"Project fear" proven right....GOVERNMENT WASTES NO TIME IN SHUTTING DOWN UK FARMS!!!!

[ollie989898]

I can't see Ugandan beef flying off the shelf in tesco.... crawling off maybe.

I'd rather eat quality polish horsemeat if I had the choice.

 

[som farmer]

we tend to like nice new kit, the problem is it depreciates in value, and is bloody expensive. It's fine for a rep to say'it's only £500 a month, think about how much easier it will be for you', Dead right, but if you multiply that over several bits of kit, + a tractor or 2, the next relevant bit of advice is, get a few more acres, increase your stock, that will spread the cost. All very true, but it's not only you, that gets told this, its loads of other farmers, so it costs you more, to enable you to spread the cost, because others are trying to do the same, so competition time.
On the other side of the coin, breeding livestock, land, and sometimes diversifying, stand a good chance of appreciating in value, and livestock have the added advantage, of increasing, are fairly flexible to various types of nutrition, according to your system. And there are some incredibly cheap systems out there, if you look. Biggest problem is changing your mindset.
We are smaller dairy farmers, but the combined value, of the silage gang, when they drive into the yard, how on earth can it be justified ? perhaps the 3 local ones dropping out, answer that. We look at our arable neighbours, with corn about £150 ton, the cost of the kit to get your 3 or 4 ton/acre, it's scary. We are entering a new phase in farming, till we know which way it's going to go, we are on a cost cutting drive !

 

[DrWazzock]

What I notice with a few years of no till, is crumb structure on the surface. Even the sand has aggregated a bit due to worm casts and the effect of leaving organic matter on the surface. It would be a real shame to bury that 8" down and bring up fine mineral sand. I am struggling with cranesbill but ally will kill that in the wheat later on if the glyphosate doesn't kill it predrilling.
Heavy land is more of a challenge. I presently have acres of wet clay that I subsoiled while'it was dry, that is now covered in blackgrass. I think it will be best left till April, sprayed off and drilled with spring barley when it's dry enough rather than maul and smear it over now. A quick blast over with the sprayer then drill straight into it. Isn't that better than days ploughing, then bashing it down with the power Harrow three times to turn it into marbles. I don't think it will dry quickly enough to plough it early enough to get a frost mold now. The way this land ploughs over I doubt I would bury the blackgrass well enough to kill it. More likely it would come up between the furrows which won't close which is how we ended up with a blackgrass problem on the heavy land despite being entirely plough based for years.

I wouldn't rule anything out though. I am not anti plough or pro zero till, but ploughing does seem to batter the life out of fragile soils. I prefer the natural structured consolidation that handles traffic better under the no till regime and like the way the trashy surface protects from erosion from both rain and wind. We had some massive wind blows here in the spring back in the old days of winter ploughing. Fairly disastrous when you look at old photos of sandstorms with dad busy shovelling it off an A road as it was blocking with sand dunes.

 

[ajd132]

Dont knock the guys who use old kit , paper never refused ink but the field will try the man . Growing up many men prefered to buy new machinery and expand renting and contracting . My auld fella worked the shite out of men and machines welded and patched and kept things going . He bought LAND at every opportunity even with intrest rates at 20 % . A neighbour who went the opposite way with new kit said he was mad shure you could rent all the land you want why would you torture yourself with wore out kit ? My father told him that like his father before him he knew too much about landlords and their rents and Land was always a good buy . That man trebled the acreage he owned during his lifetime with his skimping and scraping and mend and make do policies . The sane land is worth 14000 euro an acre today what would machinery be worth ? Sfa i would say but then again it depends on what you want out of it . I wouldnt think you that their would be much demand for no till lessons either any man who ever marked out a field and ploughed a straight furrow would find no till childs play !!!

Fair play. My father started with 70 acres and now has 450 owned. New kit has allowed profitable farming of other people’s land and has allowed us to pay off mortgages. More than one way to skin a cat!

