There needs to be a reset soon

ALL our stock is fully housed with the in-calf heifers coming in at the end of November. The cows are still giving over a kilo of solids and most of them will be dried off just before Christmas.

Thankfully our milk buyer has just announced a much-needed two pence increase in milk price for December. Unfortunately, I won’t see the benefit until the cows start calving in February, but luckily enough the new shed is near completion and most of the bills paid for, just in time as I’ve received umpteen letters and emails from suppliers telling me their prices are increasing by 10–15% for the new year. It feels that the milk price rises will be swallowed up by inflationary prices in the supply chain.

One of my biggest concerns is fertiliser. With prices today at over £600/t and the trade talking it up much further for the spring, it feels as though the whole job is out of control. You could almost rank fertiliser along the likes of bitcoin or Tesla shares. So, what should I do? Buy what I need for the spring or hold off until the last minute and see if it drops slightly?

Whatever I do, I will certainly be looking at ways of growing more clover and reducing the influence of artificial fertiliser on the farm, along with making better use of slurry as we have just finished expanding our lagoon. Or is this all the great reset for prices?

A farm consultancy firm worked out that the milk price would have to be 35 pence just to keep up with the rising costs, and that was a couple of months ago.

Since then, they’ve increased it by a couple of pence again. It’s not difficult to see why when you just look at feed, fertiliser, fuel and electric prices. But the other big one is labour.

Whereby this cost has traditionally been at 2.5p/l it is now around the 4p mark, and that is if you can get the right staff. I don’t see this cost coming down, so I’d like to think that retailers are able to see the reality at last of the pressures farmers face when keeping the country fed and that they pay the supply chain a fair price.

There needs to be a reset in everything and fairly soon. We can blame a number of factors for why this is happening, Covid-19 and even the wind, but along with food, there seems to be a ‘cheap everything’ policy set by government for our basic needs – just look at our social care system.

The pandemic has not only highlighted that this is just not sustainable, but it’s wrong.