AHDB can feck right off.

[Hampton]

Interestingly in the same period in our area (boulder clay soil) we were the only ones able to drill because we had loads of thick cover crops which kept the drill running clean and the tractor on the surface. We consistently chipped on through October getting an extra 250ha of wheat in the ground and fully drilled up. It was quite a revelation although the slugs were a worry for a while and of course there was many comments about what a mess it looked. Resultant yield 9.96t/ha over CS weighbridge. Many ended up broadcasting, slubbing things into slop and trying to move soil to get things in on ploughed and cultivated ground end result average crops and loads of compaction visible all year that needed removing.
I’m not arguing for or against anything, but we took a huge risk, which came with a lot of stick and it ended up being an absolutely huge win for both our own learning and experience cementing confidence in the system for us and our clients and most importantly our wallets. It was a revelation.
so in contrary to your thoughts we have widened the drilling window significantly, with much less cost and minimal hangover into the next season which costs even more. It is possible.

It’s all relative though.
What you call wet may not have been wet compared to what we call wet.
3 summers ago (the one with the drought) I went to see a mate who farms in Devon. He had invested in electric fence for mob grazing but was saying he was struggling with it a bit that year due to having no grass.
I looked at the floor, grass was 6 inches high and green. I said “come up to Shropshire and see no grass, our fields are scorched brown”

 

[Chris F]

It’s only seems to be divisive to you, who seems to have a vendetta about this successful ad campaign for some reason.

The simple message that comes over from that ad is that UK beef is produced in a more sustainable manner than most from elsewhere, that we feed little soya (the anti-meat lot regularly try to claim we use lots) and that the industry is seeking to reduce it’s use further.
Good on ‘em.

I do agree - to the lay person this is aimed at, it gets across that message. This is against the other agenda that is being thrust upon them in the media generally.

 

[SteveHants]

It’s only seems to be divisive to you, who seems to have a vendetta about this successful ad campaign for some reason.

The simple message that comes over from that ad is that UK beef is produced in a more sustainable manner than most from elsewhere, that we feed little soya (the anti-meat lot regularly try to claim we use lots) and that the industry is seeking to reduce it’s use further.
Good on ‘em.

Quite - if soymeal has negative connotations to the public, who we are marketing to, we can just stop using it. We don't need to, all farmed species were around before we'd even heard of soy over here, so they are perfectly capable of being grown without it (trickier in Pig and Poultry, but I see no reason why it can't be done), rather than shouting back to our customers: "No, you are wrong, soymeal is great and we are gonna keep on using it, so f**k you"

 

[milkloss]

Quite - if soymeal has negative connotations to the public, who we are marketing to, we can just stop using it. We don't need to, all farmed species were around before we'd even heard of soy over here, so they are perfectly capable of being grown without it (trickier in Pig and Poultry, but I see no reason why it can't be done), rather than shouting back to our customers: "No, you are wrong, soymeal is great and we are gonna keep on using it, so f**k you"

Are the public prepared to pay for cattle that have been grown slower and/or less efficiently? Probably not, I guess meat prices are most likely at their limit in the shops. All well and good wanting stuff but we need to be clear they are going to have to pay for it.

 

[SteveHants]

Are the public prepared to pay for cattle that have been grown slower and/or less efficiently? Probably not, I guess meat prices are most likely at their limit in the shops. All well and good wanting stuff but we need to clear clear they are going to have to pay for it.

They already are in part - Work has a milk contract for M&S and no soy in feed is a stipulation of that.

I also don't agree that the cattle have to be grown more slowly or less efficiently - If we can selectively breed a cow that produces 10000 litres of milk per lactation, I don't see why it'd be that hard to breed one that converts forage more effectively. Also, we don't necessarily need soy, so its two pronged, could use pea protein or something else.....

 

[delilah]

We don't use much but any soya we use comes from protected sources.

You can't shout in here that there isn't anything wrong with British farmers and we are all perfect. Then turn round and say people growing soya in a sustainable(possibly not the correct term) way are bad.

Possibly you and the general public need educated about responsibly sourced feed.

That post doesn't actually make any sense.

As Delilah says regularly “there is no problem our side of the fence”. basically he thinks all uk farming is beyond recompense and we do not need to improve anything.

It's a simple enough question:
Why does the AHDB persist in choosing divisive issues to use in its marketing, when there are so many issues upon which every levy payer would be in agreement ?
edit:
@Sandpit Farm
@PREES
Well ?

 

[delilah]

All these feckin experts on feeding cattle on this thread, would be interested to know a bit more about their cattle enterprises.

 

[___\0/___]

That post doesn't actually make any sense.



It's a simple enough question:
Why does the AHDB persist in choosing divisive issues to use in its marketing, when there are so many issues upon which every levy payer would be in agreement ?
edit:
@Sandpit Farm
@PREES
Well ?

Just aware that there are farmers growing soya in responsible ways and it is completely unlike you to single out farmers doing a good job.

Shouldn't we be saying that the people using Soya to feed cattle are buying from protected sources is no different from feeding cattle other sources of protein which are farmed responsibly?

 

[SteveHants]

All these feckin experts on feeding cattle on this thread, would be interested to know a bit more about their cattle enterprises.

Milking 250 at work mostly Holsteins, some Guernseys - no soya in feed.

