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The coronavirus situation has escalated quite considerably over the past two weeks, but hopefully everyone is very aware of the situation and are keeping themselves as safe as they possibly can.
Social distancing or keeping at least two metres away from everyone when you are in a public place, coughing or sneezing into your sleeve or a tissue (not your hands) and continually washing your hands in warm soapy water for a minimum of 20 seconds are three simple things we all can practice to try to help stop or at the very least slow the spread of the virus.
Social distancing
So how are things affecting the farming community? I suppose if there was one person that social distancing won’t cause much of a problem for, it’s the farmer.
The full-time farmer at least spends a large percentage of their day on their own anyway and at this extremely busy time of year, lambing and calving take over and there isn’t much time to worry about anything else.
Being able to secure the necessary inputs to effectively run the farm is a definite worry for all farmers. The availability of concentrate animal feed or meal is of vital importance at this time of year and, as the weather hopefully improves, fertiliser will become the next must-have input for farmers.
Thankfully, as of yet, there is no issue securing any of these products and no need for farmers to panic buy. Hopefully this will continue to be the case.
Sales
The other thing that farmers are worried about is whether they can sell stock in order to secure income.
The local marts are all open, albeit with safety measures in place. In Inishowen Livestock Mart, sellers are being asked to drop off their stock and leave. The stock will be sold conditionally and the seller will be notified by phone and asked whether or not they wish to accept the price.
Inside the ring, spaces are marked out allowing for correct social distancing, buyers are being asked to stand in these placings and unless they are leaving, not to deviate from these placings.
Buyers must sign in and obviously there is a maximum number allowed in at any one time.
As far as I’m aware, all factories are still operating, maybe at a slightly reduced throughput.
I’m told that mart prices, for sheep especially, are holding up well, but factory prices are under pressure and in some cases have already been reduced. However, the main point is that all the main ways to sell stock are still open and available.
Food
A person said to me yesterday “it’ll be a very different world when this is all over”. Hopefully, one thing it will do is make people realise what’s important in life. Hopefully, it will make them realise how important their local farmer is and make them realise that he or she is producing food for their table.
It’s not too long ago that Brexit was the main topic of conversation. People said that the UK wouldn’t care about Irish beef.
If they could source it cheaper from South America, then that’s what they would do. If the UK, or ourselves for that matter, were depending fully on food imports, where would we be if those exporting countries decided to close their ports?
We probably could do with more trees in this country, but, remember, you can’t eat a tree! Local produce is vital and will be even more so over the coming months.
Stay safe folks, look after one another and we'll get through this together.
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