Suspended from Red Tractor

Goweresque

Member
Location
North Wilts
110% the NFU co-own the RT company alongside 4/5 other farming unions,

A link to this has been posted a few times on TFF to confirm this.

Very clear if it wasn't the case then Guy Smith would correct it on TFF.

His comments are very intresting thou as he is basically saying between the lines it doesn't matter how out of touch with common sense the RT rules become farmers should just shut up accept them!


The RT ownership structure is here:

http://www.redtractor.org.uk/what-we-do/who-we-are/company-structure

As @gone up the hill says, its is partly owned by the farming unions, NFU, NFUS and UFU, plus the AHDB from the farming side, but the Dairy industry body, the British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Food and Drink are also co-owners. Actual % shares are not disclosed, which is a shame as it would tell a lot about who is calling the shots.

It seems to me that the RT is as much about the requirements of the food processing and retailing industry as it is about doing anything to help farmers. And one suspects given the general attitude of the NFU to anything is to bend over and take it, the entire thing is most likely run by the retailers and processors, and the interests of the farmers get ignored entirely. Its instructive that the Chairman has a food processing career background for example, and is a former President of the Food and Drink federation. I hardly think he's going to be going in to bat for the interests of the average farmer.
 

PSQ

Member
Arable Farmer
The RT ownership structure is here:

http://www.redtractor.org.uk/what-we-do/who-we-are/company-structure

As @gone up the hill says, its is partly owned by the farming unions, NFU, NFUS and UFU, plus the AHDB from the farming side, but the Dairy industry body, the British Retail Consortium and the Federation of Food and Drink are also co-owners. Actual % shares are not disclosed, which is a shame as it would tell a lot about who is calling the shots.

Interesting, as it looks like RT is part of Acoura, which has been bought by Lloyds Register...

http://acoura.com/sectors/agricultu...-and-fresh-produce/red-tractor-fresh-produce/
 

rob1

Member
Location
wiltshire
Camgrain has a bit of kit that can take out one bit of barley from milling wheat an at amazing speed, they sell this to millers without the millers making any checks on their delivers as they are trusted not to have any contamination, compare that to canadian milling wheat where certainly at one time was tipped in large outdoor heap for months and yet millers all round the world used to buy it quite happily
 

will l

Member
Arable Farmer
I don't know about you lot but when I inspect my bait stations as and when I go anywhere near them, I do not think I must now rush and fill my sheet in, which is more important the fact I do it or the fact I fill in a bit of paper.
I think a good start for all farmers on the scheme, would be when they are sent their survey form for the inspectors visit, you ask for a scheme survey instead, I have on a few of occasions.....As that would provide far more important feed back..... to scheme managers.
As others have said, the problem is the scheme managers, to keep their jobs secure they seem to need to dream up new rules every year.

I don't now about all of you but, doing what's needed to comply to RT is not the issue, the actual ground work like trapping, baiting, complying with spray rules, sampling loads saving seed tickets, temperature checking stored crops, are not hard to do and if they didn't require a massive paper trail that follows it all, 90% plus of farms would comply, just doing what they do anyway.

For the non farmer reading this thread, the problem with the scheme is, it's designed by non farmers, the record keeping is off the charts, and most of it has only lose connections with the end results they require, which is quality assured products,
They want you to keep records but don't even give you an upto date record book every year, so they change the rules and don't send you sheets that reflect the new changes. Corn store sheets used to only have temperature, testing requirements, we filled the sheets in, but on inspection they had added moisture testing as well, so we got a non conformity for that. Have we filled in the intergrated pest management plan..... we had never heard of it, it turned out to be a survey on the NFU website, that basicly says are you talking to your agronomist about problems, are you doing anything about your problems has this survey helped you.......again it's just a paper exercise that records what any farmer that talks to an agromamist or other farmer, over the farm gate, is already doing. It's just a way to force farmers to fill the NFU survey in, again non conformity.......
so they require paper work but don't provide it, or sometimes even online copy's.....that are easy to find, they don't go to any effort to make it easier on the farmer with modern aides like apps that send reminders or help with auto paper work logging of tasks. They don't even have an offline app that would check your logging all required info at a farm level, for a Windows PC so it's like an exam board who says we are going to check up on you and all the paper work we require but, they don't even supply an upto date copy each year by email, of even the pdf's or even a simple daily, weekly, mounthly, annually, cheat sheet. To remind you what needs to be recorded, and let's not forget you have to have a complaints register, now if you tell me how if the farm gets a complaint from a member of the public how that will effect my wheat your better than me.
Why they need to see how I dispose of my plastic waste, is of any baring on the quality of my wheat, sure it's a legal requirement to have your waste collected and have transfer notes for it, but why do farm assured need to see them.......why do I have to record every application of fertiliser when I also have to provide delivery tickets of the fertiliser, that in it's self proves that the fertiliser is safe to use on crops, so why is the extra detail needed of who when and amount for every field.

What's the most annoying is we pay to enjoy this stupid paper work. And it offers no benefit, if wheat from France is £1 cheaper they use that to squeeze uk prices down. As it's not like for like, as it's not quality assured in France, the scheme offers zero return for our time and money......they try to make it look that way by forcing non assured people to take less money for their wheat but we get no actual premium over foreign non assured wheat now, than we got before the scheme started.
It is quality assured in france because 80% goes through coops direct off the combine it is a different system,
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
It is quality assured in france because 80% goes through coops direct off the combine it is a different system,

Remember that quality assurance here is more than just the grain storage itself.