Edited to add a bit more info - contract has changed since the article, now supplying into M&S as well as some others.https://www.hartpury.ac.uk/news/201...-herd-is-cream-of-crop-in-prestigious-awards/

 

[DaveGrohl]

Christ, soya again? Been done to death on here. Most of the soya meal goes to chicken and pigs, less than 3% of the entire soya crop that gets harvested worldwide goes to cattle. Look it up, I can't be arsed yet again. ALL of the soya meal is a by product.

 

[yellowbelly]

That post doesn't actually make any sense.

I think what @___\0/___ was getting at was that not all soya is grown in the Amazon Basin. There's plenty of soya grown in North America on land that was never a rainforest...........

There should be no problem using the bi product of that in cattle feed.

 

[DaveGrohl]

I think what @___\0/___ was getting at was that not all soya is grown in the Amazon Basin. There's plenty of soya grown in North America on land that was never a rainforest...........

There should be no problem using the bi product of that in cattle feed.

Well quite, but that’s not what the media vegan propaganda machine is obsessed with is it? ALL of the soya comes from the Amazon apparently…….

 

[delilah]

Milking 250 at work mostly Holsteins, some Guernseys - no soya in feed.

Edited to add a bit more info - contract has changed since the article, now supplying into M&S as well as some others.https://www.hartpury.ac.uk/news/201...-herd-is-cream-of-crop-in-prestigious-awards/

Well done. Levy payers who feed soya meal, or who plough, they should just accept that their money is being used to slag their businesses off to the public then ?

 

[SteveHants]

Well done. Levy payers who feed soya meal, or who plough, they should just accept that their money is being used to slag their businesses off to the public then ?

Soya has negative connotations with the customer in question, ie consumers of meat/dairy. So, what it is is marketing to those customers.
Do you think that, say Coca-Cola, upon learning that sugar had negative connotations with some of their customers would have chosen to call them all wrong and refuse to market to them? No, of course not, they developed Diet Coke (whether the sugar producers liked it or not)

Promoting soya free production to them is a no brainer as far as I'm concerned. Also demonstrates successful soy free production to farmers who would like to market their produce like that but were unsure if it could work.

The fact that you've chosen to interpret it as a slagging off is up to you, really.

As @DaveGrohl said, there's a minimum amount of soy in ruminant production anyway so it's probably a much more achievable "win" than trying to do it in pig and poultry.

 

[delilah]

This is the sort of propaganda we are up against.
Anti-farming organisations are writing to local authorities saying that livestock are responsible for 6% of UK greenhouse gas emissions.
How do we combat this ?

https://ahdb.org.uk/news/letter-to-...429&esid=d3a9c5ec-3884-ec11-8d21-0022481b4871

 

[Bury the Trash]

ironic because the whole of them are a waste of space the CO 2 that come s out of their mouths when the talk all their unproductive crap is a big emission problem, plus the methane from their farts out of their fat lazy arses. nothing but a bunch of money and resource wasting wasters who pay the piper that plays their tune with someone elses money

 

[Bury the Trash]

This is the sort of propaganda we are up against.
Anti-farming organisations are writing to local authorities saying that livestock are responsible for 6% of UK greenhouse gas emissions.
How do we combat this ?

https://ahdb.org.uk/news/letter-to-oxfordshire-council-about-plan-to-ban-meat-and-dairy-from-council-events?_cldee=aW5mb0B3eWVjb21tdW5pdHlmYXJtLm9yZy51aw==&recipientid=contact-b3f6355c85a4e81180ce005056b864bf-b433fb5e8f384f5d9aa9de3b8aaa8429&esid=d3a9c5ec-3884-ec11-8d21-0022481b4871

I don't know but its an incredibly, incredibly weak response. nothing regards defending or spelling out the relevant attributes infact nothing technical at all just waffle like you would get from a townie or someone with out a clue...
just another bunch of unintelligent parasites lot like the council that take money by 'force' and in actual reality don't to have to account for what they do.

 

[DaveGrohl]

This is the sort of propaganda we are up against.
Anti-farming organisations are writing to local authorities saying that livestock are responsible for 6% of UK greenhouse gas emissions.
How do we combat this ?

https://ahdb.org.uk/news/letter-to-oxfordshire-council-about-plan-to-ban-meat-and-dairy-from-council-events?_cldee=aW5mb0B3eWVjb21tdW5pdHlmYXJtLm9yZy51aw==&recipientid=contact-b3f6355c85a4e81180ce005056b864bf-b433fb5e8f384f5d9aa9de3b8aaa8429&esid=d3a9c5ec-3884-ec11-8d21-0022481b4871

That response is truly tragic. For all sorts of reasons. It’s pathetic, don’t know why they even bothered. Trouble is, that could be viewed by the Council as the best that can be done by people trying to defend livestock farming, ie livestock farming is dead in the water. A few on here could eviscerate that response and embarrass the AHDB. What a sh!t show.

 

[DaveGrohl]

ironic because the whole of the councils are a waste of space the CO 2 that come s out of their mouths when the talk all their unproductive crap is a big emission problem, plus the methane from their farts out of their fat lazy arses. nothing but a bunch of money and resource wasting wasters who pay the piper that plays their tune with someone elses money

Yeah, but how do you really feel about them?

 

[delilah]

@PREES
@Sandpit Farm