Red tractor statement on level playing field

Location
North Notts
Maybe a dumb question but would we be better off pushing for RT standards on imported grains rather than lowering our standards and inviting lower standard grain to enter the country?

Don't get me wrong I despise red tractor and all the rubbish that goes with it but can't help think we'll be opening ourselves up to cheaper imports........ which are already entering the country anyway.

what about a RT,NFU, AHDB putting some of our money they take from us and taking independent samples and lots of them from any shipment of grain entering the country. Make the results accessible to all RT and AHDB paying members .

pleased they are well on the back foot, well done everyone involved!!
 

Grass And Grain

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Yorks
They can't say its all been produced to same standards as has been highlighted earlier.
Farmer gets ticked off for a non compliance and told to rectify. But too late because his non compliance wheat was tipped into an assured central store a week earlier.
So what becomes of that central stores heap of wheat and the supposed standard of it? Does it all go into bread with an RT label on it or does the whole 30,000 ton heap have to go for feed.?
Logic please.
Everyone knows it happens. RT know, UK flour millers must know, they don't want the consumer to know. They won't want it to get out.

So they know the scheme isn't worth the paper, yet pretend it's wonderful.

UK flour miller reps sit on the RT Combinables board. Hmmm.
 

tullah

Member
Location
Linconshire
This assurance is all make believe and even those inside and on the front line admit it. Can we force their hand to just say yes it's all a sham. We've proved it already but still the non farming union owners of RT swim around the plug hole. Needs that final push to send it into the sewer.
The world is changing fast and has no time for all this rubbish and those supposedly intelligent people involved with it are hasbeens.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
if food gets short, and more expensive, red tractor will be history.
if anyone thinks the major purchasers give a toss now, they don't, it's a sales gimmick, encouraged by RT. If supplies get any restriction, all they care about, is profit and full shelves, if shelves are empty, they will source from anywhere, and 2 fingers to RT.
And about time to.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
All sounds good chaps but us farmers are so easily divided and turned against each other it’s embarrassing.

Any action on an industrial scale needs a plan that needs to be agreed and adhered to.

I may be imagining things, but I seem to remember that some farmers were buying feed on contract but were told the price was going up £x per ton to cover drivers costs etc.

Thats stock / pig / chicken farmers getting f**ked because we allow a small number of mills to supply us all. And those few feed / flour mills band together via the AIC to f**k *all* of us. Be it by RT; by "force majeure"; by lack of investment in infrastructure where we are happy to sit for three hours because they don't spend £500 fixing the intakes.

It's time to wake up. The very existence of the AIC, which pitches *all* of them against 80,000 of us needs smashing to pieces.

We are blessed to live in a country where cereal yields; grass growth; and customer education allows us to grow the best wlyiekdsvof wheat, the best grass and the highest quality meat in the world. Yet....we allow imported grain *below* the defacto RT standards imposed by the AIC.

That's sick. It's sick that we pay 50p per ton for the privilage of the Ahdb passing on the money to the AIc / RT to work together to assrape us. When we could cancel them and use the 50p per ton to fund a true farming union. One that will stand up when the BBC tries to blame us for climate change. That will stop the handful of end users collaborating against us.



Farmers together.
Down with RT.
Down with the traitors who work with the


The gravy train stops here.
 

stroller

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Somerset UK
Haven’t had chance to read all the replies so this might have been covered already. If the extensive tests on imported milling wheat have been carried out, presumably they will have the results somewhere, cross referenced to the destination, so that in the event of a legal dispute over contaminated grain they can cover themselves. If they can’t produce several years worth of test results then it would look like they are bullshitting.
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
They can't say its all been produced to same standards as has been highlighted earlier.
Farmer gets ticked off for a non compliance and told to rectify. But too late because his non compliance wheat was tipped into an assured central store a week earlier.
So what becomes of that central stores heap of wheat and the supposed standard of it? Does it all go into bread with an RT label on it or does the whole 30,000 ton heap have to go for feed.?
Logic please.
That's a good point. RT is basically no standard at all because anyone with anything wrong can just fix it. Its not strict enough, no one gets thrown out or sees major financial penalties.
I do think its helped raise standards a little though, people can't get away with some of the things that used to happen as easily because of that yearly inspection.
 

