The Red Tractor ACCS referendum

Would you leave or remain a Red Tractor ACCS member ?

  • Yes, I would resign my Red Tractor (ACCS) membership and join a new "equal to imports" Scheme

    Votes: 659 96.1%
  • No, I would remain in the Red Tractor scheme

    Votes: 27 3.9%

  • Total voters
    686

FarmyStu

Member
Location
NE Lincs
I would say not many ag firms dance to the tune of farmers when we are purchasing in puts.
If your fert supplier rang and said "from now on my ferts will no longer be assured to any standard. It will save me money but I expect you to pay the same for them. Other suppliers are not doing this, but I fully expect you to keep buying from me", would you?
 

tullah

Member
Location
Linconshire
Fine, I accept all that except the bit where you say: the buyers want it, at no extra cost to themselves. You must provide it free of charge.

"They go elsewhere" means buying imported with no assurance but more importantly, lower standards than UK produced.

What you are deliberately misunderstanding is that there is no such auditing of farms exporting to the UK but that doesn't seem to matter. It's the lack of premium and double standards that's winding the farmers up.

Yes it must be deliberately misunderstanding as lacks any form of logic.
 
If your fert supplier rang and said "from now on my ferts will no longer be assured to any standard. It will save me money but I expect you to pay the same for them. Other suppliers are not doing this, but I fully expect you to keep buying from me", would you?

Depends what the standards are.

If it means the Urea meets the legislative specifications I'd be fine about it. That is what matters. If my fert man said "look at the port in Egypt, Abdul didn't record the time he cleaned the portaloo - do you still want this fert?" - I wouldn't mind a bit. If my grain is 15% and on spec it doesn't matter. I will have complied to the regulations of my country because thats the law.

Life existed before Red Tractor you know! I know they like to claim they've prevented another BSE and foot and mouth etc
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
That applies to any assurance scheme of anything, ever! Just imagine how pointless a scheme would be that only required self certification via a tick box on a form. Nobody ever checking any of it. Just the word of the producer.........
But that’s what a lot of it is now under RT. I clean my grain store in June and tick a box. The inspector looks at the tick in the box in November. He doesn’t stand there watching me clean the store in June. The box ticking and inspecting of the tick in the box is pointless. I clean the store because I don’t want rejected grain. It’s self regulating.
 

alex04w

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Co Antrim
No I'm not. But that's what you're assuming about them, which is why you get so angry. They are an assurance group. Part of assurance is an independent audit. That's the main part of an assurance scheme in any industry. Nobody is assuming you're a liar, or not trusting you or trying to catch you out. But any assurance scheme (worthy of the name) requires audit.

You may claim that RT is too easy to pass and anyone can con their way through the inspection. I think you may well be right. But that invites tighter standards, not lower ones. Basically you don't want inspections. That's fine (although very naïve in this day and age IMO for a food producer) but many of the buyers of your produce along the chain want assurance. That's a statement of fact. So you either give them what they want or they go elsewhere. Supply and demand CANNOT be ignored. You are a seller so you must dance to the buyers tune, whether that be a consumer, a supermarket, a slaughterhouse or a grain mill. I don't see how you can alter that?

I have set out before that I am beef and sheep assured.

This means that i can grow grass and feed it to my animals and everything is assured. I can make silage and feed in to my animals and everything is assured. I can grow oats and whole crop it and feed it to my animals and everything is assured.

However I cannot grow oats and run them through a combine and feed them to my animals as all my animals cease to be assured.

To grow oats to feed to my own animals I need to be cereals assured. That is a second lot of assurance fees and a second lot of inspections.

Can you tell me what is so dangerous about putting oats through a combine that makes them and the animals eating them suddenly non assured as opposed to when they are cut a couple of weeks earlier and wholecropped and they are ok???

Maybe in your world farmers need to also be grass assured, silage assured, whole crop assured, etc, to allow us to grow these and feed to our animals and them to remain assured? What nonsense, and yet this is what cereals tell us.

Also the issue about imported assured grain is that it only needs to assured from Port of delivery to be red tractor assured. If I load up and drive my oats down to the nearest port and drive them home again do the magically become assured like imports?

No, I didn't think so! That is what is so wrong with this scheme.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
If your fert supplier rang and said "from now on my ferts will no longer be assured to any standard. It will save me money but I expect you to pay the same for them. Other suppliers are not doing this, but I fully expect you to keep buying from me", would you?
I would look at it myself and if it seemed alright I’d use it. That’s what I do anyway. An assurance scheme doesn’t mean much to me. It’s fertiliser and wheat not weapon grade uranium we are dealing with.
 

An Gof

Member
Location
Cornwall
I have set out before that I am beef and sheep assured.

This means that i can grow grass and feed it to my animals and everything is assured. I can make silage and feed in to my animals and everything is assured. I can grow oats and whole crop it and feed it to my animals and everything is assured.

However I cannot grow oats and run them through a combine and feed them to my animals as all my animals cease to be assured.

To grow oats to feed to my own animals I need to be cereals assured. That is a second lot of assurance fees and a second lot of inspections.

Can you tell me what is so dangerous about putting oats through a combine that makes them and the animals eating them suddenly non assured as opposed to when they are cut a couple of weeks earlier and wholecropped and they are ok???

Maybe in your world farmers need to also be grass assured, silage assured, whole crop assured, etc, to allow us to grow these and feed to our animals and them to remain assured? What nonsense, and yet this is what cereals tell us.

Also the issue about imported assured grain is that it only needs to assured from Port of delivery to be red tractor assured. If I load up and drive my oats down to the nearest port and drive them home again do the magically become assured like imports?

