FARMING FEATURE PART TWO: Keeping an eye out for gathering storm clouds
POOR weather, disappearing 'greenbelt' land and fewer pennies in income per litre of milk sold are just some of the daunting factors that can prey on a farmer's mind.
In her third and final look at the world of agriculture, following her visits to dairy and sheep farms and her spotlight on the farming calendar, Mail reporter Jemma Crowston investigates some of the main issues farmers face every day.
The weather
"Our work is very much dictated by the weather particularly during lambing season and summer time," explained Craig Langton, who runs his family's Manor Farm at Burton Overy with his wife Nicola.
Regardless of the weather, however, some jobs simply have to be done. Snow, heavy rain and storms just makes things a lot, lot harder for farming families.
Nicola, who I met when I was invited to spend a morning on their sheep farm, said: "One winter I had to keep putting my hands in buckets of hot water to stop them from being numb all the time.
"Because we're up so early when the air is even more fresh it can be tough but we work through it. We've been quite fortunate that we've not really had any major illnesses and we carry on working if we've just got a cold anyway."
The couple also said the changing weather can have an effect on the harvest of their arable crops. If the beginning of a year is too dry or too wet it can delay the schedule for a harvest which usually takes place in August.
This year the family farm did their harvesting as late as possible because of the effects of the dry weather during the previous months.
Craig said: "We have to keep tracking forecasts daily. We check online all the time but from speaking to other farmers they're in the same position.
"We have to find other jobs to do at times when the weather is really bad. So that's when I'll catch up on my charcoal burning work."
A few miles down the road, at Duncan Barbour's dairy farm, Kingarth, which I had visited even earlier that morning, before dawn, his son Peter said the right weather is the key to their farm running smoothly.
He said: "In the summer we have to collect a heap of grass ready to produce the food mix for the cows but if the weather is poor then the quality of the grass won't be as good either which means they won't perform as well."
Land development
I wanted to find out how farmers feel about the ever-decreasing 'greenbelt' and the increase in land developments – namely new housing estates.
"This is a difficult topic," said Craig Langton, "because there is a need for new villages but it's a debate over feeding people or providing places to live.
"A lot of villagers think they've paid a premium for their house and the surroundings and don't want that to change.
“My concern is about productive land being built on when there are a lot of brown fields available still.”
Burton Overy is not too many miles away from the land owned by the Co-operative, between Stoughton and Great Glen, where the company two years ago revealed proposals to build an eco-town there, dubbed Pennbury.
I asked Craig what he thought of the scheme and the fact that the Government in the end did not include the development in July in its shortlist of proposed eco-towns.
He said: “My thoughts at the time of the proposal were over how much vital land would be taken up.
“We’ve got little bits of development happening around this village and I don’t think people mind so much but the eco-town would have created a whole new town and the traffic would have been horrendous.”
Funding
The Government pays farmers depending on how many points they gain for their work, either half-yearly or annually.
DEFRA inspectors visit regularly to ensure the work is being done and that it is correctly recorded.
Craig said: “We’re in the entry level scheme so we get paid for maintaining the land, particularly wildlife hedgerows and public access paths.
“A lot of payments are interwoven with other schemes. For instance, I’m involved with the educational access fund because I do school visits to the farm in April. We also get a grant here for our woodland.”
He added: “A lot nowadays is to do with keeping records up to date. I have to make sure I keep records for spraying the ewes and such like.”
Peter Barbour at Kingarth dairy farm in the same village said farmers are often faced with tremendous pressures created by the giant supermarket chains.
“We often have to face competition from supermarkets because it’s now such a global market,” he said. “But some farmers have scored some great deals with some of the chains and we’re lucky here because we supply a cheesemakers near Melton with the milk from our farm.”
The Barbours get an average 25 litres (44 pints) of milk from each cow and they have 58 dairy cows on their farm. At the moment they get 24p per litre for the milk, which, incredibly, is even less than way back in 1995 when they were getting 28p per litre.
Peter explained: “There are more supermarkets now and they’re a lot bigger than 15 years ago. We’ve also got competition from abroad but as a dairy farmer we’re less affected by that because milk has a short shelf-life.”
