Send me your pesticide issues

Open Meeting for Government Advisory Committee on Pesticides

I'm going to this 'Open' meeting and am willing to raise concerns and issues from farmers. The meeting is this next Monday, 9 November, in York, (entry by ticket).

My reason is to see if the Committee is aware of CDA, controlled droplet spraying. Readers of Practical Farm Ideas will remember I featured this in the Summer issue "Is Controlled Droplet Spraying Buried Technology?" The savings in chemical, water, and road travel through using this advanced form of droplet generation, perfected by Lely in the late 1970s and early 80s seems of even greater use today than when it was first pioneered.

If anyone wants to submit other issues re pesticides, please do so. Maybe the controls on specific chemicals; regulations regarding use... all would be interesting. It is unclear how much time there will be for discussion, but I am in the workshop session:
• Integrated Pest Management and its contribution to sustainable agriculture.

If you email me directly editor@farmideas.co.uk this would be best/

Why I'd never run a children's farm

With another group of children hit by E Coli, farmers considering the business of entertaining the public using the animals on their farms need to think again


Once again, farming makes the headlines as visiting children get severely ill. Godstone Farm was apparently entertaining up to 2,000 people a day over the school holidays, which at a total spend per child of maybe £8 makes the job a good earner. There are, however, a great many costs over and above those of running an ordinary farm.
Apart from the cost of swings, slides, climbing frames, climb on tractors and trains, mazes, basket swings, zip slides, tobaggon runs there are the necessary huge variety of animals - rare breed (commercials won't do) cows and pigs, poultry and ponies, chipmunks, donkeys, guinea pigs and llamas.
There are tearooms, shops, toilets, kiosks, and dedicated tractors and trailers to take visitors for rides. The whole operation needs supervising and this means minimum wage staff with all the problems of commitment, skills and ability.
On top of this the business costs a fortune to insure, more to market, and transforms a farm into entertainment. People skills, not much needed with cows and crops, reign supreme. Marketing attracts families living in totally sanitised environments, with no experience of dirt and children who have zilch resistance to the kind of disease which our farm kids just shrug off. You'll have 'Worried-Well' parents on the look-out for problems and others out to make a claim.

The big risks of disease
Overlayed on all this is the spectre of disease such as the E.Coli at Godstone farm which has put 10 children 'seriously ill' in hospital, 36 confirmed cases -as of Sept 14- and a comment from the ubiquitous Professor Hugh Pennington (one of Britain's leading microbiologists) that the consequences of the bug can be catastrophic. Yet he declared the cause a puzzle. Distressed parents have gone through hell with very sick children in hospital, and up to 20,000 others, unaffected so far, have had cause to worry.
So what's the children's farm all about? The educational value is entirely limited to 'touchy-feely'. It's partly a substitute for a family pet, which for many families is impossible.
The alternative to animals is providing mechanical adventures, such as roller-coasters and other rides, and Farm IDEAS magazine has described many of these. Machines require maintenance and supervision, but the dangers are contained and calculable. Accidents involve a limited number of people.
Operators of childrens farms have some difficult hurdles ahead. Ideally, they will want to separate visitors from animals, yet this is a major part of their marketing effort:

Here are some excerpts from childrens farm websites: - We offer animal petting / handling - Activities vary according to the season and may include duck, pig or chicken feeding, sheep milking, lamb feeding, animal handing ( where children are encouraged to stroke the cockerel, hen and baby chicks ) - the children (even the youngest) are encouraged to climb in with some of the smaller animals and to hold young chicks and to stroke the baby rabbits.

So you'll never find me having anything to do with a children's farm. I don't think the experience of eyeballing a llama at the age of six has much if anything to do with later life. If life is maximising ooo's an aaahs there are other ways of doing it that don't involve complex micro-biology.


Mike Donovan, editor

Email comments to editor@farmideas.co.uk

Practical Farm Ideas carries farm business articles as well as those concerning innovations. Download, for free, the Children and Farm Safety INDEX

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Letter published in The Times, Aug 13 2009

Dear Sir

Sean Rickard's assertion in Food News (p 17, Tues Aug 11) "We know that larger-scale, high-capitalised farms are far more productive and efficient than small-scale family farms" needs clarification. Some smaller farms are kept as a hobby, where output and efficiency are not goals, others farm within their means, with minimal borrowings. Smaller farms that are managed efficiently have no difficulty in matching their larger neighbours in terms of output or costs per acre, and can do so with lower impact on the environment and neighbourhood. The challenge is to help small family farms embrace low-cost technology which will edge up output and performance, not, I suggest, help large farms become even bigger.

