What does Red Tractor cost you in cash terms?

nonemouse

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North yorks
How can a sprayer MOT be a cost you attribute to Red Tractor? I would hope you would get your sprayer MOT'd every year, regardless of RT because the cost of something going wrong is significant not only for your business but your neighbours and the environment
By law a sprayer only needs testing every 3rd year, I think, ( certainly under a given farm area). I would like to think my sprayer is always in a well maintained state, and I would do a visual check round and normally test with clean water thru the boom before use every time it’s used. Can’t see the point of some parts of the test, such as measuring nozzle spacing (not exactly likely to change) and worrying about how accurate the pressure gauge is, when the sprayer works off a flow meter/rate controller ( the operator should monitor chemical used/area sprayed on every field). Even a tested sprayer is only as good as the operator.
 

MrNoo

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Cirencester
To be honest with the amount of £££££'s we put through a sprayer it is in our interest to check it's all ok whenever we use it, same with fert spreaders but (certainly with the sprayer) I cant sign the right NRSO membership pass doc as I'm not qualified. Hell, I can build a sprayer but cant give it a yearly MOT.
Also filling forms in, action plans etc, any other industry would charge you through the nose for this sort of thing, what would a manager charge if you had to pay for his service on an hourly rate? Why are we farmers supposed to charge ourselves out for minimum wage, fine if youre a big estate, you'll probably have someone employed to fill out all this type of guff full time. But I bet if you added it up over a year, 5 mins here 10 there, you would be amazed how long it all takes and if on an hourly rate, costs.
But without walking around with a stopwatch all year I dont know accurately exactly how much time it does take
 

Farma Parma

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Northumberlandia
Difficult to say. I use a spray contractor to avoid a lot of sh!te, so how much cheaper could I do it myself ?
Fee £250
Trips to tip to dispose of chem drums ( to get the ticket ) ?
3-4 days paperwork ? How much do I value my time ?
Moisture meter check sachet £20

I'd guess £500 ish.
10 years @ £500 / per year = nice S/H hedgecutter.

It's the pettyness that gets me. I know I'll get disbanded this year cos I ain't disposed of chem containers. ( Tips closed, or have to book slots etc when not in lockdowns ). No leeway, no allowance for the pandemic, nothing.
Surely you can do all chem containers & fert bags/seed bags every 2 years cant you? thats what i do now anyways.
Mine can all fit in one 14t trailer load & seeing ive gotta do a pretty much a 35mile round trip at my expence am sticking to that once every 24months now
its all stored dry n safe in the meantime anyways.
 

Nearly

Member
Location
North of York
As a non farm assured arable peasant and reading posts on here as well as talking to actual people in the real world it's not the financial cost that's the problem. It's the attitude and approach of the Red Tractor heirarchy and actual inspectors that come and check the conformance to every little invented test and micro-observed part of the process.

As someone with problems in the past relating to stress and lack of confidence then I'd avoid putting myself under inspection / stress again for as long as I possibly can.

Having seen some conditions in which local assured farmers store grain and other materials I have decided the whole thing is a con.
I volunteered to plink a few of the flock.of 50 pigeons living above and on a neighbour's wheat but was told it all mixes in. :(
 
Last edited:

thorpe

Member
As a non farm assured arable peasant and reading posts on here as well as talking to actual people in the real world it's not the financial cost that's the problem. It's the attitude and approach of the Red Tractor heirarchy and actual inspectors that come and check the conformance to every little invented test and micro-observed part of the process.

As someone with problems in the past relating to stress and lack of confidence then I'd avoid putting myself under inspection / stress again for as long as I possibly can.
i know what you mean, glad ihave a son to share the burden, but to be honest not had a bad auditer for years, but he was a b4stard checked spray records with met office for weather conditions , totted up wormer used against batch numbers etc. he never came back.
 
We are dairy here. Our milk buyer pays the fees. I would suggest (for us) that because we engage with ahdb and the research they produce, podcasts etc and we have derived benefit from increased scrutiny around welfare and veterinary plans/ antibiotic use. The scheme has been a net gain for us
( that doesn’t mean I approve of much of the box ticking and many of the new. Proposals.
 

DrWazzock

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
They've never tested my sprayer brakes, lights, indicators or steering during the "MOT". They take my word for it that they do work and they are right to do so. But it just makes the £250 fee seem even more of a rip off. Its basically for holding a jug and reading a stopwatch and testing my pressure gauge against the dubious looking one in the van.
On my small acreage the £250 annual sprayer MOT charge would probably keep the sprayer in spares and fuel for the year. It's a 24m sprayer doing 200 acres per year at the most. Maybe 5 passes, so 1000 acres sprayed then it needs another test. Its a sprayer, not the space shuttle.
And I need NRoSO points so its another £30 for the online update and half a day messing about on the screen. And on and on it goes.
With one thing and another it gets to the point where you wonder if its really worth the bother at all. I think that's what they want really. pee off all the small farmers with red tape and irritating picky little hoops and jobs so they pack up.
 

Wombat

Member
BASIS
Location
East yorks
They've never tested my sprayer brakes, lights, indicators or steering during the "MOT". They take my word for it that they do work and they are right to do so. But it just makes the £250 fee seem even more of a rip off. Its basically for holding a jug and reading a stopwatch and testing my pressure gauge against the dubious looking one in the van.
On my small acreage the £250 annual sprayer MOT charge would probably keep the sprayer in spares and fuel for the year. It's a 24m sprayer doing 200 acres per year at the most. Maybe 5 passes, so 1000 acres sprayed then it needs another test. Its a sprayer, not the space shuttle.
And I need NRoSO points so its another £30 for the online update and half a day messing about on the screen. And on and on it goes.
With one thing and another it gets to the point where you wonder if its really worth the bother at all. I think that's what they want really. pee off all the small farmers with red tape and irritating picky little hoops and jobs so they pack up.

We’re ring fenced so why does it matter if my lights work. I would rather spend the money fitting led light clusters on a new set of nozzles, better for me, the crops and the environment

Bit like the moisture meter everything goes straight off the field in tractor and trailer to local store where they use their 20k meters to tell me what the actual moisture is and what I will be charged to dry it. Where it’s mixed with 10,000 tonne of feed wheat and never seen again. So who gives a flying if mines calibrated or not.
 

kiwi pom

Member
Location
canterbury NZ
For arable units, sprayers seem to be the biggest headache and for livestock having some sort of relationship with a vet seems to upset people.
They seem like two fairly important things to get right though?
 

MrNoo

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Cirencester
For arable units, sprayers seem to be the biggest headache and for livestock having some sort of relationship with a vet seems to upset people.
They seem like two fairly important things to get right though?
I think sprayers are easy/simple, NRSO MOT test is just a tickbox exercise, you pay some money and get given a "sticker" job done, it's not stressful in my opinion. It's the rest of the nonsense we have to endure
 
For arable units, sprayers seem to be the biggest headache and for livestock having some sort of relationship with a vet seems to upset people.
They seem like two fairly important things to get right though?


The vet/livestock issue is in beef and sheep farmers who don't have vet visits from one year to the next. They don't need the service really and rarely, if ever, have routine visits or the like- there is no need.

Despite this, they still have to cough up the money to get their vet to sign off their animal health plan a piece of paper, which, in the case of many beef and sheep farms, means practically nothing.

Of course, you are supposed to have at least one vet visit per year as they legally can't write you a prescription for any vet meds without it.
 

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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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