Jackov Altraids

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Devon
I may be imagining things, but I seem to remember that some farmers were buying feed on contract but were told the price was going up £x per ton to cover drivers costs etc.

Thats stock / pig / chicken farmers getting f**ked because we allow a small number of mills to supply us all. And those few feed / flour mills band together via the AIC to f**k *all* of us. Be it by RT; by "force majeure"; by lack of investment in infrastructure where we are happy to sit for three hours because they don't spend £500 fixing the intakes.

It's time to wake up. The very existence of the AIC, which pitches *all* of them against 80,000 of us needs smashing to pieces.

We are blessed to live in a country where cereal yields; grass growth; and customer education allows us to grow the best wlyiekdsvof wheat, the best grass and the highest quality meat in the world. Yet....we allow imported grain *below* the defacto RT standards imposed by the AIC.

That's sick. It's sick that we pay 50p per ton for the privilage of the Ahdb passing on the money to the AIc / RT to work together to assrape us. When we could cancel them and use the 50p per ton to fund a true farming union. One that will stand up when the BBC tries to blame us for climate change. That will stop the handful of end users collaborating against us.



Farmers together.
Down with RT.
Down with the traitors who work with the


The gravy train stops here.

The thing I find most distressing about this situation is having to accept that the vast majority of us farmers have nobody looking after our interests despite countless bodies claiming that they do. :(
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
I may be imagining things, but I seem to remember that some farmers were buying feed on contract but were told the price was going up £x per ton to cover drivers costs etc.

Thats stock / pig / chicken farmers getting f**ked because we allow a small number of mills to supply us all. And those few feed / flour mills band together via the AIC to f**k *all* of us. Be it by RT; by "force majeure"; by lack of investment in infrastructure where we are happy to sit for three hours because they don't spend £500 fixing the intakes.

It's time to wake up. The very existence of the AIC, which pitches *all* of them against 80,000 of us needs smashing to pieces.

We are blessed to live in a country where cereal yields; grass growth; and customer education allows us to grow the best wlyiekdsvof wheat, the best grass and the highest quality meat in the world. Yet....we allow imported grain *below* the defacto RT standards imposed by the AIC.

That's sick. It's sick that we pay 50p per ton for the privilage of the Ahdb passing on the money to the AIc / RT to work together to assrape us. When we could cancel them and use the 50p per ton to fund a true farming union. One that will stand up when the BBC tries to blame us for climate change. That will stop the handful of end users collaborating against us.



Farmers together.
Down with RT.
Down with the traitors who work with the


The gravy train stops here.
Perhaps farmers should own more of the mills?
 

Farma Parma

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Northumberlandia
Events concerning RT are moving apace. Watch this space.
RT's owners have assets sufficient to compensate any proven wrong doing over the last twenty years.
aslong as we get that £2-3t promised what 20 odd years ago when these schemes started ?
plus interest mind its our money! by my reconing thats over £8k iam due back
afterall ive spent likely more than that to conform legally on paper.
 

Farma Parma

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Northumberlandia
I may be imagining things, but I seem to remember that some farmers were buying feed on contract but were told the price was going up £x per ton to cover drivers costs etc.

Thats stock / pig / chicken farmers getting f**ked because we allow a small number of mills to supply us all. And those few feed / flour mills band together via the AIC to f**k *all* of us. Be it by RT; by "force majeure"; by lack of investment in infrastructure where we are happy to sit for three hours because they don't spend £500 fixing the intakes.

It's time to wake up. The very existence of the AIC, which pitches *all* of them against 80,000 of us needs smashing to pieces.

We are blessed to live in a country where cereal yields; grass growth; and customer education allows us to grow the best wlyiekdsvof wheat, the best grass and the highest quality meat in the world. Yet....we allow imported grain *below* the defacto RT standards imposed by the AIC.

