Category Archive

I began writing this in response to comments in ‘cull or not to cull’, but decided to publish it as a post in its own right. I have researched, read about and discussed the problem of bTB at length - with vets, farmers, scientists, ecologists, conservationists, people living, but not working in the countryside and those that do, city dwellers and politicians. I could give facts, figures, excellent examples and analogies for and against both sides of the argument. Personally I am, of course, subjective…I have a herd of cattle I care about hugely and are at risk; I also have a passion for wildlife. And I have to make a living from my work.

The question of whether or not to cull badgers is a complex one. It ain’t half as easy as many people make out. Quite simply, it’s not black and white. The science is uncertain, the risks are large, and we are dealing with emotions as well as facts. If we are going to find away forward, it will depend on us being open-minded, listening to each other and respecting each others’ values. Above all, we must be prepared to move our positions, to get off our high horses, to let our eyeballs settle back into their sockets. Far too many of us are entrenched: a position, for or against, has been taken, and that’s the end of it. If we are to get on top of this disease, for the benefit of all - people, cattle and badgers - we must start to pull together, use what evidence there is, consider the practicality of the various options open to us, and reach consensus on the way forward. It won’t be perfect and certainly won’t be easy, but it’ll be the best we can do.

Whilst Robert was hobnobbing with royalty at the Royal Show last week I had one important thing I needed to do.
I wanted to lobby someone, anyone on the Natural England board of directors about the lack of Higher Level Stewardship (HLS) agreements being granted to small and medium sized farms. So bumping into a board member I’d had contact with several years ago gave me the perfect opportunity. Though no sooner had I started to speak she announced that she was not the person I should be talking to and firmly introduced me to Natural England’s chief executive, Helen Phillips.

Well, you can’t get better than that. Now it was up to me to make a strong, cogent case for fellow farmers up and down the country. As luck would have it she was having a heated discussion with the head of policies from the NFU on this very subject before my interruption. I had no idea at the time. Serendipitous.

I was blanked…. My nerves quivered. But no, I thought, this is vitally important, get a grip and get on! So I did. And she listened. And took notice. We agreed to keep in touch. Below is an excerpt of my recent correspondence to her…

From grass roots level this is how things appear. When HLS was first floated the take up was, I believe, mainly by farms that had no previous history of environmental schemes. These first payments were often substantial and included restorations of barns and the like. Then those whose Countryside Stewardship agreements were coming to an end applied, encouraged initially by your staff. You can imagine their surprise, disappointment and frustration when few were successful. It seems that only those applications with SSSIs or many habitats, footpaths, etc were successful. Hundreds of small to medium-sized farms like ours have been left in the lurch, while the large estates often owned by pension companies or similar have been granted agreements – with very large holdings it is, of course, much easier form them to accumulate the necessary points.

The impact on those many, many farms across the country which have not been successful (or indeed have been discouraged from applying), has been significant. They have adjusted their farming systems to meet the needs of their Countryside Stewardship agreements, often with much enthusiasm, only to find themselves high and dry and without a much needed source of income. Many have really delivered the wildlife and other goods that you are seeking. Some are now going into the red and having to resort to commercial farming of the land. Given the good budget settlement from Europe and the Treasury this rejection is hard to swallow. Meanwhile, the large estates and pension funds are benefiting, but will they show the commitment to the environment that us family farms will? I doubt it!

If it helps, I can explain what has happened on our farm. We had a Countryside Stewardship agreement for some 16 years, covering nearly half our land, but when we re-applied a year ago were unsuccessful because we did not score enough points. This despite much of the land being designated a County Wildlife Site, having a magnificent flower-rich meadow, supporting good numbers of dormice, barn owls, snipe, tree pipits, marsh tits, etc, and being crossed by a public footpath. What galled was the fact we were told ‘we were just not good enough’! Please come and see for yourself. I’d like to show you…

So all you farmers out there in the same situation as us – take heart if you can; speak to the various organisations concerned, keep on pushing and perhaps those elusive agreements will be forthcoming…

What would you do for farming if you were government?

