Plans to restrict travel pose a major threat

IT WAS Dumfries on Saturday for another outing on the show circuit and another bout of commentary on the interbreed sheep championship.

I enjoy the task, but it can be hard work in preparing the relevant notes to keep the crowd informed. However, on Saturday my preparations proved virtually worthless as the heavens opened and the notes on my clipboard quickly ran down the page. But the weather did appear to give the judges a sense of urgency and the task was completed in rapid order.

Stewart Wood, one of the two vice-presidents of NFU Scotland, was about as far away from his home in Orkney as he could be while still remaining in Scotland when he visited the show and presented the prizes to owners of the champion and reserve sheep. I took the opportunity to interview him during judging as the rain lashed down from a leaden sky. He certainly found an appreciative audience in the manner which he responded to what I thought were searching questions.

Having been to Orkney on many occasions, I know that transport costs are a huge and very expensive issue. Wood reckons that if Brussels has its way with its proposals to limit journey times for livestock to just eight hours, farming in many of the remote parts of Scotland will be virtually non-viable. This is going to be a big topic over the coming months.

Almost inevitably, once my duties were complete the sun broke through and the rest of the afternoon proved to be ideal for livestock and the large crowd.

One of the great joys of agricultural shows is the opportunity to meet a wide range of people and that certainly proved to be the case for me at Dumfries.

One of the first to be encountered was Alex Fergusson, the presiding officer at Holyrood. We have known each other for many years through his former involvement in farming and his term as president of the Blackface Sheep Breeders Association. I fancy that keeping that membership in line was no less taxing than maintaining order among MSPs!

My question as to whether he was enjoying the break from the parliament drew a rapid response to the effect that MSPs are not on holiday, but merely in recess.

Mike Russell, the environment minister, was decidedly busy presenting a barrow load of trophies to winners in the main ring. He must have shaken as many hands in half and hour as he would do during an election campaign, but he did it with style and good grace. The show president invited him to say a few words, but for no longer than two minutes – a tall order for a politician. In fact Russell spoke for just one minute.

I reckon I can make a fair fist of judging most sorts of livestock, but not the modern Holstein dairy cow. She may be the ultimate milk machine, but certainly does not rest easy on my eyes.

I just wonder if pedigree breeders have gone a shade too far in chasing those extra litres because the fact is that the average productive lifetime of the Holstein is now below three lactations. Some may last considerably longer, but the turnover in herds is astonishingly high – and expensive. That does much to explain why heifers are making extreme values in the auction marts.

Dumfries and Galloway is the very heartland of milk production in Scotland and Saturday provided a fine opportunity to take the pulse of this vital sector of the industry.

I found the mood to be more positive than 12 months ago. Milk prices have increased, but the consensus appears to be that 30p per litre is required to guarantee a decent living and leave a margin for reinvestment.

I guess they will eventually get that price for one simple reason: last year UK milk production was at its lowest for 37 years and it is a better than even bet that it will be still lower in the current year. The day may be not too long in coming when there will not be enough milk on supermarket shelves to satisfy consumer demand.

The same scenario may also follow with a wide range of foods, including beef and lamb. Farmers have become increasingly fed up with producing for minimal profit. That leads me to a letter published recently in The Scotsman by a gentleman who is obviously an urban dweller. He suggested that the problems of starvation in Africa could be solved if the European Union simply gave away surplus stocks of food.

But the problem with that simplistic notion is that there are no surplus stocks of food in Europe, or indeed in any other part of the world. The reality is that global food stocks are on a knife-edge and politicians have yet to wake up to that harsh fact.

Much has been made of food inflation in recent months, but I wonder if those who pontificate on this topic have done their homework. I have used these figures before, but I believe they are worth repeating. If we take January 1977 as the base year with a score of 100, then as of the end of May this year the index stood at 82.1, and that is according to the government's Office for National Statistics.

Yes, there will have been some increases since May, but there is no denying that the price of food is far cheaper in real terms than 20 years ago.

Farmers, not surprisingly, are deeply resentful of being accused of profiteering. Those who are making money are the major supermarkets. The business pages almost on daily basis report downturns in company profits, but I have yet to see that line repeated in relation to the retail food sector.

The purchasing power of the multiples is frightening and is something the average farmer can do little to counter, but times could yet change as supplies become shorter and it dawns on the big buyers that the world is not awash with surplus food.