- Location
- Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
I like a week in which I’m faced with a bit of a juxtaposition to stir the old grey matter, which would otherwise surely congeal. Firstly, as well as assembling a few motley store cattle and lambs for sale, wondering if they’ll make up the shortfall in cashflow until promised but elusive EU subsidies appear, I was fortunate enough to spend a few hours with some travelling Australians, one couple heading up a cattle operation covering 1.5 million acres, stocked with around 30,000 head.
Being extensive, low input cattle breeders, we obviously had immediate common factors in our lives. Admittedly, I don’t use helicopters to gather cattle, and they conserve fodder in case of drought, rather than snow. But both of our businesses are built around the wellbeing and management of mobs of unruly and seldom handled livestock. However there were differences, some unlikely, which revealed far greater chasms between our lives.
Having taken them around the property here, showing them a bit of scenery and some cows, they then got out the smart phones- and left a DVD-, to show us how it is over there. I was familiar with the concept. Red humpy backed Drought-master cattle, spread over vast miles of red dirt, and the need to be ready for dry times with diminishing grazing. Surplus cattle are rounded up and sent off on roadtrains, often for live export. However, progress has seen them drilling boreholes to an aquifer 260 meters deep, for centre pivot irrigation. These giant green discs are initially growing Sorghum for a 9% protein ‘insurance’, in big square bale silage, but lupins are also under investigation to fatten stock on site. Perversely, bales have to be wrapped, as conditions are often too humid, in the sweltering tropical North, to make ‘hay’. They have to work around the extensive mining operations, hewing Iron and Manganese, and goodness knows what, from the ground.
It was, frankly, refreshing to hear about their ‘can-do’ enterprise, driven by raw commerce, utilising the abundant natural resources of a vast empty country. They get no subsidies, but work in a country where primary production is still valued. For sure, it is a tough environment, and immediate obstacles include poisonous snakes and the nearest town being 3-4 hours away. And long term, the operation is heavily dependent on fossil fuel inputs, and could easily become unworkable should weather patterns shift a couple of notches in the wrong direction. What effects irrigating the arid landscape will be remain to be seen.
As I was absorbing all this, the news was filled with images of bedraggled people trying to get into the EU, leading me to make dis-jointed comparisons. We’re living in one of the densest populated places on Earth, and have comparatively stable Governments and economies, and an egalitarian outlook. To the inhabitants of many countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Asian sub-continent, this is some kind of Shangri-La. For various reasons, not least the hideous mess in Syria, this year has become the watershed. They are now arriving in huge numbers, to share our luck, and unless we shut the door, they are going to keep coming in escalating numbers.
It is a mark of our society’s values that discussing our feelings about this is seen as contentious and questionable. Some among us think we should keep the door open, and absorb however many wish to turn up destitute or desperate. We grapple with whether or not it’s racist to be less than welcoming. Perhaps the Germans and the Austrians have subconscious national difficulties to deal with.
Meanwhile, to be equitable, our immigration officials give visiting Australian youths the 3rd degree about work visas and the like. I’ve known an Aussie lad on a working holiday put straight back on the next flight home for lack of the correct paperwork, and a Swiss lad very nearly treated the same- coming from outside the EU see?
I’ve found it all quite jarring, and struggle to make sense of it.
As for the unprecedented wave of ‘refugees’ heading here? I’m going to be straight, and face up to my feelings. It’s true that you can’t ignore the plight of one distressed family. The problems come however when the numbers escalate, and they cease to be individuals.
And I’ll admit I’m prejudiced against what I see as backward and irrational cultures and practices, and I have issues with what the unfettered mass migration from some such cultures will do to our society. I fear that welcoming thousands upon thousands of these folk into the open handed warmth of the EU is a colossal change, and not one for the best.
And while we’re accustomed to the media’s attention moving swiftly on, this story isn’t going away.
About the author
Originally published in The Western Morning News, these articles are reproduced for the enjoyment of TFF members World-wide by kind permission of the author Anton Coaker and the WMN
Anton Coaker is a fifth generation farmer keeping suckler cows and flocks of hill sheep high on the Forest of Dartmoor and running a hardwood and mobile sawmill.