 

[lloyd]

Fair play. My father started with 70 acres and now has 450 owned. New kit has allowed profitable farming of other people’s land and has allowed us to pay off mortgages. More than one way to skin a cat!

Good better not ba**s it up then.

Might have done better away from farming though,brothers
mate lived in a semi in south Wales when he was at school
and is now climbing the Sunday times list yearly .

 

[Jungle Bill]

I can't see Ugandan beef flying off the shelf in tesco.... crawling off maybe.

I'd rather eat quality polish horsemeat if I had the choice.

Zimbabwe Cold Storage steaks used to fly off the menu in pubs when they were available, consistent high quality at half the price. Most cheap imported meat goes to manufacturing and catering where price is all.

 

[ajd132]

Good better not ba**s it up then.

Might have done better away from farming though,brothers
mate lived in a semi in south Wales when he was at school
and is now climbing the Sunday times list yearly .

I will try not to.

 

[Cowcorn]

Fair play. My father started with 70 acres and now has 450 owned. New kit has allowed profitable farming of other people’s land and has allowed us to pay off mortgages. More than one way to skin a cat!

Good, Mark Twains advice is still good land is the only real wealth trumped only by health . My father hated subsidies with a passion the gave land owners options to farm envelopes and reduced the supply of land to people like him who were expert at extracting every last penny out of rented cropping land .. Back then with eu guaranteed prices there was real money to be made . Remember when subs go many landowners may stick the land into an enviro scheme and wave goodbye to their contractor if grain prices fall and imports come in tarrif free . Same thing if the eu puts tariffs on uk grain. But if the subs go and no worthwhile enviro payments are introduced to cushion the " lazy or incomptent" as the auld fella used to call them then it could be game on for well kitted operators like you or you could be caught offside with hefty reypayments on kit and a rapidly declining customer base as farming enviro payments needs no contractor . The future is unwritten !!!

 

[ajd132]

Good, Mark Twains advice is still good land is the only real wealth trumped only by health . My father hated subsidies with a passion the gave land owners options to farm envelopes and reduced the supply of land to people like him who were expert at extracting every last penny out of rented cropping land .. Back then with eu guaranteed prices there was real money to be made . Remember when subs go many landowners may stick the land into an enviro scheme and wave goodbye to their contractor if grain prices fall and imports come in tarrif free . Same thing if the eu puts tariffs on uk grain. But if the subs go and no worthwhile enviro payments are introduced to cushion the " lazy or incomptent" as the auld fella used to call them then it could be game on for well kitted operators like you or you could be caught offside with hefty reypayments on kit and a rapidly declining customer base as farming enviro payments needs no contractor . The future is unwritten !!!

Who knows

 

[ollie989898]

Zimbabwe Cold Storage steaks used to fly off the menu in pubs when they were available, consistent high quality at half the price. Most cheap imported meat goes to manufacturing and catering where price is all.

So you accept that the low end of the market is already served by imported carp. What odds does it make to a UK producer if Ugandan meat arrives instead of Namibian?

 

[Cowabunga]

So you accept that the low end of the market is already served by imported carp. What odds does it make to a UK producer if Ugandan meat arrives instead of Namibian?

They are currently cheap even after high import tariffs. Without tariffs and quotas, they could be much much cheaper still and much more available, pulling UK produced cheap cuts, and hence whole animal price down very considerably from current levels which, as far as I can see of current prices are as low as most farms here can reasonably tolerate.

 

[Jungle Bill]

So you accept that the low end of the market is already served by imported carp. What odds does it make to a UK producer if Ugandan meat arrives instead of Namibian?

I was only replying to your comment that nobody would buy African meat, the supermarkets are easy , visible targets but are relatively supportive of UK farming compared to catering, processing and public sector catering.

 

[som farmer]

to be brutally honest, very few people would even realise it was Ugandan, and if used in processing, it would be in very small print ! A great fuss is made of home produced meat, nothing mentioned about anything else.

