Red tractor audit

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Sorry are you saying you want a load by load audit?! A wooly annual inspection is a pretty good comorimise
I could easily produce a load by load Declaration of Conformance to U.K. Legislation. As the producer and responsible person here for quality, surely such a declaration signed by myself taking full responsibility for that particular load is better than a one day visit?
I’m not blase about quality. I’m seriously into it. I just don’t need RT help with it, thanks.
 

Against_the_grain

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
S.E
I could easily produce a load by load Declaration of Conformance to U.K. Legislation. As the producer and responsible person here for quality, surely such a declaration signed by myself taking full responsibility for that particular load is better than a one day visit?
I’m not blase about quality. I’m seriously into it. I just don’t need RT help with it, thanks.
Tbh I think I would rather do the rt audit and get paid the extra £5/t or whatever it is
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Surely the rt is a quick and relatively pain free way of sort of policing this rather than have the government involved!?
Which government agency is interested in grain moisture meters? Trading standards aren’t even interested in the merchants moisture meter despite the fact that it has financial implications. I know this because I’ve asked Trading Standards. They said it was a “gentleman’s agreement.” outside of their jurisdiction.
 

Grass And Grain

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Yorks
R

And what is the premium over non assured imports????
Let's look at feed mills, as feed grain is feed grain, whereas UK milling wheat will likely be a different spec and price to Canadian...

Non-farm assured imports have access to UK feed mills. Non-farm assured UK grain doesn't have access to feed mills. Why? I've no idea.

If the world is awash with grain, and feed mill can buy imports delivered for say £170, then they sure won't pay more than £170 for UK grain.

So I'd suggest the price premium is zero over non-assured imports.

Then there's the non-assured UK grain. Markets for this are few and far between. A bit of farm to farm, or if grain somehow gets, ahem, assured, somehow. This will likely be at a price penalty to the UK assured and the import non-assured.
 

Grass And Grain

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Yorks
Actually @Against_the_grain , being fair, RT does give access to all markets. I'd say they've worked to cut off markets for non-assured, and made themselves indispensable, but let's overlook that for now...

There are some farmers who only grow feed grains. If they want to sell to a feed mill, then they've to still jump through every RT hoop, same as a milling wheat grower.

I think there's a place for 2 different standards. Boggy basic and bells and whistles, then the farmer can choose and the mill can choose. Think this is a reasonable way to go, and gives some sort of closer equivalence to imports. Maybe someone can choose to be boggy basic, bit if they want, could upgrade to bells and whistles by uploading a few more documents and having those remotely checked. £30 extra, Bob's your uncle.

What I'd like to see, is if the mill wants bells and whistles, the farmer could sell as either boggy basic or bells and whistles, and bells and whistles comes with a price premium, but the grain is only bells and whistles if the farmers signs it off as meeting the conformity spec. That is, yes it's passed the audit 6 months ago, but the farmer warrants that 6 months on the facilities/checks/standards have continued to be met from the audit to current date. This is somewhat different to just saying it's got a sticker from an audit 6 months ago, and should command a price premium. Otherwise purchaser just gets sticker to say farm passed audit 6 months ago, so it could well be null and void.

I think it might be possible?

It might then be possible for farmers to like assurance?

Would this work?

(A) Boggy basic.
(B) Bells and whistles (historic audit).
(C) Bells and whistles (signature of up to date conformity).

Buyer must pay a premium to get (C).
 
That just won’t do, all your grain should be double bagged and sent to a hazardous wate tip and you should be shot at dawn🤣🤣🤣🙈


Yep, we are all under control. Sad to see how nervous we all are about things which have no effect on the crop growing in the ground.

Tail wagging the dog.
 

Sid

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
South Molton
The fact is, under RT if my sprayer goes out of MOT at Christmas then my loads I sent into CS in September can’t be sold as assured even though they were sprayed by the sprayer while it did have an MOT. That’s an incredibly stupid situation and unnecessary obstacle to my grain sales thanks to RT stupidity. What should happen is I sign off each load as done and dusted as it leaves the farm gate, which a truer reflection of those loads safety ststus.
Why can’t anybody grasp that?

But if you buy a non RT assured animal and then keep it on a RT farm is magically produces RT assured milk, beed or lamb, in the case of milk overnight!

Can you do that with grain as well? If not why not?
 