A prodigious writer and regular correspondent for The Western Morning News, NFU and The Farming Forum, Anton’s second book “The Complete Bullocks” is available from www.anton-coaker.co.uk
Being extensive, low input cattle breeders, we obviously had immediate common factors in our lives. Admittedly, I don’t use helicopters to gather cattle, and they conserve fodder in case of drought, rather than snow. But both of our businesses are built around the wellbeing and management of mobs of unruly and seldom handled livestock. However there were differences, some unlikely, which revealed far greater chasms between our lives.
Having taken them around the property here, showing them a bit of scenery and some cows, they then got out the smart phones- and left a DVD-, to show us how it is over there. I was familiar with the concept. Red humpy backed Drought-master cattle, spread over vast miles of red dirt, and the need to be ready for dry times with diminishing grazing. Surplus cattle are rounded up and sent off on roadtrains, often for live export. However, progress has seen them drilling boreholes to an aquifer 260 meters deep, for centre pivot irrigation. These giant green discs are initially growing Sorghum for a 9% protein ‘insurance’, in big square bale silage, but lupins are also under investigation to fatten stock on site. Perversely, bales have to be wrapped, as conditions are often too humid, in the sweltering tropical North, to make ‘hay’. They have to work around the extensive mining operations, hewing Iron and Manganese, and goodness knows what, from the ground.
It was, frankly, refreshing to hear about their ‘can-do’ enterprise, driven by raw commerce, utilising the abundant natural resources of a vast empty country. They get no subsidies, but work in a country where primary production is still valued. For sure, it is a tough environment, and immediate obstacles include poisonous snakes and the nearest town being 3-4 hours away. And long term, the operation is heavily dependent on fossil fuel inputs, and could easily become unworkable should weather patterns shift a couple of notches in the wrong direction. What effects irrigating the arid landscape will be remain to be seen.
As I was absorbing all this, the news was filled with images of bedraggled people trying to get into the EU, leading me to make dis-jointed comparisons. We’re living in one of the densest populated places on Earth, and have comparatively stable Governments and economies, and an egalitarian outlook. To the inhabitants of many countries in the Middle East, Africa, and the Asian sub-continent, this is some kind of Shangri-La. For various reasons, not least the hideous mess in Syria, this year has become the watershed. They are now arriving in huge numbers, to share our luck, and unless we shut the door, they are going to keep coming in escalating numbers.
It is a mark of our society’s values that discussing our feelings about this is seen as contentious and questionable. Some among us think we should keep the door open, and absorb however many wish to turn up destitute or desperate. We grapple with whether or not it’s racist to be less than welcoming. Perhaps the Germans and the Austrians have subconscious national difficulties to deal with.
Meanwhile, to be equitable, our immigration officials give visiting Australian youths the 3rd degree about work visas and the like. I’ve known an Aussie lad on a working holiday put straight back on the next flight home for lack of the correct paperwork, and a Swiss lad very nearly treated the same- coming from outside the EU see?
I’ve found it all quite jarring, and struggle to make sense of it.
As for the unprecedented wave of ‘refugees’ heading here? I’m going to be straight, and face up to my feelings. It’s true that you can’t ignore the plight of one distressed family. The problems come however when the numbers escalate, and they cease to be individuals.
And I’ll admit I’m prejudiced against what I see as backward and irrational cultures and practices, and I have issues with what the unfettered mass migration from some such cultures will do to our society. I fear that welcoming thousands upon thousands of these folk into the open handed warmth of the EU is a colossal change, and not one for the best.
And while we’re accustomed to the media’s attention moving swiftly on, this story isn’t going away.
About the author
Originally published in The Western Morning News, these articles are reproduced for the enjoyment of TFF members World-wide by kind permission of the author Anton Coaker and the WMN
Anton Coaker is a fifth generation farmer keeping suckler cows and flocks of hill sheep high on the Forest of Dartmoor and running a hardwood and mobile sawmill.
A prodigious writer and regular correspondent for The Western Morning News, NFU and The Farming Forum, Anton’s second book “The Complete Bullocks” is available from www.anton-coaker.co.uk
and the other was leaving the Netherlands, where at the passport control while after looking at my NZ passport they implied/gestured that I should be staying rather than leaving!