No, I didn't think so! That is what is so wrong with this scheme.

Must be an Irish scheme thing. Pretty sure the same does not apply to RT Beef and Lamb. I know plenty of neighbours growing cereals for their own use who are not crop assured but who are beef and lamb assured.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
It seems like you will demand that buyers accept your new scheme, and pay the same for it, with the threat of going to court if they don't. Good luck with that. It's not how buyer/seller relationships work in my experience.

At the minute, buyers can choose to mix RT grain with non RT grain if they choose to. Obviously once mixed, it is no longer RT assured. It's a one way street (unlike livestock). Your "new scheme" grain will start off at "import standard" (I assume?) unless your scheme is slightly higher than no assurance at all?

As above, will you allow farmers to sell grain completely un assured as they can now? If so, will they be paid less for it compared to your "new scheme"? What will be different about your scheme compared to no scheme at all? Why bother with your scheme if there is no premium?


The CMA exists to maintain a fair marketplace - if a buyer will accept a certain standard of an import but not the same from a domestic product I suspect they would have a bit of an issue with that

Imported grain has no requiremnet for FARM assurance - that can not be said enough
 

Grass And Grain

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Yorks
You obviously can't prove that a pile of wheat claiming to be RT assured is and that someone hasn't mixed it with non RT stuff, or even that non of it is. But I thought it was being suggested that the rules allow RT to be mixed with non RT stuff and then sold on as RT? The rules allow non assured livestock to be magically converted to RT by the miracle of time. But grain/crops cannot.
AiC and the mills say UK grain must be RT/SQC. Concomitantly the imported stuff gets a lab test to say it is within pesticide residue limits, then it is entered into the assured food/feed chain. The RT and the imported stuff can then all be tipped onto one big heap, loaded into a lorry and delivered to the mill as assured by the TASCC merchant.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
If your fert supplier rang and said "from now on my ferts will no longer be assured to any standard. It will save me money but I expect you to pay the same for them. Other suppliers are not doing this, but I fully expect you to keep buying from me", would you?

I buy the cheapest product that does the job I need .......... so do millers

usually the cheapest is imported (fert or cereal !)


your point here is ?
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Are people who support RT really saying that they wouldn’t clean their grain store if it wasn’t for RT? Is that the sort of people they are? How long would such people last in business nowadays. Poor attitude.


and the law / buyers would (and does ) set a standard

this idea that RT makes everyone a better farmer is utterly ridiculous.......... insulting in-fact given the calibre of many inspectors Ive met ! ......... not to mention the standard their AFS vice chairman clearly farms to based on pictures of his "soil"
 
Are people who support RT really saying that they wouldn’t clean their grain store if it wasn’t for RT? Is that the sort of people they are? How long would such people last in business nowadays. Poor attitude.

Thing is RT makes no odds either way. My RT man turns up in november. How does he know if I cleaned my grainstore? Its a joke
 

alex04w

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Co Antrim
Must be an Irish scheme thing. Pretty sure the same does not apply to RT Beef and Lamb. I know plenty of neighbours growing cereals for their own use who are not crop assured but who are beef and lamb assured.

The Northern Ireland Beef and Lamb Farm Quality Assurance Scheme rule 3.12 states:-

Home grown and farm purchased feed grain or pulses must be certified under the NI Farm Quality Assured Cereals Scheme...

20210223_170703.jpg
 

Humble Village Farmer

Member
BASE UK Member
Location
Essex
Farmy Stu, you seem to like the idea of red tractor.

I would be happy to stay with it if I could earn another £2, 3 or 5 a tonne for my crops (even though there is absolutely no difference between RT and UK farm standard). But for that to happen you, or someone like you, need to convince the trade to pay more for farm assured grain or pay for the farm assurance. They won't because it will add nothing to their bottom line.

It's adding nothing to ours either and as a red tractor customer, I am withdrawing my custom. End of. Next please.
 

MrNoo

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Cirencester
many of the buyers of your produce along the chain want assurance.

Really??? If so why do they import un assured milling and blend with our RT assured milling? Surely if you were correct then it wouldnt be able to be marketed as RT assured bread or suchlike, maybe that's why you struggle to find any bread sold with the stupid tractor on it?? Or maybe the producers of the various loaves just simply dont wish to pay RT for using their logo on their products.
If what you say is correct (which it isnt by the way) then surely bread, etc would show the poxy tractor, i've get to find a loaf with any assurance info on it. I have a Hovis loaf and an M&S loaf here now in my kitchen and there is bugger all on except "made in the UK" Zero assurance info but some of the flour will be RT assured, the rest imported.
I think Shreddies and Weetabix are the only cereals that bother.
RT is just a license to be able to sell milling wheat/malting barley/feed wheat at market price, without it they pull your pants down. Sooner it is done away with the better and we can just get on and farm
 

FarmyStu

Member
Location
NE Lincs
Farmy Stu, you seem to like the idea of red tractor.

I would be happy to stay with it if I could earn another £2, 3 or 5 a tonne for my crops (even though there is absolutely no difference between RT and UK farm standard). But for that to happen you, or someone like you, need to convince the trade to pay more for farm assured grain or pay for the farm assurance. They won't because it will add nothing to their bottom line.

It's adding nothing to ours either and as a red tractor customer, I am withdrawing my custom. End of. Next please.
If RT adds nothing to your bottom line, then leave. I would. Why would you be a member of something that costs money but adds nothing? I've said this many times before!!!
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 77 43.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 62 35.0%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 28 15.8%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.7%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 4 2.3%

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

  • 1,286
  • 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/
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