You have to smile.

Location
cumbria
And many of those same 99% of milk buyers have their own more detailed and more onerous scheme a supplier must cooperate within which only serves to make generic farm assurance pointless IMV and people should be exempt from RT for that reason.

The topic of Red Tractor comes up at every producer meeting I attend now. When they start with the mass failings dunno what will happen.
Bizarrely, the only vote we have currently is to resign NFU membership citing red tractor as the reason. Even then there is a threshold of resignations that need to be achieved.
 

DairyGrazing

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
North West
Someone needs to get a grip on the slurry situation. I've been out of the village three times this week and this is what I've seen.

1) tanking slurry on to a field as it is flooding. Carried on all day field was 100 % underwater the next day.

2) farm emptying a lagoon 800m of road complete covered can't see road markings or tarmac and pavement covered as Well. People were walking in the road. No brush being used. Fields completed covered turned black can't see the grass, partially flooded the next day.

3) farm spreading dirty water on a field with a ditch on three side. Spreading right up to the top of the bank.

4) farm with no lagoon. Sheds scraped daily into dual spreader and spread onto maize stubble . Dirty water from parlour straight into the ditch.

5) pumping slurry onto maize stubble at a farm called marsh farm.

Saw more but got bored of writing it down.
 

vantage

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Pembs
Someone needs to get a grip on the slurry situation. I've been out of the village three times this week and this is what I've seen.

1) tanking slurry on to a field as it is flooding. Carried on all day field was 100 % underwater the next day.

2) farm emptying a lagoon 800m of road complete covered can't see road markings or tarmac and pavement covered as Well. People were walking in the road. No brush being used. Fields completed covered turned black can't see the grass, partially flooded the next day.

3) farm spreading dirty water on a field with a ditch on three side. Spreading right up to the top of the bank.

4) farm with no lagoon. Sheds scraped daily into dual spreader and spread onto maize stubble . Dirty water from parlour straight into the ditch.

5) pumping slurry onto maize stubble at a farm called marsh farm.

Saw more but got bored of writing it down.
Cheshire, the land of milk and slurry! :cool:
Not trying to be clever , but it’s been seriously wet this autumn, storage of manures has been under serious pressure.
 

Davy

Member
Location
North NI
Someone needs to get a grip on the slurry situation. I've been out of the village three times this week and this is what I've seen.

1) tanking slurry on to a field as it is flooding. Carried on all day field was 100 % underwater the next day.

2) farm emptying a lagoon 800m of road complete covered can't see road markings or tarmac and pavement covered as Well. People were walking in the road. No brush being used. Fields completed covered turned black can't see the grass, partially flooded the next day.

3) farm spreading dirty water on a field with a ditch on three side. Spreading right up to the top of the bank.

4) farm with no lagoon. Sheds scraped daily into dual spreader and spread onto maize stubble . Dirty water from parlour straight into the ditch.

5) pumping slurry onto maize stubble at a farm called marsh farm.

Saw more but got bored of writing it down.
That's ridiculous. Theres no excuse for any of them points in this day and age.
 
Someone needs to get a grip on the slurry situation. I've been out of the village three times this week and this is what I've seen.

1) tanking slurry on to a field as it is flooding. Carried on all day field was 100 % underwater the next day.

2) farm emptying a lagoon 800m of road complete covered can't see road markings or tarmac and pavement covered as Well. People were walking in the road. No brush being used. Fields completed covered turned black can't see the grass, partially flooded the next day.

3) farm spreading dirty water on a field with a ditch on three side. Spreading right up to the top of the bank.

4) farm with no lagoon. Sheds scraped daily into dual spreader and spread onto maize stubble . Dirty water from parlour straight into the ditch.

5) pumping slurry onto maize stubble at a farm called marsh farm.

Saw more but got bored of writing it down.
The EA would take a very dim view of most of that, especially if within an NVZ
 

bar718

Member
Inspections are few and far between here and it never seems to be the farms you’d expect if you know what I mean.
But it’s those farms that flout the rules that get us all a bad name as it’s them that get used by our critics to show farming in a bad light. Who should be responsible for showing them the errors of their ways ?
 

Farmer Keith

Member
Location
North Cumbria
But it’s those farms that flout the rules that get us all a bad name as it’s them that get used by our critics to show farming in a bad light. Who should be responsible for showing them the errors of their ways ?

