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Farming in March 2009

At Hopes Ash Farm we decided to face the credit crunch head on and conducted a staff audit to ensure a top heavy management structure wasn’t going to bring us to our knees. It didn’t take long; at the top there is the MD (My Dad) and below him are the various Directors, Technical, Purchasing, Logistics, Marketing and Finance which are all down to me plus anything the MD doesn’t want to do. Any financial misfortunes we encounter will certainly not be down to overstaffing!

Farmers, as producers, are price takers and not in a position to alter greatly the price we can sell commodities for. Milk price is on its way down; we have lost 2p a litre since January. This is disappointing as feed and energy prices are still sky high. I haven’t seen a corresponding drop in the price of milk at the supermarkets who were very quick to blame the producer for rises last year, where is that 2p going now?

As a double blow Nitrate Vulnerable Zone legislation has been re-jigged and has become even more onerous for livestock farmers. For many it requires an investment of thousands of pounds to ensure their slurry storage and spreading are compliant. Thanks to the MD’s foresight our existing system should meet the new regulations for some time to come although the additional field records should keep us on our toes.

Amazingly we are still TB free and had the luxury of being able to sell some of our beef cattle as stores. When closed with TB we can only sell fat cattle direct to slaughter. Prior to TB all our beef cattle where sold at around 12 months as “stores”, the purchaser would then fatten them ready for slaughter. Since we don’t often have this opportunity and with input prices remaining high we decided to sell whilst the going was good, or before the next TB test!

Despite their best intentions to the contrary we still have all of our Herdwick Sheep plus new recruits. Roger is a rather magnificent ram complete with curly horns who looks a little incongruous in our less than rugged terrain. Weed was a BOGOF, Buy One Get One Free, who as the name suggests is a little moth-eaten. She had been Roger’s companion for some time and had been nursed back from near death by their owner, Mrs Appleby, who couldn’t bare to see one go without the other. I did have second thoughts about Weed even though she was free but didn’t have the heart to disappoint Mrs Appleby or Roger.