A sign of how difficult things can be is the importance of the charity, the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, which helps support the welfare and well-being of farmers in hardship.
In Leicestershire the charity currently supports 21 farming families during times of need, hardship or distress. Between January and August 2009 it spent 15,000 in Leicestershire.
Time management
Some farms are dictated by the time whereas some can be quite flexible. Peter Barbour at Kingarth dairy farm said a lot of their work is dependent on time because the animals get into a routine.
He said: “We have to milk the cows twice a day and a lot of the time in the afternoon you’ll see the cows heading from the field to the gate.
“We also have to make sure the milking is done promptly in the morning because we have a tanker arrive every morning to take the milk away.”
However, over at Manor Farm, Craig Langton said: “We don’t have to get a specific amount of work done in a time slot on our farm. However it would be different at other farms such as the Barbours’ dairy farm.
“We’re out on most mornings from 8am because that’s when people start buying the eggs. But other than that, we work through the day as it comes.
“During lambing season we have to be able to work long, hard hours but there’s no guaranteed time for births and feedings.”
Technology
Technology changes and develops every day, something which noticeably affects farming life. Just looking at all the major machinery used in crop farming is a prime example.
Craig said: “I don’t think there’s been a lot of change for sheep farmers but we have had developments in vaccines such as for worming.
“But if you look at arable machinery it is changing all the time and there’s always something bigger and better around the corner.”
Over at Kingarth, the Barbours have some very high-tech equipment for a farm. In the milking parlour they have heat time devices that were developed in Israel to help farmers detect when the animals were on heat.
“The equipment monitors how much the cows move their head and makes a bleeping noise,” explained Peter. “The more movement there is, the more fertile they are. It helps us when it comes to breeding.”
He added: “On bigger farms they use robotic milking machines so the cows are effectively milking themselves. But it’s quite expensive.”
Diseases
Out of all the issues facing farmers, disease can be one of the deadliest, not just on individual animals and crops, but on the industry as a whole.
A lot of illnesses in herds of cattle or flocks of sheep go relatively undetected by the outside world - it is only the most devastating and fatal ones that make the headlines.
In the early 1990s it was the BSE outbreak, known colloquially as mad cow disease. Craig Langton, of Manor Farm, who used to have fattening cows on the farm until 1991/2, said: “When schools started banning beef from their menus and supermarkets stopped stocking it that’s when it became really tough.”
At Kingarth Farm Duncan Barbour said: “There was just a backlog of cattle in farms because the export markets closed and you were just stuck with the animals.”
Some farms chose to slaughter and burn the cattle to rid their land of the disease which left smouldering corpes on their land until DEFRA gave the go ahead to lift the export ban.
But then came the outbreak of foot and mouth disease, in two waves. The first signs came in the late 1990s and then again in 2001.
The disease made the authorities bring in new regulations and farmers faced an all-time low in prices for produce, including meat and milk.
Craig said: “Foot and mouth was particularly bad for sheep and we were stuck with them and the same happened again two years later. The market is still recovering from that.
“There’s been an outbreak of TB but that’s been less reported on. A lot of animals have been slaughtered, and then there’s a build up of animals because you can’t shift them. Diseases have completely changed farming life. There are more regulations, more vaccinations and just more awareness now so people know the signs to look out for.”
In 1988 health minister Edwina Currie caused outraged across the nation when she claimed most of Britain’s egg production was infected with the salmonella bacteria.
Craig said: “When this happened it was just so absurd. We were lucky because the local buyers stayed faithful. They said they’d never had a problem with our eggs so they didn’t see why they should stop buying from us.”
Two years ago sheep farmers were faced with Blue Tongue - an insect-borne viral infection which can cause widespread devastation in livestock.
But Craig said, thanks to the quick actions from DEFRA, the vaccine had done wonders to stop that disease from becoming an epidemic.
He added: “The vaccine has worked and this is what we need with all diseases if possible. Cattle can carry blue tongue disease but it’s more fatal to sheep. But on a farm where there are both, it can spread fast.”
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Weather for Harborough
Sunday 05 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 4 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 0 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 7 mph
Wind direction: North west
