Big announcement tonight!

DrWazzock · Jan 16, 2020

Back in 1990 we are all combinables. Plough and power system over entire farm. Soils worked to death if I'm honest.
Then we grassed half of it down. Back into sheep after a break of 15 years.
Then we adopted direct drilling wherever possible. Even our beet land isn't ploughed.
I reckon we have halved diesel usage, and we have halved ammonium nitrate purchases since 1990.
The soil is healthier, there is more insect and wildlife than ever before without any specific environmental schemes. We have a small wood anyway that isn't in any scheme amounting to 5 % of our area which we claim nothing for and isn't registered for BPS. We are happy to leave it that way. It's a nice feature.

Without great palaver, or lashings of public money we have probably halved our carbon emissions since 1990 as have many others including large estates as well as smaller units.

I really don't think we have done too badly without any prescription at all from central government, just a basic support payment that we can use as best we fit for greatest cost benefit.

Why then does it all need to be thrown in the air and round we go again in to uncertainty, muddle and inefficient bureaucracy.

Scribus · Jan 16, 2020

DrWazzock said:
Back in 1990 we are all combinables. Plough and power system over entire farm. Soils worked to death if I'm honest.
Then we grassed half of it down. Back into sheep after a break of 15 years.
Then we adopted direct drilling wherever possible. Even our beet land isn't ploughed.
I reckon we have halved diesel usage, and we have halved ammonium nitrate purchases since 1990.
The soil is healthier, there is more insect and wildlife than ever before without any specific environmental schemes. We have a small wood anyway that isn't in any scheme amounting to 5 % of our area which we claim nothing for and isn't registered for BPS. We are happy to leave it that way. It's a nice feature.

Without great palaver, or lashings of public money we have probably halved our carbon emissions since 1990 as have many others including large estates as well as smaller units.

I really don't think we have done too badly without any prescription at all from central government, just a basic support payment that we can use as best we fit for greatest cost benefit.

Why then does it all need to be thrown in the air and round we go again in to uncertainty, muddle and inefficient bureaucracy.

Because bureaucracy has to keep itself in a job and the government has to be seen to be doing something.

Shughie McFee · Jan 16, 2020

Brisel said:
Which bit didn't work? Without BPS, rural employment would be far less if we'd been thrown to market forces. Are you the offspring of a farmer? No subs and you'd be living in a town right now, looking at jobs in McDonalds. Please explain how environmental stewardship doesn't work. Plenty of innovative organic farmers like John Pawsey are making a good living out of hard work and seeing an opportunity. Look him up and visit his farm or those belonging to other entrepreneurs.

Plenty of successful rural businesses adding value to everything from wool to farm gyms to artisan foods. If you want to add value to wheat, stop just growing a generic commodity on price alone and turn it into whisky, beer, sourdough bread, microwavable pocket warmers etc.

I suggest you look up what regenerative agriculture actually is - read Dirt To Soil by Gabe Brown for a start. Just read books - they might give you ideas of your own instead of relying on others to provide them for you. Please start with one that teaches you spelling, punctuation and where to use capital letters in a sentence. You should try hard work and seizing opportunities, instead of moaning that you just see the same old clichés. The sum of work and opportunity is something called "luck" that happens to successful people. Otherwise, do something else!

20 years organic, man and boy. what a rollercoaster. prices pegged to conventional prices, recession and oversupply hits organic hard. dairy probably the exception, with a constant market. how many pioneers from the 1970's / 80's still doing it ? i'd estimate less than 5%.

enviro schemes.... https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index...eived-environmental-payments-for-2019.306298/

Bps.... helped big farmers get bigger, that's about it.

gabe brown's book....f**king rubbish.

capitol letters....this is a farming forum, not o-level english exam.

