Dairying & Red Tractor

Are Red Tractor overstepping their Remit?

  • Yes. There is no value in ever more regulation

    Votes: 120 96.0%
  • No. We need to be the best

    Votes: 5 4.0%

  • Total voters
    125

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
OK boys & girls. Some of you do venture out of this forum to "Agricultural Matters" where you will no doubt have seen many threads on Red Tractor (RT).
However there has been little input from us dairy farmers - probably due to the fact that most, if not all, our supply contracts state that we must be RT adherents in order to supply our chosen processor.

Do those of you in the sunny uplands of an Arla contract have to undertake their own Arlagarden audit which I assume is more pertinent than any RT inspection?

So the question I ask is, do you feel you are getting a fair deal from RT or are they now overstepping their remit?

Poll attached but comments are useful as it does appear NFU/RT read the forum
 

bigw

Member
Location
Scotland
RT are trying to keep up with the higher standards that a 'premium' contract requires but in doing so will add a huge burden to people on a 'standard' contract who have no way of recovering this from the market place. Also there is a large amount of duplication in their standards, checking statutory requirements like movements etc are pretty pointless as we already have to comply to these or you don't get BPS.
 

Bramble

Member
One reason why a local farm packed up last year after supposedly having a Tesco audit, Arlagarden inspection, RT inspection, Dairy Hygiene Inspection, and a visit from Trading Standards all in the same month.

Probably not the only reason they stopped but I’m amazed they had time to fit them all in.

RT felt a bit pointless when I was chucking milk away last year
 
Location
cumbria
The narrative in Agricultural Matters is a crops centric one.

The whole thing needs a bonfire though, it's gone too far to scale back.

Who in their right mind does something for 2 decades and instead of addressing why it doesn't work, just plow ahead and make it worse.
The consultation was so biased I found it insulting.

They could have narrowed it down to one question and saved themselves some time.
1) Is Red Tractor:
A. Awesome.
B. Totally awesome.

Please answer to continue 😅
 

sjt01

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North Norfolk
We find the questions Arlagaarden ask tend to be useful management info for ourselves. I would be happy to ditch RT for AG+, the various policies and risk assessments for RT are only to show the auditor, I would be surprised if one farmer looked at them between inspections.
I am now doing the climate assessment, the questions could be better framed and organised, but it is all sensible management info for our own use as well, unlike RT.
 
Location
Cheshire
One reason why a local farm packed up last year after supposedly having a Tesco audit, Arlagarden inspection, RT inspection, Dairy Hygiene Inspection, and a visit from Trading Standards all in the same month.

Probably not the only reason they stopped but I’m amazed they had time to fit them all in.

RT felt a bit pointless when I was chucking milk away last year
Better if they come on the same day.
 

NoParticularPattern

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
^Waves from the sunny uplands^

In this establishment it’s me who does the (endless) paperwork, webinars, box ticking etc etc associated with AG/AG+/Climate Check/RT so here’s my two pence for you. The fact that there’s so many bits to fill in that all overlap is a pain in my backside and gets very confusing when they all start talking in different units/formats/double negatives etc. None of them seem willing or able to communicate with each other in order to make it possible to ditch one in favour of the other. The questions overlap massively but yet not one of them will admit to it and suggest that they could work centrally. So you end up with several deadlines, visits or video calls all of which result in the same thing.

As you say we are bound by our contract to be RT assured, but we are also now contractually required to fill in the same questions and agree to another visit (or two!) only to have the questions in green rather than red. It begs the question- if RT are as relevant and beneficial as RT claim to be, why have Arla decided to check up on them?
 

NoParticularPattern

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
North Yorkshire
Oh and yes. The AG questions are far more pertinent to our business than the RT endless form filling exercise will ever be. Quite frankly I’m far more interested in what our milk buyer wants to know and see (who presumably does actual consumer/market research for themselves) than some organisation which seems to exist purely to tell everyone how marvellous they are without any actual evidence of their effect on prices.
 

Bald Rick

Moderator
Livestock Farmer
Location
Anglesey
We need to be the best. But on some aspects they are overstepping the mark and are way out of touch

I think this is the nub.

I don’t object to having some independent monitoring- albeit our milk is checked daily by NML and our buyer regularly comes to the farm - but some of the stuff now forming part of RT is a nonsense
 
I think this is the nub.

I don’t object to having some independent monitoring- albeit our milk is checked daily by NML and our buyer regularly comes to the farm - but some of the stuff now forming part of RT is a nonsense
Our milk buyers standards are much more apt for production of quality milk, a tidy farm and healthy cows.

RT just make up more sh1t to keep them selves busy. About 60% is relevant.
 

sidjon

Member
Location
EXMOOR
Got my red tractor Friday and neighbour has cut through the landline cable for 3 third time 12 months banking up a hedge🙈, took six weeks to reconnect last time
 

Jamer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Glos
It's the duplication, with a box ticking assessor who is not interested in the data you supply, that I resent. We are on an aligned contract with all the resultant hoops. However, the data collated by the milk buyer is used to identify areas for on farm improvements in health, welfare and efficiency.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 80 42.3%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 66 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.9%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.7%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,293
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top