Farm Diary - Oct 14 2009

It came slightly earlier than we expected, and it was a rush to sheet up all the straw before it got wet. The ground is still rock hard, but the wetting process has begun and it can only get worse from now on as the day shortens and the sun loses its power.

All the cows are in as we all get used to our winter routine, and they show no signs of wanting to go outside at all; they are very happy indoors as the weather deteriorates. Milk production is good, and as we calve the heifers into the herd, it should increase over the coming weeks. With good quality silage, we are expecting this winter to be a good one.

Lorayne and I attended the 'Farmers Weekly Awards Ceremony' last week. 1060 people in attendance and all sitting down for dinner! A splendid evening, with entertainment, and prize-giving, and 16 awards to category winners ranging from Beef farmer of the year, to Contractor of the year, to young farmer of the year. Our own Chris and Caroline Hodgkins, farming on the South Downs won the 'Sheep Farmer of the year'; well done indeed. Welsh Minister Elin Jones and Dr Christianne Glossop, Welsh Chief Veterinary Officer, won the Farmers Weekly/NFU Farming Champion Award, for their leadership and implementing the eradication of Bovine TB in Wales.

The Conservative Conference at Manchester saw NFU President urging the Conservatives to 'ditch their anti-European stance', claiming that they had 'few friends around the CAP table'.

This was rejected by Shadow Secretary of State Nick Herbert, claiming that there is a debate to be had about our role in Europe, but rejected the suggestion that the Tories would not get involved in policy discussions in Brussels. Nick Herbert also stated that he wanted to put the 'F' back in Defra; that is farming at the heart of the department.

Now that really would be a change!

Major retailers have been warning that their voluntary 'ban' on GM foods is becoming very difficult as major producers of soya in the USA and Brazil have switched to GM technology, and the cost of avoiding GM food is likely to add 20 per cent to food prices. Terry Leahy Chief Executive of Tesco admits that their stance on GM driven by public opinion may have been wrong. He believes now that it would have been better to stick with the science. Public opinion has changed markedly since the end of the 1990's, when single issue groups and media coined the phrase 'Frankenstein Foods', largely out of ignorance, and of course a good scare story.

The Food Standard Agency states that public concern about GM foods has fallen steadily from 20 per cent ten years ago to 6 per cent last month. With both Government and retailers now realizing that they have both adopted the wrong approach, things are going to change.

The Welsh Assembly declared Wales a 'GM free zone', which was rather silly and out of touch, given that concern in Wales has now fallen, and a third of customers believe that GM technology has a part to play. Mariann Fischer Boel has called on member states to play their part in reviewing the 'zero tolerance' approach to GM presence in ship-loads of protein coming into the EU.

As this column has highlighted many times, the risk of a single grain of unapproved GMO being found in a ship load of grain, has made availability more difficult as shippers shy at the risk of rejection.

The policy is failing, and as 80 per cent of soya beans grown across the world are GM, and likely to increase, it leaves the EU with little choice. With shippers now caught out by the presence of GM 'dust' from portside stores and loading equipment, they are voluntarily putting an end to imports of GM soya from the USA. The availability and cost of animal feed will also be severely affected by this state of affairs, and it is now time to be open and honest about the future.

Not only is sourcing non-GM going to become more difficult and expensive, given that the EU is 25 per cent below self-sufficiency in proteins, politicians are faced with some difficult choices. Stick with the knitting and watch food prices increase, and livestock farming in the EU diminish, leading to greater imports of meat from abroad which has (of course) been fed on GM soya and maize (mostly the new varieties which the EU takes so long to approve '“ leading to the root of the current problem), or change the policy of zero tolerance. The French have another solution, and that is to pay European farmers to plant alternative proteins which can be grown in our climate (pulses etc:), reducing our dependence on imported grain.

In the UK, 90 per cent imported soya comes from Brazil and Argentina, with Argentina planting 94 per cent GM seed and Brazil 65 per cent and rising. We therefore have two years at best to sort this mess out.

Proper debate and scientific fact has not been allowed to surface in this discussion, what we have seen is environmental groups on the one hand shouting that the end is nigh, whilst incompetent American Companies have made a complete shambles of persuading anyone.

Government, retailers, and other responsible bodies decided to keep quiet, which allowed the debate (if you can call it that) to polarize and stagnate.

Does GM benefit the environment by reducing the use of pesticides? Has the GM acreage planted saved many more acres of land being cleared and brought into production? What are the yields of GM crops? Will it play an important part in feeding the world as population increases? Given that GM is everywhere in our shops, is this not too late?

These are a few of the questions that ordinary people want answered in a proper, measured and proven way. Let's leave the corporate speak, and the people haters out of this discussion, because it matters to each and every one of us that we get it right.