Brisel · Jan 16, 2020

Shughie McFee said:
20 years organic, man and boy. what a rollercoaster. prices pegged to conventional prices, recession and oversupply hits organic hard. dairy probably the exception, with a constant market. how many pioneers from the 1970's / 80's still doing it ? i'd estimate less than 5%.

enviro schemes.... https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index...eived-environmental-payments-for-2019.306298/

Bps.... helped big farmers get bigger, that's about it.

gabe brown's book....fudgeing rubbish.

capitol letters....this is a farming forum, not o-level english exam.

So, it's all rubbish. It's time for you to do something else. Something different that escapes the current system of producing commodities with ever decreasing margins whilst breaking free of the shackles of chasing grants and other subsidies. Innovate to supply a demand the market might not yet know it needs or at least explore a niche in an existing market. Just stop whingeing about the current state of farming and do something about it.

At least turn the spelling checker on!

DrWazzock · Jan 16, 2020

But nobody really knows what to do as far as I can see.

Plant trees to lock up carbon, but burning them releases it again. This creates particulates emmsions and smog. So what do we do, leave the trees there for a million years in a swamp to turn back into coal? Then where do we get renewable biomass energy from without releasing carbon? It's a contradiction.

Rewild the land means crops and livestock on less land so more intensive and some people don't like that from a welfare and wildlife habitat perspective.
Extensive farming with animals kept for longer means more carbon used and methane per kg meat but more extensive systems tend to use more grassland which can sequester carbon. Slightly contradictory.

Use electric vehicles but these involve the inefficiency of remotely generated power by what? Nuclear, carbon, solar or wind. Try putting a windmill up round here and you will be pilloried for spoiling the landscape which is part of the amity value of the area so they say, and as I type megawatts of wind lower goes to waste.

Best for the government to leave it all alone in my opinion. Maybe make a few encouraging noises but avoid chucking taxpayers money at stuff that could be seen to be doing more damage than good in a decades time.

DrWazzock · Jan 16, 2020

Just phase the existing subs out over twenty years. Gives everybody enough time to change.
Abandoned land will rewild itself without needing taxpayers money.

And just let us get on, without the hangers on.

DrWazzock · Jan 16, 2020

And mark my words, more government money will just feed into land price and input cost inflation.

Shughie McFee · Jan 16, 2020

Brisel said:
So, it's all rubbish. It's time for you to do something else. Something different that escapes the current system of producing commodities with ever decreasing margins whilst breaking free of the shackles of chasing grants and other subsidies. Innovate to supply a demand the market might not yet know it needs or at least explore a niche in an existing market. Just stop whingeing about the current state of farming and do something about it.

At least turn the spelling checker on!

that's kind of what i'm saying. a new era. no living in the past with bps, silly eviro schemes, etc, etc.
and if you want to read books, read ones by peeps who've actually done something on a farm. charlie flindt for example.

Tubbylew · Jan 16, 2020

DrWazzock said:
I look at our patch here, 200 acres mixed farm, presently 40% grass with breeding ewes and sometimes cattle. The rest oilseed rape, wheat, barley sugar beet.
All underdrained but coming to end if the systems life.

So what's the future hold?
Maybe there will be a grant to redrain it as drained land holds back more water by soaking it up in a wet time and releasing slowly.
Or maybe they will want us to stop farming it and leave it as semi flooded heathland. How do we re establish all the Heath land plants, do we get a few quid per plant, write reports, have it inspected, open access, input from the parish council as to what they want to see?
Do we plant woodland then find we can't use it in the log burner because the emissions are are too high so we are stuck with a strictly controlled wood forever, with income if any at the whim of successive governments.
Do we get a grant to buy a direct drill to reduce diesel usage and conserve soil carbon, but wait a minute we have been doing that for a decade now where we can.
Sometimes we have to plough where trailers have left ruts after beet, so what then , fill in a form to gain an exemption for inverting the soil and get DEFRA approval. Root crops always leave a bit of mess, but they are essential right? Or not?
Will they want us to keep sheep and if not what do we do with the grass and bang goes the OM it builds and the low chemical usage on the grass compared to combinables and all the insect life it encourages.

It will be a burgers muddle if you ask me. An almighty cluster feck. Trying to prescribe an all singing and dancing carbon capturing habitat creating vegan pleasing system will end up contradicting itself and disappearing up its own rear end, but that never stopped them before did it.

