Agricultural production cycles are long; their inputs and outputs are rarely characterised by wild volatility. But such has been the impact of the financial maelstrom in the credit markets that we that find cereal prices have halved in just a few weeks. But whilst deflationary forces are driving farm outputs down, inputs remain gripped by inflation with fertilisers typically 2-300% more expensive. The resultant squeeze on profitability has been so dramatic that it’s probably now cheaper to buy next year’s harvest on the futures market, rather than bothering to grow it yourself. Sustainable?

Monday's forecast for Wednesday (today) was sunny spells with no rain.


Tuesday's forecast for Wednesday (today) was sunny spells with no rain.


Today's forecast for today is sunny spells with no rain.


Today's weather - persistent rain!


It seems to have been a similar story all summer and its no wonder that crops remain to be harvested, many of them now spoiling after repeated drenching as per the sprouted wheat below.

So its all right to cull 30,000 cattle each year at huge cost to the taxpayer and farming community, but not to control badgers locally in the hotspot areas to prevent this.


Food shortages in the world; the Prime Minister exhorts us to waste less; the Secretary of State prevaricates on a cull, "it might work, it might not".


Government by abdication isn't government at all.

Today the BBC reports that "The UK is more exposed to rising food price rises than its peers, adding to recessionary fears, according to a report by Ernst & Young." The article goes on the explain that our position is made worse by our substantial trade deficit in foods.


We have argued for the last decade that the Government's persistent indifference towards agriculture will cost us dear in the long run. It is a disgrace that national self-sufficiency should have been allowed to decline to just 60% of all foods and yet the matter has never warranted parliamentary time.

I have never been a fan of the CAP. Far better that we could farm and make a profit without state intervention. However, the Chancellor's call to scrap the CAP ranks as a pretty cheap shot.


Quick and easy to say, politically difficult to effect, I reckon if the Chancellor wants to save some money he might look a little closer to home. Farm subsidies may get big press but at 0.5% of "government" expenditure I reckon there are bigger fish to fry in the run up to a by-election.


Our bookmark, farm subsidies should help put it in context.

If you dislike the idea of intensive farming and the use of battery conditions such as these (due to be phased out by 2012) you may be interested in tonight's Costing the Earth on Radio 4 - 9.00pm.





Uncomfortable as we may be with intensive farming on welfare grounds, it nonetheless usually carries a significantly lower carbon footprint than more extensive systems. Tonight's Costing the Earth should be interesting.

If you want evidence that the Government isn't thinking, you may need to look no further than your nearest forestry commission wood.


Close to us, recently felled forestry is being left to regenerate naturally. This master stroke of management will provide decades of unproductive scrub at a time when the world needs timber fast. Not utilising forestry here (for environmental reasons) simply reduces timber supply increasing the price and the risk that yet more virgin rain forest is felled to satisfy demand. Crazy or what?

Any thought that the arable sector was in for a bumper period is receding fast as input costs soar. In less than a year fuel and fertiliser costs have doubled and now as the area sown to wheat grows, so the futures have fallen. Making money in agriculture is always a lot harder than it first looks.

After a decade of trying to rid UK agriculture of its productive ability, the government has finally woken up to its importance.


Worldwide, the rising cost of food is pushing millions into absolute poverty while at home the cost of the family shopping basket has soared.


"something must be done"


Unfortunately the rush to condemn biofuels is missing the point as yesterday's rise in the price of crude illustrates. Reserves of fossil fuels are declining fast and their use is contributing to global warming. Some when soon we are going to have to learn how better to harvest today's sunlight for our energy needs. Besides which, in the UK we hardly have a biofuels industry anyway. With the exception of British Sugar's bioethanol plant (a great use of sugar beet), UK manufactured biofuel is thin on the ground.


Sadly government thinking on agriculture continues to run decades out of date. In the 1980s we needed an environmental policy. In the 1990s we needed a biofuels policy. Right now we need a production policy - one that helps maximise the effectiveness of our land for food, energy and conservation. No sign of that however as the government continues to strangle the industry with red tape and reduce investment.


Given the long term trends of climate change, rising population, rising wealth, changing patterns of consumption and the need for biofuels, agriculture now needs to come centre stage in government thinking – critically we need a renewal in the importance of science. Out must go the tired anti-agriculture prejudice; lets make a start by investing in


production efficiency
second generation biofuels
wastes for fertiliser
genetic modification
diffused CHP


and our universities. Agriculture will play a huge role in world affairs over the coming decades. Let's hope UK agriculture is part of it.

Yesterday's demonstration by pig farmers at Downing Street marks a desperate attempt to raise awareness of the economic difficulties they are facing.


