The cost of sustainable farming

I don’t think I’m a person who moans; I never saw myself as a whinging farmer. My family may say differently, but they often find themselves on the wrong side of any sarcasm.

But if something winds me up, everyone has to know – and if I think some official is talking nonsense, well, I have to tell them.

This can make you enemies, but who cares.

What is winding me up today is all this talk that when we went organic that’s exactly what we were doing – no sprays, no chemical fertiliser, high standards of welfare, the same number of cattle on more acres (we have cut out growing an arable and keep the same number of cattle on that acreage). We are very close to being antibiotic free, which ticks a very important box.

So we are fast becoming self-sufficient – surely that is farming sustainably?

But it isn’t.

When we became fully organic, milk was 39p per litre. Our budget for this year is that our milk average price will be 34p per litre. If the grass should ever grow – at the time of writing, there are frosts most nights – we will sell 900,000 litres. Therefore, 5p per litre multiplied by 900,000 is £45,000.

Out of our control; to be taken on the chin.

We also produce point of lay pullets. We produce two-and-a-half crops a year – if you average that out it comes to 100,000 a year.

These go on to free-range laying units, which are, we are told, a kinder way to produce eggs.

The people we grow for provide the birds and the feed. We provide the housing, the inside equipment, the heating and the labour, and all the other bits and pieces.

What we get for each pullet is the same as it was three years ago. In that time everything we buy as our part of the deal has gone up in price, so we are worse off than we were three years ago.

This is not meant as a criticism – from what I know about the finances of egg production, there just isn’t the money in the system to increase our management fee.

If we are so much worse off with our milk production and worse off with our pullet production, what’s sustainable about that?

If it’s a financial struggle when you are doing most of the right things, what chance is there for the ones who farm conventionally?

TB: testing times

I haven’t finished yet – then there is TB.

Last August we sent off some cull cows. I’ve told you this before, but it’s all part of the picture. One cow was considered to possibly have TB. Some of her tissue was sent off for further examination and we were closed down as regards cattle movements. It took five months to say that she was clear. We never complained.

Movement restrictions were lifted and we were able to sell some calves. These calves were of an age when they needed a pre‑movement test – no prizes for guessing who had to pay for that.

But our movement derestriction didn’t last long. In our area we are on six-monthly testing and another reactor was found. Restrictions were reapplied and at present we have 30 calves on milk.

The very best case scenario is that we have two clear tests – that’s 120 days with more expense and you are worse off anyway for reasons I have previously explained.

Irony of ironies, the cow that was taken didn’t have TB. The ministry letter said that just because it couldn’t be found doesn’t mean she didn’t have it. If I apply the same logic, it doesn’t mean she did, either.

All we ask for is fairness, and this doesn’t feel very fair. I’m not for a minute saying that somewhere there is an agenda to get rid of small family livestock farms, but that is sometimes how it feels.

Looking forward, it’s only large (1,000‑cow) herds that will be able to afford the infrastructure required of them. But people don’t like big housed herds. They like cows to graze and feel the sun on their backs, and as the years pass I am confident calls will be made for a return to small herds on family farms.

But it may be too late.

Grass won’t be greener

But it gets worse. All day long the TV news has reported that to achieve green targets we need to cut back on meat and dairy.

Politicians were saying this because it is expedient to say so. People – the voters – like politicians to say, for example, that farmers don’t think grassland had an important part to play in locking up carbon, and people assume those green fields would still be there if people cut down on meat and dairy.

But they are wrong. Those grass fields are only there because farmers want to graze livestock on them. If that stops, those fields will soon revert to something else.

The majority of people don’t know how the countryside works, but that is no barrier to them having an opinion – and it certainly never crosses their minds that their opinion is not the right one.

Throwing stones

I’ll tell you a story. The story is quite funny and, at the same time, quite frightening.

A farmer friend of mine is having a quiet sit in his armchair one Sunday afternoon. There is an insistent rapping on his back door. He finds a group of about 12 ramblers. There is no preamble; no hello or sorry to disturb you.

One asks: “Are those your sheep in that field?”

“Yes”.

“They are starving; they are so hungry, they are eating rocks.”

Cries of “shame on you” and “it’s a disgrace” are shouted at the farmer.

The farmer, for his part, is at some loss to work out why these people thought his sheep were eating rocks. Then he realises the problem – he had recently put out some Himalayan rock salt for the sheep to lick.

This rock salt comes in big pink lumps. Sheep and cattle love it – and the farmer had some in the cruet on his kitchen table.

The ramblers don’t believe him until he takes them up his yard and shows them the rest of the delivery. They are clearly disappointed; they would have much rather found an instance of animal cruelty.

The worrying thing is that people like that – or the organisations they belong to – will lobby politicians about the future of the countryside, and the politicians will listen to them long before they will listen to the farmers because there are more of them than there are farmers.

Also worrying is that some of those politicians know as much about the countryside to think that sheep eat rocks as well…