‘My barley can pay the wages for 84 nurses’

[llamedos]

Richard Wright, of RG Wright and Sons in Hardley, near Loddon, won the 2014 Ian MacNicol Memorial Trophy in recognition of the conservation work carried out at Chestnut Farm, a third generation family farm in the Yare valley.

During a celebratory farm walk organised by the Norfolk branch of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), Mr Wright said he treated conservation as any other commercial crop on his land, backed by government subsidies and Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) payments.

But he said he was often asked whether public money should be better spent on services like the NHS – so he had calculated the value of his output to the public purse.

“I am going to do this how the Dutch do it, to show you how we undersell something in this country,” he said. “We grow 85 hectares of spring barley and we supply a distillery in the Isle of Skye. The basic payment for that this year was £6,970. If you ask the public in this country what that money should be spent on, they say we should employ more nurses. Well, that money would employ one nurse for two months.

FWAG farm walk, June 2015, RG Wright and Sons, Hardley
“But our malting barley will produce 240 tonnes of grain, which will make 264,000 bottles of malt whisky. At an average retail price of £24 for a bottle of single malt that would be £6.336m, and at 60pc that would be £3.8m in tax revenue for the government, enough to employ 84 nurses full-time.

“We don’t do enough to tell people the value of farming to the economy, but in places like Holland, everybody knows it.”

The Wright family’s 179ha farm is divided between arable crops on its upper fields, growing wheat, malting barley and sugar beet, while a 110-head beef finisher herd is grazed on grass in the lowland meadows.

The conservation elements – including a carefully-managed network of buffer strips, hedgerows, wildflower margins, and beetle banks – have been underpinned by an HLS agreement for the last three years.

“We treat conservation as a crop and, to be honest, it is financially very beneficial to us,” said Mr Wright. “But I would also say the public perception at the farm is totally changed since we started these schemes. There are people who stop me and ask who is responsible for those flowers. They really like it. A guy at the other end of the village keeps bees and he brings me honey now.

“It is an image change and it means people will work with me now, because they know what we are doing and they know the benefits of it.”

Richard Wright’s calculations:

85 hectares of spring barley

=240 tonnes of grain

=264,000 bottles of malt whisky

=£6.3m in retail sales

=£3.8m in tax revenue

=84 nurses’ salary

Credit http://www.edp24.co.uk/business/far..._the_economic_case_for_agriculture_1_4119776?

 

[An Gof]

85 Ha for 240T of grain?

Either someone has their figures wrong or it's a pretty poor yield.

 

[wdah/him]

perhaps not all makes the grade for malt

 

[Big Al]

His calculations are a bit ideological to say the least. To attribute 100% of the duty payable on the retail price of a highly processed product to the farm that produced the raw material it is just plain daft. The person actually forking out £24 a bottle for the stuff would have a much better claim for paying the duty.
Perhaps 60% of the farm gate price of the barley or £28800 at £200 a tonne might be reasonable. So 0.6 of a nurse.

 

[Sheep]

His calculations are ridiculous.

 

[GreenerGrass]

Claims he is getting BPS £6,970 for 85 hectares - so £82/hectare. He needs a calculator, stopped reading after that but from the sounds of posts above he just went further off the wall. If you are going to try and make a point at least get the facts right.

 

[B'o'B]

It all seems to be out by a factor of 2.471. I wonder what could explain that?

 

[buffalo_soldier]

Drinking too much of his end product probably.

 

[An Gof]

It all seems to be out by a factor of 2.471. I wonder what could explain that?

Lazy reporter?

 

[sleepy]

His sfp would be more like 16k, and if he didn't produce the barley we could just buy it from some other country and the government would still get all the alcohol duty.

Stupid plonker

 

[Will Blackburn]

If he had 85ha of Spring Barley he would be getting a reduced payment.

 

[B'o'B]

His sfp would be more like 16k, and if he didn't produce the barley we could just buy it from some other country and the government would still get all the alcohol duty.

Stupid plonker

I'm guessing he grows 85 Acres of barley. While the calculation and conclusion are nonsense is it not the case that anti farming lobbies use the same kind of methodology to promote their aims? They know it's wrong, we know it's wrong but millions of the pubic read the headlines and it builds a narrative.

 

[Cowcalf]

as I understand it one ton of barley produces 410 litres of alcohol so to get to his figures it must be getting cut with something else

 

[B'o'B]

as I understand it one ton of barley produces 410 litres of alcohol so to get to his figures it must be getting cut with something else

No he doesn't say how big the bottles are that its being sold in. It seem he might be selling it in 372ml bottles. The canny man!

 

[kernowcluck]

Even the nurse numbers are way out. On an average nurses wage £3. 8 million would pay for 152 nurses. If only we were paid the amount in his calculations I could have retired years ago.

 

[lazy farmer]

ah nothng like a bit of farmer bashing. well done

 

[Clive]

I suspect who ever reported this got Ha and Ac mixed up

lazy journalist ? surely not !

 

[spin cycle]

i'm pretty sure it said 85ac in the original EDP article?....don't know about the maths but he does have kinda a point?....for instance you could take the sfp away from that 85ac and spend it on public services...net value £6 1/2k....but if that money encourages a crop to be grown/transported/processed...turned into a product thats sold and is taxed along the way it might provide way more than that?...as well as providing other employment?

 

[cudota]

Where do you get a farmers calculator from........ i can never get my figures to add up like many farmers

 

[Frodo]

My guess is he was talking slightly in jest, and of course the figures are speculative. It does maybe make you think.