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The dairy sector is in desperate need of some of cider's sparkle, writes Chris Rundle
It wasn't that many weeks ago that one or two of farming's so-called leaders were rubbishing suggestions the end of quotas could see milk prices dropping to as low as 10 pence a litre.
Well it's happened. Anyone calling Dairy Crest asking for the spot price last week would have been told just that: 10 pence. Take it or leave it.
As to when so ruinously low a figure was last being quoted in the marketplace there are probably few active dairy farmers who can recall the time. And at 10 pence a litre the question has to be asked whether it isn't easier just to throw the stuff away and be done with it – and to call in the auctioneers.
Anyone milking without a contract is now in serious jeopardy – and it's not all good news for those who have one, particularly if they are tied to First Milk, the only major dairy company still wholly owned by British farmers.
It's been beset by rumours and has admitted to a series of financial problems (including cash shortfalls) in recent months. But the more they are dismissed as minor issues, the more those denials have the ring of a ship's captain explaining that his vessel has been driven onto the rocks merely for the purposes of inspecting the coastal geography.
Farmers have been informed retrospectively about the April price while the forward price quoted for June by the co-op, which handles a billion litres of liquid a year, is pitched between 13 and 17 pence. Meanwhile, more than £3 million is about to be extracted from shareholders to finance "restructuring", including redundancy payments resulting from a significant swathe of job losses.
Compare those prices with the 32/34 pence being paid by Tesco and Sainsburys (neither noted for their open-wallet generosity) to their dedicated suppliers on the basis that that's what they need to turn a modest profit and the situation at First Milk looks even more dire.
Compare them to the 40-42 pence a litre industry analysts say farmers should be paid in order to finance the re-investment necessary to guarantee future supplies and the situation – which amounts in essence to farmers personally subsidising the ruinous four-pints-for-88p supermarket offer – is clearly unsustainable.
The problem is (to continue the nautical metaphor) we are sailing in entirely uncharted waters where a so-called "free" market has turned out to be a controlled market, with ruthless supermarkets setting the course and speed.
The situation is poised to deteriorate further once the effects of the spring flush kick in, but the forecast post-quotas deluge of Irish cheese imports has started, which is why some of the world's finest cheddar, the vastly superior product that comes off the farms in East Somerset, is having to be knocked out at giveaway prices.
Which is also why one bank branch alone in Somerset now has more than 50 farm businesses in special measures, many of them dairy units bumping along on 22 pence a litre.
The dairy sector is already creaking ominously. Last year one of the best clotted cream makers in Devon simply bowed to the untenable financial pressures and gave up.
Yet between them the industry's appointed leaders have done no more than stand, open-mouthed, watching the tsunami approach. In all this, the recent assertion by a West Country farming union official that the small and medium family farms are best placed to grin and bear the storm looks even more fatuous, and the view of someone woefully out of touch with reality.
Caught between low prices and the demands of the bank and having already sacrificed everything, including a modest income and decent life for the family, the small and medium farms, on the contrary, have only one direction left to head: for the exit.
Cheerier news for those of us who prefer to take our vitamin C in liquid form, with reports of significant investments in new cider orchard plantings.
And of indications that drinkers who have been lured to the sector by more palatable, easy-drinking ciders are now getting seriously interested in the more complex and challenging varieties out there.
Thatchers Cider alone has dropped more than 100,000 new trees into the soil. Not so much the Cox and Katy dessert varieties with which it seduced an army of new converts to the cider cause but traditional, classic bittersweet varieties such as Vilberry, Harry Masters Jersey and Dabinett, all of which yield rather more characterful results.
Even more excitingly a new seven-acre orchard at Myrtle Farm, the Thatchers headquarters on Sandford, will trial 22 different apple varieties, including the little-used Stoke Red, White Jersey, Chisel Jersey and Tom Putt, in the hedgerow style the company has pioneered, to assess their suitability for large-scale production.
Cider-making now uses more than 50 per cent of all apples grown in Britain and makes an impressive £30 million contribution to the rural economy through orcharding. And in another startling statistic, British drinkers now consume nearly half the annual world output of cider.
Meanwhile, the world is getting thirstier for the British product. Interest is growing particularly strong in the US where cider (there styled 'hard cider' to distinguish it from mere 'cider' – apple juice), for long overshadowed after the 19th century introduction of German lagers, is very much back in fashion. This is partly as a result of it being declared a "super-food". And you thought it just tasted nice.
And further west, a new planting of perry pear trees is in blossom at another pioneering maker's hacienda, Sheppy's, in Bradford-on-Tone, near Taunton, all of them destined in time to open up another product line.
It's taken time but the public is at last catching on to perry, thanks in no small part to some impressive bottlings by, among others, Westons, whose vintage perry is one of the finest drinks to ever come out of the Welsh marches.
That we make such excellent perry as well as cider should not really be that surprising. We have the soil, we have the climate and we still have the varieties – though many only just saved from oblivion thanks to enthusiasts in Gloucestershire, formerly the heartland, tracking down and conserving them.
Perry was once far more important. Sparkling perry was widely drunk by the great and good when the Napoleonic Wars closed off the supply route for champagne – and was frequently considered superior – with Showerings nodding towards that era when they launched their "champagne perry" Babycham.
But it almost disappeared as popularity waned and the number of farmhouse producers fell. When relaunched commercially on the back of the cider revolution, it had to be marketed as "pear cider" so the punters understood.
The term – an entirely modern concoction – still makes purists cringe. But with luck the more this segment grows and the more growers like Westons and (eventually) Sheppy's fill the shelves with such distinguished products to further raise its profile, the sooner we can all revert to calling it by its proper name
Read more: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/...tory-26443640-detail/story.html#ixzz3ZMKZoPHj
It wasn't that many weeks ago that one or two of farming's so-called leaders were rubbishing suggestions the end of quotas could see milk prices dropping to as low as 10 pence a litre.
