The new fashion for establishing herbal leys

Well, it is certainly spring now, much warmer and beginning to dry up at last. The countryside is a picture as the blackthorn is out, resembling snow on the hedgerows and mutterings from the old boys as to how we are in for a cold spell.

We might, but we might not and in the south east it will cool a bit (from 19C) to nearer 10C, but hardly a disaster. The rhododendrons are out at Tillington, and the weeds are motoring on now, docks, thistle, and the ragwort.

Grain prices have improved after a steep decline, this due to the port of Odessa becoming more of a worry for traders.

Lamb prices have been strong as the Easter trade is always terribly busy and beef shortages are being talked about as there are fewer dairy cattle and fewer suckler cows around.

With beef traders predicting 45 – 50,000 fewer animals this year, retailers are concerned that prices will go up and how consumers will react to that.

Following a Defra published impact assessment, a letter has been written by a pro-science think tank; Science for Sustainable Agriculture (SSA).

Although the impact assessment was done in a hurry, there are forty-five different authors representing 11 different organisations and they have considered 741 different environmental actions.

This was done in a short space of time and captured 2400 sources of evidence, focussing on the environmental benefits of different actions with ‘habitat creation’ considered to be the most impactful.

The Defra impact assessment discusses tradeoffs and given the intense competition for land, according to SSA there are 31 Environment Land Management (ELM) scheme actions likely to have major disbenefits.

SSA says Defra’s own assessment identifies multiple risks to both food production and the environment from its land sharing policies

Land in these schemes will be less productive which means more food needs to be produced on land not in such schemes and that includes other countries which could mean an overall environmental and food security disbenefit.

Defra dismisses the claims and that their impact assessment is one of many but admitted that the assessment did not take into account the popularity of the various actions.

Defra is also adamant that whilst there may be some short-term food production issues, longer term it claims that food production will benefit from the various schemes.

I can see this one running on for quite some time.

I organised for Professor Christopher Reynolds to come and talk to the Ruminant Health and Welfare group last week, a four nations group that I chair.

Christopher is head of animal science and director of CEDAR (Centre for Dairy Research) at Reading University, and he came to present their work on herbal leys. Herbal leys are becoming fashionable now as they improve soil structure and are seen as drought tolerant.

There are other reasons too, there is no need to buy Nitrogen fertiliser as herbal leys have legumes in them which provide that for the other plants as well as themselves and given that a mere 200kg of Nitrogen fertiliser production, is equivalent to travelling 6,000 miles in a small car as well as the high cost, it’s a win-win?

There is also a government grant in England to establish herbal leys and therefore I can see many farmers putting a % of their arable land into these leys.

Christopher Reynolds told us that in their trials of many years (he was initially a sceptic), they have produced silage crops the equivalent of Nitrogen applied ryegrass swards, the gold standard.

This is impressive and we were all getting increasingly interested in this concept.

However, as always it is not quite that straightforward and I have since sent a series of questions to Christopher on the grazing requirements of these leys.

How does that work, what are the measures and how are we to treat these leys in a rotational grazing system.

Given that many of these plants are quite different to ordinary ryegrass and whilst there are benefits from the diversity effects (exchange of nutrients at root level) of many different plants in the sward, there are a few things to learn too.

Whilst there are anthelmintic properties in these swards (another tick in the box) I have heard of farmers losing animals with bloat or sick animals grazing these swards.

This is most likely due to new skills being needed to graze them effectively and safely; information we need urgently.

I am getting frustrated with the Bank of England. Having allowed inflation to really start motoring whilst they sat on their hands and being far too slow in rising interest rates to combat it, they continued to put them up for too long which has harmed the economy.

Now inflation is on its way to below the 2% target and still they are not bringing rates down fast enough to help boost the economy.

It’s a poor show and whilst I understand the reasons for making them independent, I am no longer sure it was a good idea.

An end of an era at Petworth town, as Salvatore the barber hangs up his scissors in May, after 41 years.

That is very bad news for those of us who have been going to the same place regularly for decades, with those who have moved away many miles from Petworth over the years, coming back for a haircut.

Sal (as we call him) also did a great deal of football refereeing for all the Petworth youth over the years and is held in high regard.

He is not retiring, he is giving up to look after his wife who is unwell, and those of us who have been going there for years are organising ourselves to gather in small groups in one of our homes, where Sal will visit on his free days and carry on cutting! A local hero.

Salvatore comes from Italy of course and I was sad to see that another Italian hero of mine, Marcello Gandini has died.

Gandini was of course the designer who put tractor maker Lamborghini (Jeremy Clarkson has a very big one) on the map when it came to supercars in the 1960’s.

I remember when I saw the film ‘The Italian Job’ in the cinema for the first time, with the opening scenes of a blood red Lamborghini Miura speeding along a winding mountain road with Matt Monroe singing ‘On Days Like These’.

It ended violently of course as the car crashed into a Mafia bulldozer parked in a tunnel for that purpose, reversing with the remains of the car attached to its big blade before pushing it down into the ravine.

But what a car, it certainly frightened Ferrari at the launch at Geneva Motor Show in 1966.

Suddenly his offering was seen as old fashioned compared to this new beauty with a stonking V12 engine placed transversely behind the seats; the mid-engine road car had arrived.

He followed up with the Lamborghini Countach and also designed the Lancia Stratos, all great cars too.