I am now a month back at the day job after a fantastic busman’s holiday in Western Australia.

I had a very interesting trip, spending over two weeks working with an Aberdeen Angus stud herd at calving time, and then out with a livestock haulier for several days, collecting and delivering lambs to market and abattoirs.

I met many interesting people and came away impressed by their resilience, positive attitude, knowledge and understanding of marketing their produce. Although other parts of Australia are having more serious long-term problems with drought, I became quickly aware of how critical water supplies are for both livestock and crop production in the region. I will certainly be less inclined to complain if the weather is too dry in the UK in the future.

I was also very taken by the Blue Tree Project, where farmers have been painting dead trees blue to raise public awareness of mental health issues and to try to remove some of the stigma attached.

The initiative followed the sad death of a young farmer last year. The Blue Tree Project promotes conversations about mental health and suicide prevention. It would be a worthwhile exercise to extend such a project to the UK.

One thing that was clear during the trip was the positive way that politicians supported agriculture and its related industries and businesses.

There is a fairly strong anti-farming lobby as well. However, there is a balanced commonsense approach taken to dealing with the problems that the agricultural industry faces.

Our politicians and the public in general would do well to take heed. Rather than undermining the industry that puts food on the table, it must be supported by promoting home-produced food, ensuring food labelling is fair and accurate, and sub-standard imports and the profiteering importers are all held to account. It is vital that Britain endeavours to become more self-sufficient by using home-produced food from all sectors.

Home farm

Back on the home farm, we are now well on with shearing, having finished marking last month. The final rearing percentage looks to be around 85%-90%, which is better than the 60%-65% last year. Ewes are still recovering from the trauma of the 2018 winter and hopefully by this November will go to the tup in good order. The lambs on the hill are also looking as well as I’ve seen for a few years.

However, the auctioneers have been doing their rounds and unfortunately talking down the forthcoming lamb marketing season. Not really the news I want to hear, but only time will tell, and we hope to market our lambs as well as we can.

Silage

Next on the agenda is silage, with crop volume a lot higher than last year.

Our haulage enterprise has also been fairly busy carting hay around the country; crop yields and quality have been good, so hopefully the price of hay, straw and feeding grain will be at a level livestock farmers can afford. For the last couple of years, it has cost us around £14/head/week in silage/hay, straw and concentrates to keep a beef cow through the winter.

Add to that wages, a tractor loader and other associated fixed and variable costs, it is not hard to work out that suckled calf production is not leaving much of a profit.

All agricultural sectors are being squeezed by low margins and low prices for the end product, with beef production suffering the most. The situation is not helped by beef imports coming into the market via questionable routes. Maybe we will have a clearer, fairer market after Brexit on 31 October; pigs might fly as well.

Read more

Farmer Writes: tales to be told from a visit down under

Reasons to be positive despite higher costs