LAST week was a particularly busy period for the farming press, but the undoubted highlight was the annual conference staged by the Scottish Agricultural College at Murrayfield stadium in Edinburgh.
The Scottish rugby team may be sliding down the world rankings, but the same cannot be said for SAC, which is consistently ahead of the game both in terms of practical advice and market research.
The theme of the conference was "Food Secur
ity in a Climate of Change", and highly significant in these time of great uncertainty. Indeed, it is difficult to predict where the industry will be in 12 months.
For arable farmers there is a whole raft of uncertainties, not the least regarding the price of grain after next year's harvest. The futures markets offer no great encouragement with prices currently being quoted substantially below the cost of production for most European Union growers. But this is a changing world and prospects could alter very quickly.
Last November, with feed wheat selling at £167 per tonne it seemed as if the industry was the verge of a new age of much-needed prosperity for the arable sector.
No-one foresaw that a year down the line prices would have fallen by more than 40 per cent to under £100 per tonne or that fertiliser costs would have gone through the roof.
Over the same timescale sterling has fallen by 20 per cent. That same pound is also at an all-time low against the euro and may well fall still further.
All of these factors make forward planning incredibly difficult. Julian Bell, a senior rural business consultant with SAC, certainly pointed out the options and the fact is that many arable farmers might actually be better off if they planted no crops in the spring. Bell also reckons that a tonne of wheat will lose its growers around £22 per tone with similar losses projected for spring barley.
However, those figures take no account of the single farm payment subsidy. If this is factored into the equation, then there would be a margin of £14 per tonne for wheat and a breakeven for spring barley. That is hardly the most encouraging outlook. However, while there is likely to be some reduction of cereals on moderate land, my guess is that the vast majority of farmers will do what they always do – plant crops and hope that matters will improve.
They could be right especially considering the fact that the world supply of wheat currently stands at just 60 days, in spite of bumper harvests in many countries. Stocks are at the lowest level since the early 1970s. A poor harvest in any of the major crop-growing countries could dramatically alter the balance between supply and demand with major consequences for prices received by farmers. It has happened before and will doubtless do so again.
The whole question of food security is one that very few politicians have addressed. Many appear intent on placing further restrictions on how farmers can operate, with a ban on a wide range of chemicals recently introduced by Brussels. . Farmers have a pride in the countryside and they will abide by sensible rules. The amazing aspect of the proposed ban is that no impact assessment was undertaken in terms of what the effects on food production would be.
It does not take a genius to understand that there would be a considerable drop in production with consequent increases in the price of food. What further galls farmers is the fact that the EU would still be at liberty to import from countries that will continue to use the very chemicals that Brussels seeks to prohibit. John Scott MSP, the Conservative spokesperson on rural development and the environment, to my mind hit the nail on the head when he addressed a meeting near Ayr last week. He said: "UK farmers can play a bigger role in feeding our own population. Government at EU, UK and Scottish Parliament levels must encourage farmers to increase food production as self-sufficiency continues to fall.
"Government and consumers alike must be reminded that the first public benefit of land is food production – not tourism or environmental enhancement."
I guess those remarks will find favour with the vast majority of agricultural practitioners.
BUT back to the SAC conference where Richard Lochhead, the Cabinet secretary for rural affairs, in a somewhat rambling address announced that he is to review the workings of the Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP).
Normally the press receives an advance copy of ministerial speeches with the proviso to "check against delivery."
Well, Lochhead's pronouncements on the SRDP were not in the media advance. But perhaps he had been reading The Scotsman because a review was precisely what I urged last Monday.
Lochhead has another busy week ahead and is due in Brussels on Wednesday along with senior figures from NFU Scotland to hear the outcome of the "health check" on the common agricultural policy.
The issue will be debated by the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Mariann Fischer Boel will then fly to Brussels, where she will meet representatives of all the member states.
The word is that there may be an all-night session in Brussels until a deal is threshed out. Nothing very radical is anticipated, but some sort of a compromise deal is likely to be announced around lunchtime on Thursday.
From the Scottish perspective, one of the most important issues will be seeking approval of the special beef calf scheme. That seems likely. In fact it is essential to prevent a further decline in the national herd.
Support is now largely decoupled from production, but the French have persisted in giving direct payments to beef farmers. Sensible people, they know a thing about food security and, indeed, France is the only EU member state where beef cattle numbers have actually increased.
The full article contains 990 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