Seems like nationalisation by the back door for those who take the shilling, i've never received subs directly,although my father has, as his predessesors did, (although a good part of my hedgelaying income would come from CAP money) I can't help feeling like the ladder is being pulled up on my generation (35yr old) of farmers somewhat, although i don't bellive in subsidies generally, but can't see joe public paying a fair price for food! More uncertainty in an uncertain world not very inspiring to all the bright young things they'll need to find in the next 15 to 20 years.

som farmer · Jan 16, 2020

I think most farmers would agree, the whole job has got to complex, ending up with a lot of farmers chasing their own tails, and not really going forward. Also the majority(?) of farmers, have spent most of their lives with CAP. But Brexit will open a new direction for UK farming, and no-one really knows what direction it will go in, BUT change is coming, and we can only hope it will be farmer friendly, initial thoughts show that it will be focussed on the environment, and again most farmers care about their farms, and if we are going to be actually paid for, things like, hedge planting, woodlands, less intensive farming systems, soil structure, fantastic. Because, for a lot of farms, it isn't much fun at the moment ! Certainly for us, the future is going to be, max out, on any schemes etc going, and run our dairy at the lowest cost system we can. We have a mid-tier application in, which, we hope, will pay us to plant 900 meters of new hedges , and double fence it, plus yard concrete etc, £32,000 worth, cost out the materials, there is a good chunk of money left, which will easily cover our labour costs, whats wrong with that ?

DrWazzock · Jan 16, 2020

Being realistic the only things I can see making much difference to carbon emissions without a complex bureaucratic nightmare are woodland schemes and more renewable energy.

Both of these measures are already covered by existing legislation and schemes though more could be released for them and planning rules could be relaxed. That's about it really.

All the rest is half baked hogwash.

ollie989898 · Jan 16, 2020

I wish the words 'carbon' and 'sustainable' were banned. They are heavily over-used but poorly understood.

Moonbat might think planting trees all over the shop is somehow helpful but they die and release carbon eventually, and wholescale afforestation can be very damaging environmentally if it is not carried out carefully.

Government policy is all over the place. In some areas they are actively seeking to flood land to create wetlands. Didn't someone point out that wetlands release methane by the ship-load?

The big question policy makers need to ask is do you want a home-grown food supply or not.

DrWazzock · Jan 16, 2020

som farmer said:
I think most farmers would agree, the whole job has got to complex, ending up with a lot of farmers chasing their own tails, and not really going forward. Also the majority(?) of farmers, have spent most of their lives with CAP. But Brexit will open a new direction for UK farming, and no-one really knows what direction it will go in, BUT change is coming, and we can only hope it will be farmer friendly, initial thoughts show that it will be focussed on the environment, and again most farmers care about their farms, and if we are going to be actually paid for, things like, hedge planting, woodlands, less intensive farming systems, soil structure, fantastic. Because, for a lot of farms, it isn't much fun at the moment ! Certainly for us, the future is going to be, max out, on any schemes etc going, and run our dairy at the lowest cost system we can. We have a mid-tier application in, which, we hope, will pay us to plant 900 meters of new hedges , and double fence it, plus yard concrete etc, £32,000 worth, cost out the materials, there is a good chunk of money left, which will easily cover our labour costs, whats wrong with that ?

Nothing. So why do they need to change the system?

Brisel · Jan 16, 2020

Shughie McFee said:
that's kind of what i'm saying. a new era. no living in the past with bps, silly eviro schemes, etc, etc.
and if you want to read books, read ones by peeps who've actually done something on a farm. charlie flindt for example.

