Great news for pig farmers as supermarket slashes prices

Spring is here! Wonderful sunny weather last week and continuing this week has changed everything. It’s drying up fast and we cut our hedges at Tillington without making a mess in the fields. A note of caution if we think winter is banished though; as an old saying goes ‘A February spring is not worth a pin’. We are now in March and this is spring as far as I am concerned and the wildlife seems to agree with me.

We are getting on top of the pandemic now and Boris is desperate for all to return to their offices. I think he is in for a shock; Things will not go back to how they were before Covid, as so many are happier working from home and it makes so much more sense. A huge amount of day-to-day work and activities can be done online saving time, costs and with a much smaller carbon footprint. I know they need people out and about and spending, but I am not sure it’s going to work out.

The best news this week is that Morrison’s has slashed its pork, sausage and bacon prices in order to assist pig farmers by creating demand in its stores. A shoulder of pork which would normally cost £4.20/kg is now just £2, a pork loin reduced from £6 to £4 and pork tenderloin reduced from £7.50 to £6.00.

With pigs unable to move off farm creating a pork mountain, this move from Morrison’s to support the industry will hopefully make a real difference. We have a few Morrison’s in Sussex and I will be making a special trip.

A combination of Chinese ban on German pork imports has led to an oversupply in the EU which has lowered prices across the board, coupled with the extra pressure of Brexit border bureaucracy on British pig producers hampering our exports to the EU, causing huge difficulties on pig farms across the country.

The big event last week was the NFU Annual Conference; online of course and frankly it was a bit of a disappointment. Without the full programme (we only had a few headline speakers), breakout sessions and the atmosphere created in Birmingham during the event, it was always going to be tough.

NFU President Minette Batters opened the conference with a strong message that rural Britain is uniquely placed to help the nation recover from the Covid-19 pandemic, but that government investment in order to ‘level-up’ the countryside is needed. Addressing the rural/ urban funding gap could create jobs, boost green economic growth and improve the well-being of the nation.

Minette also warned government against food complacency, expecting it to be there; 86 per cent of citizens believe we should be growing more of our own food, a return to whole food, honest food as not all food in the world is produced to the same standard. She also backed Red Tractor which is 20 years old this year and warned processors and merchants not to cynically continue mixing Red Tractor assured food with non-assured food.

George Eustice promised to respect the AHDB Horticulture vote which is to end the compulsory levy as he will do when the potato ballot delivers its results. He also said that further ballots will now be held on all other sectors which is alarming to say the least. Who in their right mind would hold a ballot, never mind two ballots during a pandemic? With such limited opportunity for AHDB to go out and explain and persuade levy payers, it was always going to be difficult.

The biggest and most progressive horticultural growers have now been defeated by the one levy payer one vote ballot and will need to fight to keep their levy investment going on a voluntary basis whilst everyone else ride on their coat tails; benefiting from the work done. I fear the potato vote will go the same way and will continue the domino effect. The industry needs the work done by AHDB more than ever with the challenges ahead, but many farmers will not be interested.

The chairman of the Trade and Agriculture Commission Tim Smith I thought was downbeat; a man who can see his board will make little difference in the scheme of things. He admitted the board was two years too late and it cannot get much done unless it can pull together the various heads of department but acknowledged that this government is not joined up.

It has taken this country decades to achieve our high welfare and environmental standards he said, and we must ensure that there is no race to the bottom as we sign up international trade deals.

Sir Keir Starmer was the first Labour leader to address the NFU Conference since 2008. He had a strong message that the Labour Party needs to reconnect with agriculture and farming. His most compelling message was that Labour has been quick to articulate things they are opposed to in the countryside, such as badger culling, without telling us what it is in favour of.

Desperate for a positive story, he was forced to go back to the past-war period when Clement Attlee introduced the 1947 Agriculture Act which glossed over their record on replacing the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food with the more metropolitan Defra, the problems with the Rural Payments Agency which were huge and many more. He has a huge mountain to climb in order to persuade farmers to support his party; not least due to the green agenda being hijacked by David Cameron with his ‘vote blue, go green’ initiative.

This is continuing with the environmental land management scheme and higher animal welfare policies of this government which squeezes

Labour out.

The Labour Party, which has been in charge of Wales for years, is of little help, especially having enraged farmers by putting the whole of Wales under a Nitrogen Vulnerable Zone (NVZ) status and its opposition to badger culling whilst failing to improve infection rates when compared to the successful policy in England and elsewhere.

However, agriculture and farmers are facing huge challenges under this government in the immediate future and Sir Keir played on everyone’s fears and lack of confidence; it could just be that this government could lose the countryside if it all goes wrong. After all governments tend to lose elections and that is how the opposition come into power. Sir Keir has certainly seen off the hopeless Corbyn and his army very swiftly and is now firmly in charge. What can he do with it?

Monty Don has spoken! Cutbacks in council funding have helped to prevent the box-ticking municipal vandalism that is road verge trimming. Thankfully, the cuts and growing awareness of the importance of road verges for wildlife has reduced cutting and delayed it to give the seed a chance to ripen. I totally agree on this point and I have also noticed that the cow parsley plant thrives on this regime of vandalism.

There are an estimated 2,400sq kilometres of road verge in Britain and organisations such as the Wildlife Trust, Butterfly Conservation, and Natural England have set out guidelines for councils to better manage these areas. It’s exactly what these organisations should be doing, as there is no advantage for anyone to see road verges without wildflowers.