Red Tractor Stickers... 19th century pisstake

Deranged peasant · Mar 30, 2020

When selling grain tell the buyer there will be no sticker.
If they insist tell them they can’t buy it.
Everyone does this for a couple of weeks it’s finished.
But the weakest seller would be central storage so there’s no escape.
It’s ridiculous the next load to yours can be imported, none of this nonsense, just has to meet the spec

Clive · Mar 30, 2020

you all need to be emailing them right now and letting them know what you think !

[email protected]. is the email address that keeps sending me “helpful” updates about how the scheme is still running - i suggest the 30,000 of you that read this forum daily ALL send her an email ?

Happy · Mar 30, 2020

Stickers?
We haven’t needed stickers on our passports up here for well over a decade now. Each passport already has your assurance number pre printed on it.

Would think think following this corona virus that electronic passports a certainty now.
Certainly wasn’t comfortable last week handing the lorry drivers passports I’d just filled out knowing they then had to complete their bit of it before handing it over at end destination.

Barleymow · Mar 31, 2020

The idiots sent me 2 sheets of stickers last year 1 only use half a sheet a year

Northeastfarmer · Mar 31, 2020

Brisel said:
Ensus run on imported maize too. No grain passports with that

Same as Tesco importing meat from every corner of the globe unassured but won’t take yours unless it is FA then when they do the give you a sh!t price

ollie989898 · Mar 31, 2020

Now is the perfect opportunity to dump the red tractor scheme en masse. Do it.

Spear · Mar 31, 2020

I’ve had to chase rt for stickers every year for last 3 yrs. They never send out new ones despite saying they have.
Same phone conversation every time.
“Stickers are sent out automatically, you would have received them! (Checks on system) ...Oh that’s strange...we’ll get some out to you straight away”

teslacoils · Mar 31, 2020

My stickers are dated to Feb 2020. My renewal was paid a while ago. My certificate says to 2021. My inspection is usually in June after hassling them.

Wombat · Mar 31, 2020

We take every load straight in a tractor and trailer to the local store and the passports and stickers are pain

Clive · Mar 31, 2020

ollie989898 said:
Now is the perfect opportunity to dump the red tractor scheme en masse. Do it.

^^^^^ this !

however I’m not sure it needs dumping, we need assurance, just not the meaninglessness joke of a system we have right now

What’s required is a ground up rebuild to make it do what it should have been doing from the start ........ adding value to our produce and being meaningful to consumers

ollie989898 · Mar 31, 2020

Clive said:
^^^^^ this !

however I’m not sure it needs dumping, we need assurance, just not the meaninglessness joke of a system we have right now

What’s required is a ground up rebuild to make it do what it should have been doing from the start ........ adding value to our produce and being meaningful to consumers

Some sectors already have more meaningful (and often more onerous) assurance schemes for which a premium is paid. There is no need for a generic scheme on top. Grain is the last thing assurance should be needed for as nobody gives a fudge about the stuff in the real world. Maybe top end buyers making flour would run their own scheme.

teslacoils · Mar 31, 2020

We pay money to access a scheme that lets us sell grain to mills who, when the price rises, have no problem importing from countries with no / poor assurance, let alone use maize of potentially questionable GM status.

I think we know what Alan sugar would say.

Donkey Oaty · Mar 31, 2020

Ensus! It's not even going into the food chain. Where is the logic?

ollie989898 · Mar 31, 2020

Farms already have to comply with:

HSE legislation.
EA legislation.
Usual business legislation (public liability, employee liability etc).
Trading standards- includes animal welfare and vet med requirements.
Fire regulations.

On top of and supplementary to this are things like BCMS.

I think anyone in the industry would agree that these listed above are quite necessary but hat agriculture does get given a fair rein in these things to some extent.

What I object to is something on top of this which is apparently mandatory and delivers absolutely no value for money for either the consumer, processor or farmer.

IF a farmer wants to supply Waitrose pork or milk, I have no doubt he must jump through an additional scheme and subsequent hoops but that is his choice and it is a commercial decision as well- the premium on offer must surely offset the additional costs incurred. I understand that freedom foods/RSCPA or whatever they are termed are much more onerous than the above and are managed by Waitrose themselves. I therefore see no reason for red tractor to be involved. It is a defunct and pointless idea that should be binned immediately.

David. · Mar 31, 2020

It is all very well people who can justify/afford all the remote monitoring gear and fancy infrastructure that goes with commercial stores demanding a scheme to suit their rarified circumstances.
However; for the rest of us, Red Tractor (albeit with the pedantic bòllox like the OPs circumstances trimmed a bit) provides one annual check, at a mutually acceptable time, that all the above agencies might otherwise feel obliged to perform, unannounced, on a few occasions per year. It is called earned recognition.
The scheme is not perfect, NFU as a main shareholder in RT should be stronger in demanding that the likes of Ensus are unable to take the pìss so blatantly as they and others obviously are.
But it is a broad scheme that most people who are doing the job about right, can comply with.
On that basis I'm still in.
Most of the RT members experiencing pedantic and obstructive assessors seem to be using CMI/NSF, it seems to me. That would be a good place to start. As far as I know you can still choose who you pay your membership to, and so far with SAI, I have yet to have an unreasonable assessor turn up (for balance, they had one star; a chippy ex "agronomist", who is now gone) and they have NEVER dictated when they were coming either, always by mutual arrangement. Also, soon as membership is renewed by paying the fees, the next years stickers come through without issue.
Be careful what you wish for; the type of scheme that Clive has advocated in the past, with real time recording etc, doesn't sound half as user friendly, to me as a dirt under the fingernails farmer, as what we have now.

teslacoils · Mar 31, 2020

I don't find anything about it onerous. I just don't see why fussy mills suddenly get unfussy when 10000t of Ukrainian stuff turns up, or 2500t of USA maize.

Brisel · Mar 31, 2020

Donkey Oaty said:
Ensus! It's not even going into the food chain. Where is the logic?

The byproduct does go into the animal food chain. With all the GM imported rubbish that's cheaper.

teslacoils said:
I don't find anything about it onerous. I just don't see why fussy mills suddenly get unfussy when 10000t of Ukrainian stuff turns up, or 2500t of USA maize.

It's amazing what a few quid per tonne difference does to "standards," isn't it?

teslacoils · Mar 31, 2020

Brisel said:
It's amazing what a few quid per tonne difference does to "standards," isn't it?

Yup. I wonder how many non assured oats make it into human consumption when supply is tight.

chickens and wheat · Mar 31, 2020

So yesterday I Waited all afternoon for a wheat lorry, apparently stuck at ensus due to having a stickerless passport.
he arrived at 6:30 I loaded him, last load out of shed so took a bit longer

Banana Bar · Mar 31, 2020

Clive said:
you all need to be emailing them right now and letting them know what you think !

[email protected]. is the email address that keeps sending me “helpful” updates about how the scheme is still running - i suggest the 30,000 of you that read this forum daily ALL send her an email ?

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Red Tractor Stickers... 19th century pisstake

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100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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