The other end of the table and I took a day off the farm to visit the Royal Welsh Show. On the last 10 miles to the show ground, we were greeted at every farm gateway with a black plastic wrap with a big circular notice stating “Welsh farmers – proud to be producing food for the nation.” Underneath was the Welsh NFU logo. It was so impressive; I felt it a shame that we don’t do something like this in England.

At the show itself, there was an opportunity to catch up with old friends and acquaintances and all talk was of the dire consequences of the drought. On the way up, it was impossible to tell the difference between the yellow corn fields and the yellow grass fields. My local feed compounder tells me he is sending out 70t of lamb feed a week where normally this figure would be zero.

On the AMC stand, the talk was that the drought would be the last straw for quite a few who are over-borrowed, over-capitalised and facing a difficult labour situation. But it is difficult to comprehend that a bad spring followed by a bad summer will be followed by a bad autumn. This would be truly disastrous for many.

Farmers are already culling stock to reduce the demand on feed

Locally, the asking price for whole crop is £650/acre, for maize it’s £1,000/acre, for barley straw behind the combine £200/acre. I point out that these are asking prices and are a combination of one farmer robbing another and farmers talking themselves into a disaster. I’ve told my straw supplier to sit on his hands for the moment because no-one will chop straw behind the combine this year because of the price. Yields are actually better than expected and farmers are already culling stock to reduce the demand on feed. The barren price has fallen by 30p/kg in the last three weeks due to oversupply.

One of my friends on a direct supermarket contract informs me that the latest demands are no more calves in single pens and no more antibiotic milk fed to calves.

“They’ve got us where they want us,” he laments. I refrain from reminding him that this is because farmers climbed over one another to get a penny more per litre, from the supermarket contracts, though it now costs them more than a penny to achieve it.

Milk price

The worst thing for these producers at the moment is that the buyers are taking the milk contract away from the 10% of producers with the highest cost of production and awarding this to the 10% with the lowest cost of production. As this goes on year on year, their milk price will continually fall and bear no relation to the actual price the rest of us receive. No doubt, sometimes their price will be higher, but whenever milk goes short, as it is at the moment, our milk price will be well over theirs. I lament the demise of the co-ops, since I firmly believe unity is strength, and selfish sheer bloody mindedness is just that.

Bull proofs

At the Royal Welsh Show, we always walk around the stands in the afternoon and it’s always entertaining for me to watch, as the wife with her encyclopaedic knowledge of bull proofs walks on to the semen stand. The old hands always edge backwards leaving some poor new boy at the front expecting a quick sale to this woman. Within three minutes, the poor lad is completely flustered realising he’s out of his depth. This has happened so many times that eventually an old hand who respects Mrs Collingborn’s knowledge comes and rescues the poor chap and starts a serious discussion. This year we were very fortunate that one of the semen companies has agreed to come and genomically test our bulls.

Back at home, I remember when I was a very young boy in the 1960s, a very old farmer in a dry year such as this stating: “’Tidn’it like ’26 my boy when you could lose walking sticks in the cracks in the ground.” Well, we are halfway there.

We are now out of grass

We are now out of grass, feeding wraps made this spring, feeding grains and about to open the clamp.

Milk is holding up at the moment and we are about to start drying the autumn calvers off, milk supply will fall inevitably and milk prices will rise but not enough nor quickly enough to make up for the extra costs involved. The most alarming thing is that this heat wave is worldwide, so can global warming still be denied? Look at California, Mr Trump.

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