Farm Diary April 8 2009

The conditions are perfect and it should all be finished and rolled in by the time you read this. We have spread some more dirty water on the silage fields, and the grass has started to grow very strongly in the last week as the days lengthen noticeably. We are filling in around the concrete towers with clay and soil on the building site, with conditions being ideal for this activity. Whilst the German engineers put up the roof timbers on the first tower, and paint the inside with black epoxy paint, we have been erecting some very complicated shuttering to form a concrete base for the electrical 'switch', through which the power will be fed into the national grid once we start generating. We have yet to make the base for the transformer itself, but that is fairly straightforward. Climbing inside the towers now that they are finished, one realizes how massive they really are; what a place for a party! I got the dreaded phone call last week to tell me the Rural Payments Agency were coming to check all passports, ear tags, records etc: 24 hrs notice is all one gets, but this time we are very relaxed. We are really on top of this, and apart from the nuisance for the cows of them all having to go through the race in order to have their tags read, and the hours that will be wasted with all the beurocracy, it's just something one has to put up with. At least it's not raining! Defra have announced their consultation on 'responsibility and cost sharing' of animal disease. This to be more accurate is a proposal which allows government irresponsibility and farmers to pick up the cost. Take the Foot and Mouth disease outbreak of 2007, where virus is escapes from a government licenced premises, or the 2001 Foot and Mouth outbreak where the cost to the taxpayer was 40m and the cost to the industry was 100m. We will now be expected to share the cost to government on top of our own costs, and they do nothing to stop exotic diseases from coming into the country. Our port and airport surveillance and protection from disease are non-existent. Let's look at Defra for a moment. Recently, the National Audit Office was very critical, commenting that Defra was not in a position to embark on such a consultation; nevertheless it pushes on, desperate to raise money from industry as the treasury cuts off more and more funds. The next government will seriously need to look at Defra, and I suspect that big changes will be made. It is not only short of money, but also short of talent as any civil servant worth his salt has put in for promotion, and transfer to another department. It is entirely appropriate that such a shambolic organization has Hilary Benn in charge, with morale through the floor, confused, disorganised, bereft of ideas; they blunder on. Does Hilary Benn seriously think that farmers are going to pick up the cost of Bovine TB whilst he does nothing about wildlife? Does he think that a 'consultation' should be fully costed and time-table in place? This is an attempt at getting an ill thought out plan, pushed through in a short space of time. He has a fight on his hands, because it's not just a case of rejecting the plan, it's a case of challenging Defra's competence to deliver any plan. Let's look at the proposed costs, 4.40p per dairy cow, 1.10p per beef cow. Why? A cow is a cow, surely? Does he think that a poultry unit can afford 4p per bird? That is more than the profit they make, and would put poultry out of business in this country. They claim that they want to make farmers 'more responsible' for disease, yet under current proposals 60% of sheep farmers (those with less than 177 ewes) would be exempt! All I can say is, there would be a growing number of flocks with 176 ewes in the country. We do need to tackle animal disease in this country, and the first step is to stop disease coming in. Farmers have demonstrated, and continue to demonstrate their responsible attitude to disease prevention; look at the successful 'Blue-tongue' vaccination campaign of last year, and we are all vaccinating on the 'front line' in the South again this year. We, just like the National Audit Office, have no confidence in Defra. We agree with the auditors that 'Defra cannot deliver a fair and equitable cost sharing scheme'. With BtB wiping out 30,000 cattle last year, and projected to take out 45,000 cattle this year, how can we take Benn and his organization seriously? We want an independent body that will take the politics out of animal health. We need a long term strategy that spans many elections, taking out incompetent Ministers who look no further than the next vote, and are spineless in the face of a few protesters and single issue groups. In Wales, we see proper plans being implemented by forward thinking and courageous politicians, who want to see healthy cows and healthy badgers, and deer co-exist in a healthy countryside. Meanwhile Hilary Benn tours the new 'Southdown National Park', talking about 'land managers'.