Farm Diary Sep 10, 2008

Indian summer? No sign of it yet, and with another wet week forecast, it is becoming desperate for the arable farmers, especially up north.

I was up in Newcastle and North Yorkshire last week, and they have still to finish winter barley, with the wheat untouched in many areas. Yields are very good but the drying costs are through the roof.

As for straw, it's not going to be very clever for this winter. Those who have finished harvesting in the south of the country and East Anglia (and there are plenty who have not), are now struggling to get cultivations done, and oilseed rape acreages could be down, as it is getting late and drilling in poor conditions is not an option.

At Crouchlands, all site works have ceased in the appalling conditions.

Almost all the cows are in, we are filling our winter dirty water storage and only half our straw has arrived on farm. I think the rest of the straw, still in the field, is now written off, and I am looking to buy as much as I can for delivery now from merchants before the price goes through the roof this winter.

We seem to have been pumping dirty water forever! A total of 65mm of rain fell over the weekend and when you collect that over a few acres of concrete it mounts up.

It rained so hard that the yards were spotless '“ cleaner than I have seen them in a long time '“ but the volumes were huge and tested our systems to the limit.

By the time you read this, I hope to have cut some maize at Tillington.

I drilled it very early (April 17), as I knew I would run out of last year's maize in September. It is ready, with good cobs and not too much crop. It's about 6-7ft tall, rather than the 10-11ft of the crops that were drilled later. They are a long way off, which is just as well as we have a clamp to build before they come in!

Tillington's maize will keep us going easily until then but I wonder if the ground conditions are good enough to travel. We shall soon see!

I'm delighted to say I have found a buyer for my Holstein bull calves.

He is willing to take a chance on about 50 calves, hoping that by the time they are fattened there will be a market for them. He has done it in the past and it worked out very well but it is a gamble all the same.

They won't sell for much money but the relief of not having to put them down will be huge. We struggle to keep animals alive and well in farming, and putting down perfectly healthy animals is against all our instincts. Done properly, it's not an animal welfare issue, but it most certainly is a moral and ethical issue.

I was astounded up north '“ in the Penrith area in particular '“ to find that farmers are not going to bother with the bluetongue vaccine.

It's too late in the season they say; the risk is minimal now. I countered that the risk is real and should the weather compensate, as it usually does, midge activity will be high.

Of greater concern is that a dealer or farmer could import from abroad, as they have done already. Where would that leave the area without any protection at all? It is completely stupid to ignore such risks when the insurance cost (vaccine) is so low.

I made it clear that compulsory vaccination is more likely if they do not vaccinate and that the farming community would take a very dim view if bluetongue became established in their area through their reckless behaviour. They are mostly sheep farmers and I can only hope common sense will prevail.

Dairy farmer numbers keep falling, with only 12,000 of us left in England and Wales, with England now under 10,000.

They are still leaving the industry at the rate of two a day '“ down from three '“ and that is likely to accelerate as we approach 2011, which is the deadline for complying with the new nitrates-vulnerable zone environmental legislation.

This will cover 70 per cent of England and will mean an investment of around 50,000 for the average dairy farm, mainly in slurry storage to comply with the requirement of storing all slurries for five months in the winter.

There will be no spreading in the autumn/winter period, although the precise dates vary according to soil type and rainfall.

This money has to come from the market, as no Government funding is available (unlike all other EU countries), and it needs to start this autumn in the form of a milk price increase to cover production costs and reinvestment.