 

[ollie989898]

to be brutally honest, very few people would even realise it was Ugandan, and if used in processing, it would be in very small print ! A great fuss is made of home produced meat, nothing mentioned about anything else.

Exactly my point- how much British beef is used in these processed ready meals? Fudge all. That being the case, what odds does it make. You aren't going to sell Ugandan steaks in Waitrose or Sainsburys however you paint it.

What evidence is there that imported beef hidden in processed foods makes domestic beef worth less?

 

[steveR]

to be brutally honest, very few people would even realise it was Ugandan, and if used in processing, it would be in very small print ! A great fuss is made of home produced meat, nothing mentioned about anything else.

I found it interesting that the (pathetic) steak pie Herself grabbed as a quick supper last night, had UK beef in it. Not proudly announced on the front of the box, rather it was in the small print on the back. ?

 

[Henarar]

Exactly my point- how much British beef is used in these processed ready meals? Fudge all. That being the case, what odds does it make. You aren't going to sell Ugandan steaks in Waitrose or Sainsburys however you paint it.

What evidence is there that imported beef hidden in processed foods makes domestic beef worth less?

supply and demand

 

[som farmer]

Exactly my point- how much British beef is used in these processed ready meals? Fudge all. That being the case, what odds does it make. You aren't going to sell Ugandan steaks in Waitrose or Sainsburys however you paint it.

What evidence is there that imported beef hidden in processed foods makes domestic beef worth less?

I really think, its better not knowing, anyway we have a nice fr steer nearly fit for freezer, but I really wished I had a camera, when our vet pd'ed it, should have seen her face, when I said ahem !!!!!!!!!

 

[neilo]

Exactly my point- how much British beef is used in these processed ready meals? Fudge all. That being the case, what odds does it make. You aren't going to sell Ugandan steaks in Waitrose or Sainsburys however you paint it.

What evidence is there that imported beef hidden in processed foods makes domestic beef worth less?

Why won’t the supermarkets be able to sell Ugandan steaks? They might not put it in big writing on the front, and might sell it under a ‘farm’ brand, but most of their shoppers won’t be bothered enough to look at the small print on the back, even if they could decipher it.
US stuff will come in just the same, with country of origin only made obvious if there is a perceived quality attached to it, Scottish beef being a prime example of that.

Imported beef ‘hidden’ in processed foods are taking the place of the poorer/lower value cuts of UK beef, reducing the price of that, which obviously reduces the value of the carcass as a whole.

 

[Henarar]

I really think, its better not knowing, anyway we have a nice fr steer nearly fit for freezer, but I really wished I had a camera, when our vet pd'ed it, should have seen her face, when I said ahem !!!!!!!!!

Would have liked to have seen your face if she had said he was in calf

 

[som farmer]

Why won’t the supermarkets be able to sell Ugandan steaks? They might not put it in big writing on the front, and might sell it under a ‘farm’ brand, but most of their shoppers won’t be bothered enough to look at the small print on the back, even if they could decipher it.
US stuff will come in just the same, with country of origin only made obvious if there is a perceived quality attached to it, Scottish beef being a prime example of that.

Imported beef ‘hidden’ in processed foods are taking the place of the poorer/lower value cuts of UK beef, reducing the price of that, which obviously reduces the value of the carcass as a whole.

I follow some US ranchers on utube, they really look after their cattle, and are passionate about them, virtually all angus, Herefords and bramhas, but all the fattening cattle get a hormone shot, that equals 1/2 lb a day extra gain.
The other big 'thing' that's obvious, is the uniform size of all the cattle, with that in mind, think what you see looking at store, or fat cattle in market, all sorts. 1 big slaughterhouse, 2000 workers, 5000 cattle a day, all processed on site, all meat fitting into 1 standard box, for a UK abattoir that must be bliss.