Your faithfully

Mike Donovan

Will the Grocery Ombudsman help lift farm product prices?

Will the new Grocery Ombudsman help farmers?

Call me a pessimist, but I doubt it. The more law the more entrenched the protagonists. Supermarket buyers will make sure their new contracts are worded so they can operate as normal. Will the Ombudsman be busy? I doubt it. How many farmers and small processors will use the service and subsequently risk a future contract?

The commitment is for low inflation and low supermarket prices, and however achieved, these help keep the nation happy. Few people understand the problems of the industry - they have enough difficulties in their own sectors to be concerned about others.

Creating a Grocery Ombudsman tells farmers that the government is concerned, answers the NFU by showing that something is being done to directly address the issue of supermarket power and dominance. The Ombudsman is not there to look at farming viability, or indeed the comparative strengths and weaknesses of players in the food chain.

There are other actions that could improve the terms of trade for farmers. Gwyn Jones, NFU Dairy Director has been working on milk contracts, devising an agreement fair to both sides. The widespread adoption of fair contracts which have at least in part be written by the producer and not simply provided by the buyer, be it in milk, strawberries or fresh beef or lamb, would go a long way to help. If buyers realised they had to go along with such contracts to be certain of supply, and that these contracts were by and large fair to both parties, change could take place.

Public pressure can still be effective. Farmers need to be continually devising ways of letting consumers of their products know they are being supplied at or below cost. The countryside got together over hunting. Maybe the same organisations, which all make good use of farming land for their sport, should be asked to help the farmers, who after all give them the land on which to gallop, the coverts for their non-quarry, and feed for their steeds!

The Grocery Ombudsman is about politics, not livelihood. Once established, consumers will be able to justify in their mind the low prices they see on supermarket shelves - be happy with the two-for-one promotions which are often funded by the suppliers, not the generous retailers, as are so many of the special offers etc, as well as any costs associated with in-store product promotion. Will the Ombudsman be able to change these practices? It's doubtful, but buyers are going to need to be careful to include for them in the supply contracts. The real issue is that they shouldn't be there in the first place.

The new issue of Practical Farm Ideas Vol 18 - 2 is now published. Get the full contents.

After MPs... will farmers be in the frame?

The MPs have done wrong with their expenses and the Daily Telegraph has created a scenario which has caught everyone's imagination, and doubtless enjoyed healthy sales as well. So what happens when the dust settles? Will the nation's population just get on with their financial difficulties? Or will they, and the media look for another sector which benefits from the public purse?

If farmers and landowners were picked on in the same way, how robustly would their stand be? Have they the moral high ground, can they justify the payments they receive? Last week Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg mentioned the Common Agricultural Policy in the same breath as 'structural reform'. Will others take up the same theme? Farmers might well be advised to prepare for a siege - and then a rainy day.

Major cutbacks to present payments would hit the smaller working farmer badly, for many find the income from crops or livestock products such as milk barely cover their outlays. The large estates, which have useful economies of scale, might be better able to cope, but only by shedding labour and cutting costs further. All farmers find much value in their copies of Practical Farm Ideas.

Fertiliser wastage

Fertiliser wastage

Did you know that nine farmers out of ten waste fertiliser by failing to mount the spreader on the tractor accurately? That the waste of fertiliser can be between 5 and 10 per cent. A striped colour happens when some parts of the field get more than the planned amount, and other parts get less - BUT it's only visible when the difference is more than 15%. The farmer may well use the correct quantity, but the spread pattern is wrong... simply because the the machine has been put on inaccurately.

At today's fertiliser prices it racks up a loss few farmers can afford. Improve accuracy and there's an opportunity to reduce the amount applied. Improve accuracy and total yield improves as each plant receives the recommended calculated application.

There's a useful Practical Farm IDEAS on-line report on www.farmideas.co.uk/reports.php which has 15 useful tips to get the job done correctly, without spending money on a new fertiliser spreader.