We live in volatile times with costs rocketing
Cooler temperatures with ice and snow last week! There is a great deal of greenery joining the blackthorn blossom in the hedgerows; this brilliant white blossom which either signals that winter is not finished yet or a welcome spring sign as it looks like snow. It often gets colder at the end of March and as it coincides with Blackthorn blossom, it is easy to see why the old folk would call it a blackthorn winter. Last year was similar to this spring with April very different to the wonderful March weather; let’s hope that is not the case again.
We live in unpredictable and volatile times with inflation and all costs rocketing. Food inflation is higher than stated, according to experts, and is set to increase further this year as costs work their way through supply chains. There is always a lag as increased farm costs take time to feed through; much faster in milk and chicken as we see prices increasing in retail shops, but slower in beef as the animals take far longer to grow and finish.
When global markets are volatile and on the increase they attract investors and speculators and food markets are no different. We saw this in 2008 and we are seeing evidence of it again according to Jennifer Clapp, Canada research chair in global food security and sustainability at the University of Waterloo. There is an increase in commodity futures and commodity-linked investment funds and reports of financial investments moving into other kinds of agricultural-linked investment funds.
It’s a sign that investors are looking for speculative gains associated with rising food prices, she said, and there has been dysfunction in the commodity markets in recent weeks. The future wheat price rising so high that contracts with farmers wishing to sell forward have been rejected as the buyers do not believe prices accurately reflected reality and were possibly due to over-speculation.
There is talk that Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine was a bid to leverage political power through the global food chain. Professor Tim Benton, research director at Chatham House think tank and professor at Leeds University, suggests that this move should be seen as a geostrategic asset; less land means more demand for goods produced on that land. Professor Benton asks whether one of the drivers of the Russian invasion was to control a bigger block of very good land and thereby increase the share of global food supply in the same way as Russia does in the global energy market.
I regularly come across various pressure groups and after many years of working with them where I can and where it makes sense, most of the time it’s not productive or rewarding. I say this simply because single-issue groups are exactly that, they are campaigners and they think only of their single issue. There is no compromise, no give, certainly no chance of seeing the bigger picture and right now, with the biggest crisis I can remember, no change in their attitude or zeal for change.
It’s not that they have no idea; it’s just that they don’t take anything else into consideration and therefore it’s their cause and nothing else which matters. While I have worked with them over the years, I have also understood that they are not there to help; its take and no compromise. This is not to say that pressure groups are a bad thing, indeed over the years they have achieved many changes in all sorts of different areas and are an important part of our democracy.
But they are on the margins and should not be anything other than part of the picture in government deliberations and while paying attention to all the voices over certain policies; they are just that, another voice. Sometimes pressure groups go further, they petition, organise protests and in some cases issue legal proceedings, but there is a line which they should not cross and it looks as if one group has done just that over the badger cull; one of the most contentious issues of all.
Farmers and more importantly Defra have rebutted a study which claims that licensed culling of badgers in England has been ineffective in reducing bovine TB. The findings were published in the Vet Record journal recently by vets who oppose the cull, claiming that the policy has cost a fortune and saved nothing. The peer-reviewed study was co-authored by ecologist Thomas Langton and vets, Mark Jones who is head of policy at the Born Free foundation and Iain McGill; all three longstanding opponents of the policy.
In a nutshell, the study claims that in nine of 10 counties, bTB incidences began falling before badger culling began due to the introduction of cattle-disease control measures introduced at the same time. This has been a bone of contention for a very long time and there is little doubt that measures to limit the spread of the disease have also played a part.
However, the paper acknowledges the limitation of the data used for this analysis and now that Defra and the industry have had an opportunity to study the work this has become clear. Chief veterinary officer (CEO) Christine Middlemiss and chief scientific advisor Professor Gideon Henderson rebut the study’s claims and found significant methodological flaws in the analysis by Langton and colleagues.
Experienced government scientists from the Animal and Plant Health Agency have reviewed the report and also found the analysis scientifically flawed. The report has manipulated the data in a way which makes it difficult to understand the actual effects of badger culling and as a result of this its conclusions are wrong. No doubt this debate will continue as a vociferous minority will not let it go, but at least if they publish we can at least discuss the scientific merits (or otherwise) of their reports.
It seems that at long last the water companies are in the dock for discharging sewage routinely over 1,000 times a year into our rivers and not just as an emergency measure during floods. Farmers have been blamed by environmentalists and pressure groups for years, but now it’s there for all to see as the media have at last caught up with this huge scandal.
They don’t deny it; they say water rates will need to increase if they are to stop this practice. Where is the Environment Agency; that useless organisation which throws the book at any innocent who has an accident, but powerless when faced with rogues and it seems water companies? Will there be huge fines? Cuts in the obscene salaries at the top for those who were obviously not doing their job and should be sacked?
NFU Cymru lost its court battle with the Welsh government which has designated the whole of Wales an NVZ area and the need for several extra months’ expensive slurry storage. Not only have material costs gone through the roof in the meantime, but availability is becoming a problem and this will drive many farmers to leave the industry I suspect as it is a heavy blow on top of all the other pressures.