Summer outlook is forlorn for both horn and corn

It’s a bit difficult being an arable farmer at the moment – on top of the yield implications of the wet spring, the dry summer and the return of mixed weather just as harvest looms, the industry seems to have gone from hero to zero in a matter of days.

Only recently, plaudits were coming in for the admirable degree of co-operation which has seen grain growers promise not to drop the chopper as they harvest their crops and, rather than ploughing straw back in, offer it to help livestock producers struggling for fodder and bedding for the coming winter.

But this didn’t last – and the focus soon switched to the arable growers who are now putting large areas of land down to crops designed to feed anaerobic digester (AD) plants rather than cattle – and this means less land is available for growing grain and straw.

Although this has been lurking quietly in the background, with virtually no carry-over of straw from last year and this year’s bonsai barley and woebegone wheat meaning that straw will, quite literally, be thin on the ground, the issue has now been pushed centre stage.

Despite initial gratitude shown to those cereal growers willing to help, last week saw beef and sheep producers turn on the arable sector for moving into the renewable energy market.

The fact that it is more profitable is, from the arable growers perspective, the main reason for changing – but this has drawn accusations that 0 Last week beef and sheep producers turned on the arable sector for moving into the renewable energy market

the renewables sector is benefiting from double funding, which is pricing livestock producers out of the market.

Claiming that cropping farmers benefit from area support measures, while the processors benefit from the financial incentives of Feed In Tariffs or Renewable Obligation Certificates, livestock producers have effectively cried “foul”.

While this call might go unheeded in normal times, with everything up for grabs as the UK begins to draw up its own domestic farm policy for the first time in 40 years, he who shouts the loudest might just be heard.

So the old corn/horn divide seems to be alive and well. NFU Scotland president Andrew Mccornick tried to pour some oil on troubled water by pointing out that while only around 2 per cent of arable land was devoted to AD production, more than twice this acreage has to be diverted from standard crop production to comply with “greening” regulations.

He hinted that this could give policy-makers a way round the impasse, either by lowering this requirement or allowing production of industrial crops for renewable energy to qualify as greening. In a further attempt to hold the two sectors together, he called on the UK Government to copy the approach which sees wind turbines paid to stand still – and continue

to pay the financial incentives to AD plants which reduced output and diverted feedstocks to the livestock industry.

Although a short-term answer, this would free up arable crops and much needed distillery by-products for use as fodder.

Despite these pleas, the Government sometimes moves in mysterious ways – and there was a hint that the taxman might curb the attractiveness of the AD market.

HMRC are currently taking a hard line on tax collection – and this could have implications for land used for providing crops for supplying AD plants.

Last week farmers growing hay to supply the horsey market were warned by a leading accountancy firm that HMRC could be set to challenge any claim for Agricultural Property Relief for inheritance tax purposes on land so used.

The argument would be that “horsey culture” isn’t agriculture – and while a ruling on the energy production front has been given that short-term coppicing is OK, the same accountants said that when the revenue comes round to assess inheritance tax, a big question mark hangs over availability of APR where farms are devoted to the production of bio-energy crops.

So, in a year like this, neither the horn nor the corn can escape feeling forlorn.