This was one of the questions I was asked when being interviewed the other day. A ribbon of quicksilver thoughts free-fell through my brain – global economies, EU legislation, free-trade, climate change, energy, air-miles? Where would I make a change, what would have an effect? I was about to open my mouth with something along the lines that the topic was far too involved and deserved discussion in its own right, when I heard myself say – Education. Simplest, cheapest and most effective. Educate all our children from an early age about food, farming, countryside and the environment, locally, nationally and internationally. Integrated fully into the curricula of subjects already taught, future generations would come to understand the value of quality food (so they are prepared to pay the extra to buy it and farmers can earn a decent crust), and about the way food and the environment and our cultural heritage are inseparable. So, the current Year of Food and Farming is on entirely the right lines, but it needs to be continued, become mainstream. Ultimately, farming depends upon all of us as consumers, and this is where government should show real leadership, not through passing yet more laws but through helping us to make informed choices.

bluetongue 2

My fears have been confirmed. We are in the bluetongue surveillance zone. I arrived home this evening checked the answer phone and there was the man from DEFRA with his recorded message – in a dead-pan voice he stated ‘some, part, or all of my holding now came within the bluetongue surveillance zone and…’

Below is an excerpt from an email sent to me by a fellow farmer in Norfolk. I won’t add anything. The words tell their own story - poignant and thought provoking.

‘Our stock are our livelihood, such as it is, we run an organic beef suckler herd and 700 laying hens, and work long hours trying to make a living, but that’s life: farmings’ shit at the moment, but what else do we do?’

Last year they were hit by restrictions from both FMD and Avian flu (twice), having just, in the very nick of time, saved their entire suckler herd from drowning during the floods they heard the news about bluetounge. In her own words…

‘Just after that Bluetongue was detected, and we thought Now What!!? how do we deal with this? what are the symptoms? is it contagious? does it cross species? and the media had a field day; yet again; (They virtually camped in the area during the first Avian Flu outbreak- 9 miles from us) and there was no clear information, later on the farmers that had cows with the disease said there were few symptoms to tell they were affected, but since then our vet has been trying to keep abreast of the disease, and how it will affect cows in the future, and it seems as though some of the affects of the disease is to cause infertility in some and may cause calves to be born with abnormalities. I can only liken that to thalidomide in pregnant women. Follow that up again with Liver Fluke and a blasted fox getting my five 12 week old chicks from off the lawn, and traumatising their mother half to death. (she spent hours in the pond to avoid getting caught), and one might wonder why we carry on!’

She ends…

‘Yes, you bet we’re worried, but we can’t allow it to take over our lives. We just take heart that life here, at the moment, goes on in the age old tradition, and we are thankful that at least this year we have some beautiful calves to see bounding and gambolling about, and we will worry when the time comes (and hopefully it won’t). I’ve got enough grey hairs, and F has none, he has pulled all his out over the years!!’

So how will farms and good, caring people like this cope? Beef animal are already making a loss of £139 per animal. Not to mention the heartache caused from tending sick and dying stock. We will loose those very farms and farmers that are trying their best to produce high quality food from healthy, happy, animals whilst caring as best they can for the environment.

midges flying over hanaborough moor 7th february 2008

Bluetongue. Twenty-four different BT strains identified so far each needing a strain-specific vaccine. This disease is expected to become endemic in Britain. There will be no compensation. Vaccination will be the only way of protecting livestock. Our native and indigenous breeds of cattle and sheep will be more susceptible to the disease having never encountered it before.

Bluetongue. The BTV-8 strain is now affecting the Eastern and South-eastern counties of the UK with the surveillance zone having been extended into some parts of Dorset. DEFRA are expecting different strains of the disease to arrive along the South West coast from France this spring and spread northwards.
In the UK midges have not been killed off during the mild winter and are already flying. They travel two kilometres a day in normal weather conditions and much further in strong headwinds. It doesn’t take a mathematician to work out how long it will take to reach Devon.

