Another reason to get out of RT, testing sprayers every year instead of three, farm inspectors telling you how to run and present your own farm etc.Can the next immediate target please be to get RT to make an exception and let us use unprotected urea at least until the end of April as a one off derogation? It’s not like it’s been exceptionally wet is it? As per FW defra insist they won’t help us, but surely since defra have given (how that was allowed I’ll never know) the policing of it to RT we can get them to give the derogation? Sorry @Grass And Grain another little job for you but it’s really getting rather urgent……
Also it’s not like most of the imported cereals will have used unprotected urea all through their growth
Precisely. They force their monetary gain agendas on us via RT which equates to ever decreasing farmer income and ever increasing workload.Both GFC and standalone RT are barriers to market access and are deliberate control of farmers imho, and NFU, DEFRA, AIC mills, flour millers etc. use it to control us. If any of those organisations want something from us they put it in the "voluntary" Red Tractor, but then make RT compulsory of we want to supply to those mills.
NRoSO = theoretically voluntary, but they've made it mandatory through RT.
DEFRA urea policy, it's not the law, but DEFRA/NFU/RT have basically made it mandatory for any sizeable cereal growers
because they know we have to be RT assured.
Gov also use RT as a free inspection service, and the farmer pays
Mills didn't think 36 mth sprayer testing was good enough, and they could get 12 mth for free using RT.
I recon even DEFRA were pushing for the GFC because they could get 5% environmental habitat, and low behold that would have meant more uptake of SFI and more net zero boxes ticked.
Thankfully NFU probably thought they'd lose even more members if GFC went ahead, so they put the NFU's future before the GFC. Many people commented the only way to get change was to hurt these organisations in their wallets. It worked. NFU either had to end the GFC, or end of the NFU was looming imho.
Everything which was going to be wrong with the GFC (in a really dramatic way), is also wrong with RT's core standards. Lots of it is unnecessary claptrap, we have to pay to join, we have to pay to do the things they tell us, they won't let us sell our produce unless we're in RT, and then they add in any new rules they're wanting us to follow....
....urea policing is a pertinent example, and was the first emissions reductions action they got us to do through RT. And farmers have had to carry the cost of it, whilst the large processors and retailers got the free emissions reduction.
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