Sending it to a central store doesn't completely get away from assurance...but in @Clives case this wouldn't have happened, or at least affected him were it stored centrally.
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
Actually, that begs and interesting point! If Clives been suspended from RT because of this, if other farmers had stored grain with him in the same store (as he does for commercial customers etc) technically their RT status should/could have been called into question also.

Or going on again....GTAS/TASCC. If RT kick up a fuss you'd expect them to get involved as RT's big brother and ask what's going on....is this something we need worry about?

Shows how crazy the whole job is.
 

bobk

Member
Location
stafford
Actually, that begs and interesting point! If Clives been suspended from RT because of this, if other farmers had stored grain with him in the same store (as he does for commercial customers etc) technically their RT status should/could have been called into question also.

Or going in again....GTAS/TASCC.

Shows how crazy the whole job is.

The conspiracy theorists among us would assume clive has been targeted .
 

crazy_bull

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Huntingdon
Imo the punishment is disproportionate to the supposed crime.
It is a temporary suspension, they happen fairly frequently for rat/mouse droppings, seed wheat contamination, etc

Often the suspension is reversed within a day or two, it is to prevent the 'offending' farmer simply asking his merchant to switch homes and carry on loading.

Is the suspension inconvenient, yes. Is it the end of the world, no. It is simply a case of the procedure working. there is no need to lie to anyone, just inform them of your already robust pest control measures and that you will ensure that when sweeping up the shed at the end of the year you are more diligent with what goes in the lorry.

C B
 

bobk

Member
Location
stafford
It is a temporary suspension, they happen fairly frequently for rat/mouse droppings, seed wheat contamination, etc

Often the suspension is reversed within a day or two, it is to prevent the 'offending' farmer simply asking his merchant to switch homes and carry on loading.

Is the suspension inconvenient, yes. Is it the end of the world, no. It is simply a case of the procedure working. there is no need to lie to anyone, just inform them of your already robust pest control measures and that you will ensure that when sweeping up the shed at the end of the year you are more diligent with what goes in the lorry.

C B

Thanks for the clarification , maybe clive would be better served sending his grain in to central storage . :D
 

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
Also how are RT aware of members rejected loads , ffs it would take a whole company to track that.... and the dead weight cattle that get condemned at slaughter.

Red Tractor are meant to be informed of failures on delivery.
One of the "supposed " benefits ?? of the E Grain Passport system was to automate this process ............ that would see even more people suspended. :banghead:

Its all out of control but the reality is there is no way any of us can defend delivering mouse sh*t in a load of milling wheat. I can understand why @Clive is upset but if he bought a granary loaf for breakfast with his wife and children and found a mouse turd on the top i'm sure he would become somewhat exercised about it :whistle:

Perhaps if, in the real world, the reality is that it is all but impossible to keep mice out of a grain store perhaps the onus should be on the miller to clean grain prior to milling. It's not like its a new problem, it's been a potential issue ever since grain was stored and delivered to millers.
 

bobk

Member
Location
stafford
Red Tractor are meant to be informed of failures on delivery.
One of the "supposed " benefits ?? of the E Grain Passport system was to automate this process ............ that would see even more people suspended. :banghead:

Its all out of control but the reality is there is no way any of us can defend delivering mouse sh*t in a load of milling wheat. I can understand why @Clive is upset but if he bought a granary loaf for breakfast with his wife and children and found a mouse turd on the top i'm sure he would become somewhat exercised about it :whistle:

Perhaps if, in the real world, the reality is that it is all but impossible to keep mice out of a grain store perhaps the onus should be on the miller to clean grain prior to milling. It's not like its a new problem, it's been a potential issue ever since grain was stored and delivered to millers.

Totally agree , what RT don't understand is we're the first point of production not the last ... do they know wheat is grown in open countryside ?
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
The long and short of it is that at present we can't do a thing about RT and the red tape that comes with it.

I have learned it's better to roll with it than rail against it, even though a lot of it is very tiresome.

Short of grinding your own wheat and selling your own loaves I can't see a way round it. Even then you'd be inspected by FSA etc.

I do think the finding of one mouse turd is a bit much though. If the load smelt of mouse pee and was visibly contaminated with turds then maybe a case for rejection.

There used to a thing called discretion.
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
Red Tractor are meant to be informed of failures on delivery.
One of the "supposed " benefits ?? of the E Grain Passport system was to automate this process ............ that would see even more people suspended. :banghead:

On that basis, surely trading standards etc. should be informed? or environmental health?!

The market should be able to self regulate. If a farmer loads copious amounts of mouse poo on a lorry, and kept getting rejections, then the grain merchant would likely stop dealing with them.

@crazy_bull is probably right that it's just an admin thing that works its way through the system and joined up thinking would knock it into touch.
 

S J H

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Bedfordshire
you make some very good points.....the only slight weakness was why were 'grain reps' buying off these 'shithole farms' ?....surely they should've walked away?....why take a 'stick' to the rest of us?

i think to much emphasis is put on paperwork...when you visit a farm you generally get an idea of how it is

But not every farm can be inspected by the same person, a tidy place in my eyes might look like a hellhole to someone else.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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