I wouldn't dismiss anything automatically. We certainly need to adapt and whilst my employer wants to pursue the environmental route, it's not going to pay the rent. He has already got diversification on the estate, so we're not unprepared for a drop in farm profit. To really go wild and start making a fortune from discovering the next widget the world wants to buy, I'll need to quit and start afresh. In the meantime while I wait for the dust to settle and the blood to be cleaned from the carpet of UK agriculture, I'll keep on with my stewardship schemes and attempts at regenerative agriculture. "The second mouse gets the cheese"

As for books, I'd read ones by very successful people. I don't know Charlie Flindt well enough to know what he's done with his farm, though he is making use of his significant talent with words in terms of his journalism. Really successful people buy farms to blow their fortunes on!

ollie989898 · Jan 16, 2020

David. said:
How bad will you all feel, when she announces the indefinite continuation if BPS, and free beer on Sundays?

If there is free beer what need is there of BPS?

Tubbylew · Jan 16, 2020

som farmer said:
I think most farmers would agree, the whole job has got to complex, ending up with a lot of farmers chasing their own tails, and not really going forward. Also the majority(?) of farmers, have spent most of their lives with CAP. But Brexit will open a new direction for UK farming, and no-one really knows what direction it will go in, BUT change is coming, and we can only hope it will be farmer friendly, initial thoughts show that it will be focussed on the environment, and again most farmers care about their farms, and if we are going to be actually paid for, things like, hedge planting, woodlands, less intensive farming systems, soil structure, fantastic. Because, for a lot of farms, it isn't much fun at the moment ! Certainly for us, the future is going to be, max out, on any schemes etc going, and run our dairy at the lowest cost system we can. We have a mid-tier application in, which, we hope, will pay us to plant 900 meters of new hedges , and double fence it, plus yard concrete etc, £32,000 worth, cost out the materials, there is a good chunk of money left, which will easily cover our labour costs, whats wrong with that ?

The thing is, yes the money is there to do the work, but is there anything left for your buggering about, after everyone else has been paid, it used to be the cows paid to keep the farm in good nick and gave the farmer a profit to live on, now it seems that farming is relying on grants to maintain the infastructure, might just as well give them the farm and be employed by them to look after it, at least you'd have 30k and 28 days holiday, sick pay etc.

steveR · Jan 16, 2020

Hindsight said:
The Bill will allow us to move away from the EU’s bureaucratic Common Agricultural Policy, to our own unique UK bureaucratic UK Agricultural Policy.

And we know where the REAL experts in bureaucratic bullshite reside, and it ain't over La Manche...

neilo · Jan 16, 2020

DrWazzock said:
Back in 1990 we are all combinables. Plough and power system over entire farm. Soils worked to death if I'm honest.
Then we grassed half of it down. Back into sheep after a break of 15 years.
Then we adopted direct drilling wherever possible. Even our beet land isn't ploughed.
I reckon we have halved diesel usage, and we have halved ammonium nitrate purchases since 1990.
The soil is healthier, there is more insect and wildlife than ever before without any specific environmental schemes. We have a small wood anyway that isn't in any scheme amounting to 5 % of our area which we claim nothing for and isn't registered for BPS. We are happy to leave it that way. It's a nice feature.

Without great palaver, or lashings of public money we have probably halved our carbon emissions since 1990 as have many others including large estates as well as smaller units.

I really don't think we have done too badly without any prescription at all from central government, just a basic support payment that we can use as best we fit for greatest cost benefit.

Why then does it all need to be thrown in the air and round we go again in to uncertainty, muddle and inefficient bureaucracy.

You have embraced a move to less tillage, to reduced N ferts and back/forward to mixed farming and a sensible rotation with OM building grass. You are a poster boy for the new regime.

The new regime is because so many have not, still ploughing & powerharrowing everything, every year, and wall to wall cereals across huge prairie like fields.

Cab-over Pete · Jan 16, 2020

Will you all still need lime?

Hindsight · Jan 16, 2020

Cab-over Pete said:
Will you all still need lime?

Think I saw specific reference in the Bill to a return of the Agricultural Lime Schemes, seeing as leaving the EU is a return to the future, but to bring things upto date a top up payment if applied using a triaxle low ground pressure vehicle.

Big announcement tonight!

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Up to 25%

25-50%

50-75%

75-100%

100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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