I couldn’t agree more and it’s those farms that will mean we all end up permitted in the very near future but that’s probably the only way to implement change as the softly softly approach will never work.
 

Jdunn55

Member
Someone needs to get a grip on the slurry situation. I've been out of the village three times this week and this is what I've seen.

1) tanking slurry on to a field as it is flooding. Carried on all day field was 100 % underwater the next day.

2) farm emptying a lagoon 800m of road complete covered can't see road markings or tarmac and pavement covered as Well. People were walking in the road. No brush being used. Fields completed covered turned black can't see the grass, partially flooded the next day.

3) farm spreading dirty water on a field with a ditch on three side. Spreading right up to the top of the bank.

4) farm with no lagoon. Sheds scraped daily into dual spreader and spread onto maize stubble . Dirty water from parlour straight into the ditch.

5) pumping slurry onto maize stubble at a farm called marsh farm.

Saw more but got bored of writing it down.
What I don't understand about that (if you forget the environmental impact!) Why you would want to waste such a valuable resource?! Npk and organic matter arent cheap to buy in! If used correctly and efficiently slurry, dung and dirty water are priceless imo
 
What I don't understand about that (if you forget the environmental impact!) Why you would want to waste such a valuable resource?! Npk and organic matter arent cheap to buy in! If used correctly and efficiently slurry, dung and dirty water are priceless imo
Wait till your milking. Slurry is a pain in the arse and never ending. What your used too with beef sucklers is child's play compared to siht running in a pit 24 hours a day for 120 days a year. Yes its all fertiliser, but its a pain and if you havnt got storage it's a nightmare.
There is a member on here who can't get premission for extra storage so is stuck with only a few weeks in the winter, its not their choice as they want to build a lagoon but can't get permission, what do the collective recommend they do?
 
So I've failed farm assurance (nothing wrong with stock or milk quality) but they now say I'm going to get a spot check within the next 12 months (no problem with that) what gets my goat is the fact, they've given me 28 days to pay for said visit (£270) and if its not paid within that time my farm assurance is being suspended and my milk won't be collected, I didn't realise that not paying an invoice which could be 10 months ahead of any visit, affected the quality of the milk I produced, therefore making it unsalable.
Failed my last inspection too on some minor points, one not having a piece of paper filled up with contingency plans.

One of the questions being what would you do in the event of loosing farm assured status with a) your milk and b) your cows.
Seem like stupid questions to me, once farm assured status is lost, what has it got to do with them.

No doubt they have a correct answer in mind but instead of issuing guidance on what you could do they ask a question that they might not like the answer to.
Stupid questions deserve stupid answers,
I did think of replying that I’d commit suicide and leave the problem for someone else, but perhaps that’s a bit too near the truth for some, I’m sure there’s a whole host of other answers that would be unacceptable too.

There was also the question what would you do if activists rolled up on your farm. Another one where guidance would be more appropriate but they ask the question.
No doubt feed them to the pigs would only lead them to asking questions about why I have pigs that they have no records of assured status for or I could reply that I’d bury them deep but I’m not convinced they’d consider my mini digger up to the task of burying them sufficiently deep enough

Even the inspector said those in the office were getting OTT in their attitude
 

Farmer Keith

Member
Location
North Cumbria
Wait till your milking. Slurry is a pain in the arse and never ending. What your used too with beef sucklers is child's play compared to siht running in a pit 24 hours a day for 120 days a year. Yes its all fertiliser, but its a pain and if you havnt got storage it's a nightmare.
There is a member on here who can't get premission for extra storage so is stuck with only a few weeks in the winter, its not their choice as they want to build a lagoon but can't get permission, what do the collective recommend they do?

tower?
 

Yonlass

Member
What I don't understand about that (if you forget the environmental impact!) Why you would want to waste such a valuable resource?! Npk and organic matter arent cheap to buy in! If used correctly and efficiently slurry, dung and dirty water are priceless imo
I think it would be the fact if that their storage is full, then they have to blow it somewhere.
If you didn't need to spread it now, then why would you?
Not defending, just pointing out that not everyone gets 20 inches of rain a year and can travel all year round. This has been a particularly wet summer and autumn. It's like the Somme round us at the moment ☹ However, if it's year in, year out, then they need to be addressing it.
 