The reasons are not hard to see; soaring grain prices have destroyed margins and higher welfare obligations add costs that others do not carry. As things stand producers are giving up fast.


With UK self sufficiency in pork products at only around 60%, you would expect supermarkets to be keen to retain their UK suppliers and offer a bit more. But its not happening. And don't expect any interest from the Government.


If you think that the UK's best interests are served by having a domestic pig industry that offers quality meat produced under high welfare standards, then please write and say so to any or all of the following:


Mr Justin King
Chief Executive
J Sainsbury PLC
33 Holborn
London
EC1N 2HT


Mr Marc Bolland
Chief Executive
WM Morrison Supermarkets PLC
Hilmore House
Gain Lane
Bradford
BD3 7DL


Sir Terry Leahy
Chief Executive
Tesco PLC
Tesco House
Delamare Road
Cheshunt
Hertfordshire
EN8 9SL


Mr Andy Bond
Chief Executive
ASDA
Asda House
Southbank
Great Wilson Street
Leeds
LS11 5AD

Its easy to agree with the gist of Hugh’s Chicken Run and Jamie’s Fowl Dinners. Chicken are sentient beings and surely deserve to be grown in conditions akin to those the RSPCA espouses in its Freedom Foods Assurance Scheme. Lets face it we can all afford an extra quid for a chicken.


But hang on. It’s a £1 increase on a £2.50 bird which by my reckoning is a 40% increase in price. Try saying £1.60 for a loaf of bread and you’ll get the measure.


As a society we rear 850 million broilers per annum so at £1 per go we are talking about adding the better part of £1 billion to the consumer’s cost of food. And its not as if the £1 increase in price is going to give the farmer any extra profit which could be taxed and redistributed to society. Slower growing birds that require more space mean lower annual throughput for each building - 6 birds per unit of area compared with 10 conventionally. And per unit of meat there’s a need for more feed, more heating, more ventilation and more bedding. Production becomes a whole lot more expensive.


Welfare costs.


Can we afford it?

Well over 100 hectares of our farm were “in dispute” following a recent inspection by the RPA so it is with some relief that the latest letter finds us in the clear. Some fields are ever so slightly bigger, some the other way with a net difference of just 0.09ha. Overall that’s an error rate with a lot of zeros in it.


Its all beyond me to understand the point of all this micro mapping. Two centuries ago the Ordnance Survey started mapping everything to perfectly acceptable levels of accuracy. Hundreds of millions of pounds later we are no further forward. It's no wonder government finances are in a mess.

It may seem odd that at the conclusion of a year which has seen avian influenza, foot and mouth, bluetongue and poor profitability affect the livestock sector, that there should be reason to be cheerful for agriculture.


Of course it couldn't get much worse, but that's not the point.


In the space of a few summer months many crop (soft) commodities doubled in price. This was no speculative fever but the first step in a re-rating of agricultural produce that reflects rising worldwide demand set against a constrained supply.


Agricultural cycles run in decades; expect this year's changes as just the start. Agriculture is back.


Happy New Year

I blogged some time ago about the dangers of sharing data with the Government through its Whole Farm Approach. Not only is its data protection statement completely inadequate, it is important to understand what happens over time.


Today’s Government initiative to collect “helpful information” quickly accumulates large quantities of commercial and personal data. In due course the scheme is replaced, officials move on, a new department takes over and nobody is quite sure what was important. An official request comes in from a “partner organisation” that doesn’t really need to know, the data is submitted in its entirety without protection, its inadvertently published and once out becomes a matter of public record.


The small matter of the loss of 25 million personal records (mine and my children’s and perhaps yours too) by HMRC doesn’t therefore come as a huge surprise; we have become culturally complacent about data in the digital age. If Inland Revenue procedures are so lax as to allow a lowly official complete access to copy and distribute the child benefit database, what hope the security of our data elsewhere?

Yesterday on The World at One, Professor Lang clearly articulated what we in the industry have been saying for some time; we need to start thinking about supporting a productive agriculture in the UK. Its not just that the days of cheap food supplies are coming to an end, the days of secure food supplies are becoming threatened.

Climate change coupled with rising demand for agricultural commodities for both food and energy are putting huge pressure on supplies. It is good news therefore that the Government is looking into the question of food security although it remains to be seen whether Defra's thinking has advanced since its recent paper

“Food Security and the UK” published December 2006 and about which I have already commented.

Here it argues that self sufficiency is unimportant and that free trade in foods will always provide us with food security. But what if that food is not available? Surely a reasonable degree of self sufficiency is a prerequisite to food security?