Food security is of importance – the global days are gone
It’s still very wet and most soils remain saturated. Much warmer when its wet of course and last Thursday was just like spring; 14-15 degrees in January! We are now in February and less than four weeks until March 1 which to me is spring. We had gained an hour of extra daylight from the shortest day (December 21) to January 26 and I am looking forward to gaining the next hour of daylight in less time. The songbirds certainly agree as activity and song gradually increase in volume. The owls are hooting a great deal at night in the woods as they prepare to pair up.
Welsh farmers and the whole industry are up in arms over their government’s decision to put the whole of Wales in NVZ (Nitrogen Vulnerable Zone). It was announced last Wednesday; now referred to as ‘Black Wednesday’ amongst Welsh farmers. I remember speaking in Haverfordwest many years ago when I was at the NFU, warning farmers of the difficulties and cost of farming under NVZ rules in England.
I suggested they prepared for similar measures unless they were able to persuade their government that they were farming in a way which meant such regulation was not needed. It was not a popular message (not many of my messages were!) and I am only surprised that it has taken this long for the Welsh government to act. There are constant stories of pollution from dairy farms, free-range egg production, lack of slurry capacity and so on – all the issues which farmers could have done something about with the aid of their government if they had worked together and grabbed the initiative.
This is going to be very difficult for many farmers, especially tenant farmers who will be looking to landlords to fund the extra storage needed for slurry – a considerable investment. Rural Affairs Minister Lesley Griffith has in the past expressed concerns over ‘calendar farming’ when referring to closed periods for slurry spreading; noticing that on the first day spreading is allowed, farmers are out there with tankers and spreaders regardless of weather as slurry stores are often full.
She has nevertheless refused to change the closed periods, although very often the weather is far better during the closed period, when some spreading would be less harmful. She is being warned that the NVZ regulation will mean more animals out-wintered and the consequences for soil and water. She is also being blamed for going against her word of not announcing any of this during lockdown; none of this cuts any ice.
In England we are all focused on the Government’s consultation on animal transport and live exports. The Government put the ban on live exports in its manifesto at the election and is also committed to improving animal welfare. I find it difficult to see them changing their minds on this issue despite protests from the industry. Sheep farmers in particular point to a lucrative store lamb trade in Europe which keeps prices higher in the UK due to competition.
Given that the major ferry companies stopped taking animals over from Dover many years ago, it is unlikely that a case can be made that it takes less time to cross to Europe, rather than travelling across this country. No dairy calves have gone across for many years and that as a welfare issue is a good thing. We should be rearing them here and our supermarkets and government procurement policy should be looking to UK produce first every time.
After all a valuable lesson has just been learned on vaccination production and procurement; the same goes for food. It is high time we realised that food security is of importance and the global days of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, when it mattered not where manufacturing took place, are long gone. Many more countries are becoming more protective and nationalistic and security of food and medicines are fundamental where others will look after their own first.
The animal transport consultation will need to be thought through and I expect a strong response from industry. The biggest sticking points are that journey times seem to include time at market or collection centres, and that travelling when outside temperatures are below 5c or above 30c (poultry 25c) would not be allowed. That would have meant no travelling in the north of England in January! How would the poultry industry, planning transport three months ahead or more, cope with the vagaries of our weather?
The biggest complaint is that the proposed travel regs are not evidence based or science-led. We wait to see what evidence there is that sheep for example or cattle find it uncomfortable to travel in a truck when the outside temperature is say 3-4c? We do not experience many days above 30c and when it is that hot one can see that there could be discomfort, although 25c for poultry means that there would be many more days when their journeys could not take place.
As farmers ask why we are faced with all this extra regulation having left the EU, the fantasy of a Singapore-on-Thames is at last being discussed in the press. It is forgotten that the phrase was coined as a threat to the EU by Philip Hammond, then chancellor; resurrected three years on by the present Government as the Singapore of Europe. The dream is that Britain will become a buccaneering, low-cost, low regulation nation; modelled on the Asian city-state, where productivity is twice that of the UK.
Rather than cherry pick the attractive parts of the success of Singapore, we should look at some other aspect of life there. Singapore is not a liberal democratic state; it has had one party in power since 1959 which has more than 90 per cent of the seats in parliament. Its government strongly believes in elitism, believing that not all human beings are born equal.
It has crime policies which include the death penalty and caning; it believes that a country needs to develop its discipline more than its democracy. It operates a small government and spend little on public services, and whilst all of the above may appear attractive to many in this country, Singapore also depends heavily on its immigrant workforce; a quarter of its 5.7million people; which will not be attractive to so many here.
We live in strange times; no, not Covid, but Swampy! Protesters against HS2 have spent months secretly digging tunnels without detection under Euston Square Gardens, to the embarrassment of security personnel. Led by veteran ‘master digger’ (!) Swampy, who first hit the headlines in 1996 (he must be getting on now) during the A30 dual-carriageway link to Devon, a network of tunnels have been dug metres from Euston Station, one of London’s main railway stations.
When the tunnels were found, a few of the protesters managed to escape underground and are now dug in, protesting against our government’s irresponsibly; putting life at risk from climate and ecological emergency! One of the protesters compared their work to the film The Great Escape; a film riddled with fiction, based on the mass breakout of British prisoners of war from Stalag Luft 3 which had a very different ending in real life.
This would not happen in Singapore!