Wait till your milking. Slurry is a pain in the arse and never ending. What your used too with beef sucklers is child's play compared to siht running in a pit 24 hours a day for 120 days a year. Yes its all fertiliser, but its a pain and if you havnt got storage it's a nightmare.
There is a member on here who can't get premission for extra storage so is stuck with only a few weeks in the winter, its not their choice as they want to build a lagoon but can't get permission, what do the collective recommend they do?
Can’t say I regard slurry as a pain in the ass, it’s liquid fert.
I have to have sufficient storage as I’m in an NVZ but I didn’t think it was that difficult for an existing farm to get permission for additional storage in most circumstances, it’s not really planning policy to force established business to shut down.
Of course lagoons or perhaps I should say unlined lagoons aren’t appropriate everywhere including here which is why I have towers .
There must have been a reason given as to why someone wasn’t allowed to dig a lagoon which would probably give a clue as to what to do next.

As far as I can remember it was a recommendation to have 4 months slurry storage as far back as 1990 although no doubt most farms still in milk will have increased cow numbers since although maybe not slurry storage. Just how much of a recommendation and how enforceable the 4 months is I haven’t a clue
 

Jdunn55

Member
Wait till your milking. Slurry is a pain in the arse and never ending. What your used too with beef sucklers is child's play compared to siht running in a pit 24 hours a day for 120 days a year. Yes its all fertiliser, but its a pain and if you havnt got storage it's a nightmare.
There is a member on here who can't get premission for extra storage so is stuck with only a few weeks in the winter, its not their choice as they want to build a lagoon but can't get permission, what do the collective recommend they do?
Whoever that member is has my deepest sympathy, I couldnt think of anything worse and is completely unfair on them. I have no suggestions as to what they can do other than remove themselves from the situation by moving elsewhere, with or without the cows, but I dont know their circumstances so wouldnt like to comment any further.

I hate dealing with slurry, to the point of considering roofing over the store eventually and bedding with straw to create dung instead (not viable for now unfortunately). But that's no excuse to be pumping it into rivers and polluting the environment unnecessarily. If you genuinly cant build a store then I dont know what the answer is but out of the 5 cases mentioned I would bet not all of them cant build a store! If you can build a store then that's what should and (imo) must be done.
 

Jdunn55

Member
I think it would be the fact if that their storage is full, then they have to blow it somewhere.
If you didn't need to spread it now, then why would you?
Not defending, just pointing out that not everyone gets 20 inches of rain a year and can travel all year round. This has been a particularly wet summer and autumn. It's like the Somme round us at the moment ☹ However, if it's year in, year out, then they need to be addressing it.
True but I would say slurry can be spread after first, second and third cuts (especially if something like a trailing shoe is used) I dont see why you should have full lagoons going into a winter? Surely you should be going into winter with them nearly empty? Spreading a bit now when the weather and field conditions allows is perfectly fine, but spreading huge quantities now to get the store empty is a bit reckless to say the least
 
I think it would be the fact if that their storage is full, then they have to blow it somewhere.
If you didn't need to spread it now, then why would you?
Not defending, just pointing out that not everyone gets 20 inches of rain a year and can travel all year round. This has been a particularly wet summer and autumn. It's like the Somme round us at the moment ☹ However, if it's year in, year out, then they need to be addressing it.
Sounds like you’re having it a lot wetter than us then, milkers have been in about 5 weeks but drys and youngstock still out with plenty of grass.

Not a particularly dry autumn but not too bad either, Anyone having to spread slurry now would be in a right pickle if they were in an NVZ, I suspect they haven’t got all that much storage
 

dinderleat

Member
Location
Wells
True but I would say slurry can be spread after first, second and third cuts (especially if something like a trailing shoe is used) I dont see why you should have full lagoons going into a winter? Surely you should be going into winter with them nearly empty? Spreading a bit now when the weather and field conditions allows is perfectly fine, but spreading huge quantities now to get the store empty is a bit reckless to say the least
I’m afraid your going to a have a shock when you start on your own 2 feet it’s not a dig at all , it just sometimes you can’t control all situations and everything isn’t straight forward.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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    Votes: 79 42.5%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 65 34.9%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

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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