That's sick. It's sick that we pay 50p per ton for the privilage of the Ahdb passing on the money to the AIc / RT to work together to assrape us. When we could cancel them and use the 50p per ton to fund a true farming union. One that will stand up when the BBC tries to blame us for climate change. That will stop the handful of end users collaborating against us.



Farmers together.
Down with RT.
Down with the traitors who work with the


The gravy train stops here.
Well said mind
 

Blaithin

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Alberta
also no need to subject uk grain to a lot of the import test that are not relevant in a country with no access to many of the banned products or GM etc and already produced under uk legal and environmental standards
Please tell me you didn’t just refer to milling grains as GM?
 

Dave645

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
N Lincs
Maybe a dumb question but would we be better off pushing for RT standards on imported grains rather than lowering our standards and inviting lower standard grain to enter the country?

Don't get me wrong I despise red tractor and all the rubbish that goes with it but can't help think we'll be opening ourselves up to cheaper imports........ which are already entering the country anyway.

what about a RT,NFU, AHDB putting some of our money they take from us and taking independent samples and lots of them from any shipment of grain entering the country. Make the results accessible to all RT and AHDB paying members .

pleased they are well on the back foot, well done everyone involved!!
Ok first there is zero chance we can push any scheme resembling RT on imports even if we could they would find a way to make an equivalent scheme that could be done by gatekeepers as they call them.

When you peel the onion that is RT all they do is audit our self declarations, all the mills want is a risk assessment that the crop is safe for use and the mills do tests as they get it from farms to see if it hits the specs the mills set.

RT really do zero and take zero risk, the main problem we have with them is of their own making they enlarged their scope far past real farm crop assurance. Real crop assurance is a very small thing it’s about the Agro chemicals we used on the crop and basic storage, and transport rules, and for crops going for fuel use a small declaration that you don’t use protected ground to grow crops for fuel production.
Very little of what we do for RT has anything to do with real crop assurance or quality, that is why it doesn’t exist outside the uk.
the fact we pay them to do what in effect is next to nothing is just a joke on us, if H&S want to check on my farm then let them come, no piece of paper from RT will protect me from an inspection. And at no point would you be expected to pay the H&S to visit your farm. The reality is most imports at max under assurance scheme rules run by importers under gate keeper rules the farms get a basic check every 3 years and a declaration form to fill, at a minimum not even that as the. Importer can test the crop in bulk and average the results over full boat loads. The on farm part of assurance is zero, the gate keepers take on responsibility for crop quality.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Perhaps farmers should own more of the mills?

Ironically, Morrisons was bought for £7bn. If £4bn of that was "real money" then that's only £50k for each farmer in the UK. Not being harsh, but a new tractor is more than that. I'd suggest each farmer went out on 6th April and put £10k of Tesco shares in their ISA. That would perk them up.

The tide has turned. It's time to get more aggressive.
 

Goweresque

Member
Location
North Wilts
Ironically, Morrisons was bought for £7bn. If £4bn of that was "real money" then that's only £50k for each farmer in the UK. Not being harsh, but a new tractor is more than that. I'd suggest each farmer went out on 6th April and put £10k of Tesco shares in their ISA. That would perk them up.

The tide has turned. It's time to get more aggressive.
I said a few years ago (at the time Tesco was in the doldrums because of their accounting scandal) that UK farming should buy it, and turn it into the 'British Supermarket'. I think the cost worked out at about £100/acre across the board.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Ironically, Morrisons was bought for £7bn. If £4bn of that was "real money" then that's only £50k for each farmer in the UK. Not being harsh, but a new tractor is more than that. I'd suggest each farmer went out on 6th April and put £10k of Tesco shares in their ISA. That would perk them up.

The tide has turned. It's time to get more aggressive.

You do realise that there are plenty of farmers that wouldn’t/couldn’t buy a new tractor, even one only costing £50k?
A hell of a lot don’t have £10k spare they can spend on Tesco (or any other) shares either I would think.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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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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