadful Windsor (Northern Ireland) Agreement also enraged many and will change. The warnings were designed to prevent a border in the Irish Sea, with food and goods going to Northern Ireland without EU import checks.

The Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) agreement is now pretty much completed and is a big step forward in doing business, aligning food standards since we left in 2020. The agreement will also remove the need for a £200 veterinary certificate and physical checks on farm produce. There will be some changes, for example reformulation of some foods to meet EU food standards and as farmers we might lose some pesticides. There will be more detailed labelling needed on some products , with some products such as blended honey needing to list all countries of origin.

The Youth Mobility Scheme is a bit of a political football but will be sorted and the protectionist industrial scheme will impose trade restrictions on countries outside the bloc and this could affect British automotive and steel sectors. However, the big prize apart from the food and drink deal, is access to Made in Europe scheme, officially known as the Industrial Accelerator Act, designed to protect and stimulate the European Union’s manufacturing base. This includes the rearmament programme, and the UK badly wants a piece of that and not be locked out.

When supermarkets thought they had nothing more than running out of tins of beans to worry about as a result of government rhetoric, they had not factored in the hackers. Suppliers gearing up for Christmas, have been hit compromising their fridges and seem to be targeting organic suppliers too. Riverford, Whole Foods Market and Able and Cole who supply major retailers are the latest victims of cybercriminals. Langrige Organic in West London also had cold storage and cold rooms refrigeration systems hacked. Alarms were disabled, defrost cycles activated and others turned up to 66 degrees.

A number of parameters were changed and most of the settings were very much in the wrong place. GCHQ had warned companies that their equipment was vulnerable to hackers, just as hackers have created havoc in Europe by attacking freezer units and fridges in major retailers there; and now human blood supply storage. Our national Cyber Security Centre stated that the hackers had no idea whose kit was suffering as a result of their activity, they had simply found a control panel which could be manipulated remotely.

Suppliers are now urgently checking equipment, and whilst little was destroyed, it is too early to say what the damage has been. There were further waves of attacks in Europe last week as hackers manipulated computers controlling refrigeration equipment at more than 100 stores, and large quantities of food was thrown away as a result worth hundreds of thousands of euros. The affected businesses were in Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, and Luxembourg.

Last month around 700 supermarkets were attacked in France, where food worth millions of euros was destroyed. There is an urgent review of operating systems underway, but no one knows who is doing it. Whilst our systems in the UK are different to those operating in Europe, it is now clear that they are also vulnerable.