Bluetongue. It is hoped, according to DEFRA, there will be enough BTV-8 vaccine ready to carry out vaccination in the South East during May. There is no indication of a more comprehensive vaccination programme this year, next year or ever. The costs of developing vaccines for the 24 various strains and for implementing a countrywide vaccination programme will be staggering. Will DEFRA or the government be willing to help with the costs? I’m not so sure.

I’m shit scared and worried. It seems extraordinary to me that some people appear to be acting as if it’s a mild inconvenience. This disease is potentially devastating; especially to an already beleaguered livestock industry. And I don’t know if I have the heart or energy left to cope with a farm of sick and dying animals. This could be the death-knoll for Locks Park Farm.

Twinkling fairies? Or the harbinger of devastation?

Jane has asked for my opinions on set-aside. So here goes, not, I’m afraid, a terribly sexy subject!

Set-aside was originally put in place in the early nineties as a production control measure to take around 10% of arable land out of cropping; it was not an environmental scheme. I can remember the huge outcry from the farming community as some of England’s good arable land lay fallow. Apart from letting the land revert there were specific things you could and could not do to manage the land; these requirements changed over the years. Back at the beginning, for example, you could grow fodder legumes (lucerne, vetches and clovers) and graze at certain times with goats, camilids and horses (hence the exorbitant prices alpacas and lamas commanded back then and the start of the huge surge into horsiculture). These things stick in my mind as I was running a milking herd of goats that benefited from a neighbour’s lucerne hay and some herb-rich grazing. There was some talk of environmental opportunities missed, but the increases is farmland birds and rare arable plants that followed was incidental, not a planned benefit. Read the rest of this entry »

farming has devastated the environment?

‘And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’ (the Bible Genesis 1:28).

Shouldn’t it be so? Shouldn’t the earth be used to feed the starving in any way she can? A recipe for global disaster! We need the Earth’s diverse and complex ecosystems to support life, give as the oxygen we breathe. Don’t we need it too to inspire us and bring us wonder? Read the rest of this entry »

It’s a week since Jilly died and I’m beginning to be able to remember her in a softer, gentler way without so many of the sudden punches to the solar plexus of raw pain and horror. Skye and Ness, though still clingy, seem chirpier too and are beginning to reinvent the pecking order between them. Read the rest of this entry »

What is going on with those civil servants and government bodies?

The other morning I listened to the news in disbelief. Civil servants had ‘lost’ discs, apparently randomly chucked onto a courier van, containing the personal data, yes really, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, bank details and heaven knows what else, of twenty five million people! Nice one.

And it’s November not April.

Today…
…I open an unsigned letter from Natural England which informed me that

‘as my organic registration had been terminated I no longer qualify for the Organic Entry Level Scheme (OELS).’ Read the rest of this entry »

What a busy, hectic time…
A gloriously large muddle of people, babies and animals centred in and around the kitchen. Yes, we do have more house than just a kitchen but it’s the kitchen that’s the heart and the room everyone tends to gravitate to. The orchestration of cooking and clearing in this ever moving, circulating throng requires the skill of a rugby winger speed-weaving up the field with the ball (this rugby analogy for all those following the world cup!). Read the rest of this entry »

Gordon Brown seems to be backing farmers.
“Their actions live out our shared understanding that our countryside is more than the space that surrounds – it is the oxygen for the towns and cities.”
“And in order to be the country we should be, Britain must protect and cherish, not just our cities, but our countryside too,” Mr Brown said.
I’m delighted. No, really, I am. But… Read the rest of this entry »

The FMD story grows alarmingly. There appears to be chaos and confusion once more. Misinformation, non-information and contradiction.
With DERFA’s website appallingly devoid of basic facts and figures it seems that even those worried farmers and smallholders in the protection and surveillance zone, desperate for hard news and exact locations, are being kept in the dark. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s odd how strangely divorced I feel from the news of the new FMD outbreak in Surrey and all the horror it entails.