Surely the rt is a quick and relatively pain free way of sort of policing this rather than have the government involved!?
The government is already involved, they've set the legal time scale for a sprayer mot, then RT want more, as for grain quality I'm guessing you've never had trading standards randomly turn up unannounced wanting a sample of grain from each of the 5 stores in sealed jars for a detailed analysis, RT stands for nothing.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
I was at the hospital yesterday. I was dealing with medical professionals. There was plenty of hand washing going on between procedures. All good stuff. But what I noticed is that the surgeon and nurses never recorded that they’d washed their hands. No doubt they have a written procedure requiring such but what struck me was that they were trusted to wash their hands as a matter of course, as part of their training. Well we clean loader buckets, we do all sorts of other precautionary measures that RT don’t even know about and but in contrast tommedical staff aren’t we trusted to do basic de minimis routine stuff without writing it down at every time we do it? It just seems we are treated with contempt, not trusted, taken to be idiots. That’s what annoys me most really. We are patronised and treated like idiots. OK I’d sign a general declaration that I pay attention to crop hygiene and comply with salmonella reduction measures as the law requires but to expect me to record every actual instance of washing and cleaning is unrealistic. So what do we do? We say we have cleaned the bucket on 8th July or something made up to satisfy the inspector and that makes the scheme a complete sham in my view.
 

D14

Member
I’ve got a audit next week for combinable crops and I missed my local moisture meter clinic this spring so I’ve not got the relevant pice of paper but I do have samples of all the crops I grow with moisture checked by local merchant. Will this be good enough to get me a tick in the correct box or will I get pulled up on it. My meter is a whole grain meter so I just tip the sample back into the bag after checking and the sample is double bagged and stored in a dry place. Thanks in advance ben.

Just buy an oven dried sample off farm marketplace and say you have tested it against that. Thats all we have ever done.
 

MrNoo

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Cirencester
^^^^ Exactly

I fail to understand why a few think it good business to check against a neighbours meter, who has checked against his neighbours who had it checked in 1998. This has FA to do with RT, its about saving money.
Calibration costs £20.
My Marconi hasn’t been calibrated since new 1957, it’s had a mains conversion and it’s cock on and have never had issue.
Modern tat has to be calibrated every year as it’s so reliable.
Traceability, my arse
 

Grass And Grain

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Yorks
But if you buy a non RT assured animal and then keep it on a RT farm is magically produces RT assured milk, beed or lamb, in the case of milk overnight!

Can you do that with grain as well? If not why not?
Good question. Your milk and beef examples are crazy.

Imagine there's many occasions where land gets sold or a standing cereal crop gets sold, and purchased by an assured farmer, then sold as assured. Which makes you wonder if it's also OK to purchase non-assured grain and then sell it out as assured? I don't see the difference (although think it would be pulling wool over eyes of the purchaser, so not suggesting it should he done). That said, non-assured imports get a magic assurance sticker by virtue of a few lab tests, and AIC have given themselves the self-appointed power to allow this, so why can't I or anyone else give ourselves the self appointed power to do this, by any method we see fit, be that lab testing, declaration, etc.

I was at the hospital yesterday. I was dealing with medical professionals. There was plenty of hand washing going on between procedures. All good stuff. But what I noticed is that the surgeon and nurses never recorded that they’d washed their hands. No doubt they have a written procedure requiring such but what struck me was that they were trusted to wash their hands as a matter of course, as part of their training. Well we clean loader buckets, we do all sorts of other precautionary measures that RT don’t even know about and but in contrast tommedical staff aren’t we trusted to do basic de minimis routine stuff without writing it down at every time we do it? It just seems we are treated with contempt, not trusted, taken to be idiots. That’s what annoys me most really. We are patronised and treated like idiots. OK I’d sign a general declaration that I pay attention to crop hygiene and comply with salmonella reduction measures as the law requires but to expect me to record every actual instance of washing and cleaning is unrealistic. So what do we do? We say we have cleaned the bucket on 8th July or something made up to satisfy the inspector and that makes the scheme a complete sham in my view.
Ridiculous isn't it. Lots of people admit to making the dates up of things like grain bucket washing. We all know the dates get made up, as no-one has time to faff about writing down such a thing (as in per your medical staff hand washing example). Red Tractor inspectors know the dates are made up. If ever I've forgotten to write something down, my inspectors have previously just suggested I fill in a date during the inspection - make one up. I'm sure NFU and RT know lots of the dates get made up, yet they still insist everyone carries on with the charade.
 

D14

Member
But if you buy a non RT assured animal and then keep it on a RT farm is magically produces RT assured milk, beed or lamb, in the case of milk overnight!

Can you do that with grain as well? If not why not?

No different to all the farms who sell their none assured milling wheat to their neighbour who then sells it as assured. I know a few who do this. One friend sold 2000t last year this way and gave his neighbour £2/t for picking the phone up and selling it and then providing the stickers for the paperwork. The collection address is irreverent because if asked then the seller rented the shed space of his neighbour. without thinking to hard there was about 7000t sold this way last year around this area. Over the entire country it would be hundreds of thousands tonnes.
 

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

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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/
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