Well it's happened. Anyone calling Dairy Crest asking for the spot price last week would have been told just that: 10 pence. Take it or leave it.
As to when so ruinously low a figure was last being quoted in the marketplace there are probably few active dairy farmers who can recall the time. And at 10 pence a litre the question has to be asked whether it isn't easier just to throw the stuff away and be done with it – and to call in the auctioneers.
Anyone milking without a contract is now in serious jeopardy – and it's not all good news for those who have one, particularly if they are tied to First Milk, the only major dairy company still wholly owned by British farmers.
It's been beset by rumours and has admitted to a series of financial problems (including cash shortfalls) in recent months. But the more they are dismissed as minor issues, the more those denials have the ring of a ship's captain explaining that his vessel has been driven onto the rocks merely for the purposes of inspecting the coastal geography.
Farmers have been informed retrospectively about the April price while the forward price quoted for June by the co-op, which handles a billion litres of liquid a year, is pitched between 13 and 17 pence. Meanwhile, more than £3 million is about to be extracted from shareholders to finance "restructuring", including redundancy payments resulting from a significant swathe of job losses.
Compare those prices with the 32/34 pence being paid by Tesco and Sainsburys (neither noted for their open-wallet generosity) to their dedicated suppliers on the basis that that's what they need to turn a modest profit and the situation at First Milk looks even more dire.
Compare them to the 40-42 pence a litre industry analysts say farmers should be paid in order to finance the re-investment necessary to guarantee future supplies and the situation – which amounts in essence to farmers personally subsidising the ruinous four-pints-for-88p supermarket offer – is clearly unsustainable.
The problem is (to continue the nautical metaphor) we are sailing in entirely uncharted waters where a so-called "free" market has turned out to be a controlled market, with ruthless supermarkets setting the course and speed.
The situation is poised to deteriorate further once the effects of the spring flush kick in, but the forecast post-quotas deluge of Irish cheese imports has started, which is why some of the world's finest cheddar, the vastly superior product that comes off the farms in East Somerset, is having to be knocked out at giveaway prices.
Which is also why one bank branch alone in Somerset now has more than 50 farm businesses in special measures, many of them dairy units bumping along on 22 pence a litre.
The dairy sector is already creaking ominously. Last year one of the best clotted cream makers in Devon simply bowed to the untenable financial pressures and gave up.
Yet between them the industry's appointed leaders have done no more than stand, open-mouthed, watching the tsunami approach. In all this, the recent assertion by a West Country farming union official that the small and medium family farms are best placed to grin and bear the storm looks even more fatuous, and the view of someone woefully out of touch with reality.
Caught between low prices and the demands of the bank and having already sacrificed everything, including a modest income and decent life for the family, the small and medium farms, on the contrary, have only one direction left to head: for the exit.
Cheerier news for those of us who prefer to take our vitamin C in liquid form, with reports of significant investments in new cider orchard plantings.
And of indications that drinkers who have been lured to the sector by more palatable, easy-drinking ciders are now getting seriously interested in the more complex and challenging varieties out there.
Thatchers Cider alone has dropped more than 100,000 new trees into the soil. Not so much the Cox and Katy dessert varieties with which it seduced an army of new converts to the cider cause but traditional, classic bittersweet varieties such as Vilberry, Harry Masters Jersey and Dabinett, all of which yield rather more characterful results.
Even more excitingly a new seven-acre orchard at Myrtle Farm, the Thatchers headquarters on Sandford, will trial 22 different apple varieties, including the little-used Stoke Red, White Jersey, Chisel Jersey and Tom Putt, in the hedgerow style the company has pioneered, to assess their suitability for large-scale production.
Cider-making now uses more than 50 per cent of all apples grown in Britain and makes an impressive £30 million contribution to the rural economy through orcharding. And in another startling statistic, British drinkers now consume nearly half the annual world output of cider.
Meanwhile, the world is getting thirstier for the British product. Interest is growing particularly strong in the US where cider (there styled 'hard cider' to distinguish it from mere 'cider' – apple juice), for long overshadowed after the 19th century introduction of German lagers, is very much back in fashion. This is partly as a result of it being declared a "super-food". And you thought it just tasted nice.
And further west, a new planting of perry pear trees is in blossom at another pioneering maker's hacienda, Sheppy's, in Bradford-on-Tone, near Taunton, all of them destined in time to open up another product line.
It's taken time but the public is at last catching on to perry, thanks in no small part to some impressive bottlings by, among others, Westons, whose vintage perry is one of the finest drinks to ever come out of the Welsh marches.
That we make such excellent perry as well as cider should not really be that surprising. We have the soil, we have the climate and we still have the varieties – though many only just saved from oblivion thanks to enthusiasts in Gloucestershire, formerly the heartland, tracking down and conserving them.
Perry was once far more important. Sparkling perry was widely drunk by the great and good when the Napoleonic Wars closed off the supply route for champagne – and was frequently considered superior – with Showerings nodding towards that era when they launched their "champagne perry" Babycham.
But it almost disappeared as popularity waned and the number of farmhouse producers fell. When relaunched commercially on the back of the cider revolution, it had to be marketed as "pear cider" so the punters understood.
The term – an entirely modern concoction – still makes purists cringe. But with luck the more this segment grows and the more growers like Westons and (eventually) Sheppy's fill the shelves with such distinguished products to further raise its profile, the sooner we can all revert to calling it by its proper name
Read more: http://www.westerndailypress.co.uk/...tory-26443640-detail/story.html#ixzz3ZMKZoPHj