I can’t really understand my own reaction. It surprises me. But I don’t think it’s just me. Even the national news is remarkably devoid of hype and those gruesome, unnecessary, pictures of dead or dying livestock. And when I speak about it with anyone involved in farming, there is a telling hesitation before the appropriate expressions and remarks. Read the rest of this entry »

I was going to tell you about how apparently cows could one day help to meet the rise in demand for alternative energy sources, according to Ohio State University researchers, who used microbe-rich fluid from a cow to generate electricity in a small fuel cell. There’s a rather macabre description of how it’s accomplished and I have a horrific and gruesome vision of lines of cows wired and plugged up complete with shunts and catheters supplying our power needs… Read the rest of this entry »

Yeay, yeay, yeay! We’re clear!
I’m at the top of the roller coaster…wow! Got through it again.
Threw my stick on the ground, punched the air and hugged the vet.
A reprieve of six or twelve months, depending on regulations. Read the rest of this entry »

Our cattle were skin tested for bTB today. The first stage that is.

Now we wait seventy-two hours (Friday) when the vet returns for the second stage.
This waiting is the worst part. I used to torture myself by trying to feel the lumps on the cattle’s neck. Now I try to avoid any eye contact with the area. Read the rest of this entry »

Well, this is it.
Not a week I’m looking forward to.
It’s bTB testing time…again.
I began gathering up the cattle yesterday, so they are on the home farm, and easily accessible to move into the yard on Tuesday.
I hate it. I worry. Read the rest of this entry »

cut hay waiting for the sun so it can be baled

If I thought it was busy when I went away I had another think coming… Read the rest of this entry »

Last night it rained – heavily.
This morning it rained – heavily.
Suddenly the sun came out; there was a breeze, blue, blue sky and cotton-wool clouds. It looked as if it had never rained at all… Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday was a bad day. I was a strumming bag of nerves.

My initial reaction to hearing that FMD was back in the country was like a vicious kick to the solar plexus bringing all the fears, horrors, controls and constraints of the 2001 outbreak flooding back. This, coupled with the extraordinarily difficult summer, was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Read the rest of this entry »

We were out last night.
I’ve just turned the computer on (8am) and here was an email from a customer and friend
‘Dear Paula
The news last night can only have had one reaction throughout the country, “Oh no, not again!”
Our thoughts are with you and your lovely ‘boys and girls’, and we fervently wish your area and your farm are spared in the weeks to come.
We wish you the very best of luck.
With best wishes
David & Lizzie’ Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote the last post to illustrate the sense of hopelessness the majority of farmers feel faced with the dilemma of cattle TB.

I sense, also, there’s a common feeling that farmers take delight in killing badgers. This is not so, it is wildly off the mark. The truth is that farmers feel a growing sense of helplessness and were hoping for some light at the end of the tunnel when the Independent Scientific Group’s (ISG) report was published. Now all they have on offer is yet further increases in cattle movement restrictions and more severe culling regimes for cattle…hardly a solution. The fraught headlines following the publication of the ISG Report last week reflected farmers’ huge sense of frustration. We are people who like to get on and take action; practical folk used to being able to solve problems ourselves through direct action. Read the rest of this entry »

TB – Bovine Tuberculosis…
TB – Tests…
TB – Strikes a panic cord…
Every year - I collect up my cattle from the smallest calf to the largest bull, have them tested and wait three long days for the results.
Every year - I feel a growing sense of impending doom…
Every year – I wait… Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday felt special.

Blue sky streaked with soft mare’s tails left by watery brush strokes. Clean, bright air full of warm honey-bread-fragranced grasses and delicate green-tea scented blossoms – a day when you breathe in, and in, and in. The colours clear and crystal-sparkly. Bird song filled the air, the soft lowing from a cow calling to her baby and the distant humming drone and clank of a tractor working. It made me smile.

I walk, the dogs scuttering and bounding in front of me, surprising the odd hiding pheasant which explodes into the air with loud chuck, chuck, chuck. Spears of southern marsh and spotted heath orchids peeping through young green stems of purple moor grass. Meadow thistle, bugle, tormentil, hay rattle and ragged robin flowering amongst the earlier lousewort and vetches. Huge dragonflies blunder past me with the whirr of old propeller aircraft as butterflies flit and dance silently overhead.

Read the rest of this entry »