Embarrassing bodies ...

Weird,  Pseudo-Scientist Michael Blanche (25) has made yet another genetic breakthrough.  Based on years of slap dash research and lazy development, the innovation means a step change in carcass value of sheep meat by providing six legs per lamb:

You should be able to count 6 legs ... only 4 work

Commenting on the biggest revolution in sheep genetics since Dolly, Professor Blanche said, “I was sick in my mouth when I saw it ... its gross.  At least its alive ... makes a nice change.” 

Zack Dingle Rides Again ...

A Multiple Choice Paper recently completed by Michael Blanche:

Qu. 1.  Both your cars die in the same week ... both will cost £2,000 each to fix ... you have less than that in the bank ... its 3 weeks before lambing and you have 750 sheep to shift off your old grazings.  Do you: 

a) Adapt

b) Innovate

c) Overcome

Answer - Adapt.  Buy a van for £700. Immediately acquire the nickname Zak Dingle from your neighbours.  Order a shiny red Hilux on contract hire which you probably can’t afford but as it takes 4 months to arrive the cool thing is you don’t have to think about it yet.

The Van ... hardcore!

Qu. 2.  You have purchased this “totally awesome” auto-drafter and have lots of stuff on a computer thingy relating to each sheep’s EID number.  If you don’t manage to link the ewe to her lambs, half the point of recording for genetic gain is lost.  You have always numbered your sheep before lambing with spray paint which by the time they lamb you can never read.  You get tired very easily and catching ewes, outside is beyond you.  Do you:

a) Adapt

b) Innovate

c) Overcome

Answer - Innovate.  Copy Lynton Arney - the nice man with the nice Border Leicesters from Oz - and make up neck tags using hi-viz tags and bungee cord that you can use next year too.  Be too concerned about choking sheep and make cord far too long. Go round picking most of tags up that fell off as soon as sheep stooped to graze.

If you look closely enough you might see a tag round its neck

Qu. 3.  You are desperate for grass and you get 180 acres of this:

Spot the ryegrass plant competition

Do you:

a) Adapt

b) Innovate

c) Overcome

Answer - I have no idea.  I’ll get back to you.

Pride Lost, Navel Found ....

London is exciting.  Mainly because, if I’m in it ... I am usually in it for a reason ... on purpose ... and not by mistake or due to taking a wrong turn. 

This time it was The Farming Ladder conference.  Organised by Sir Don Curry and Dennis Chamberlain. It had the same title as my Nuffield study and meant I felt obliged to go.

I think this sort of conference helps and there were some really good speakers.  This said, I came away feeling a bit empty.  A previous scholar told me at a get-together last year to “be selfish” in my study ... I’d get far more out of it.  I didn’t want to do that.  I wanted to help and come up with suggestions and potential answers.  Now I realise that there are plenty of suggestions, lots of ideas and a good number of potential answers ... its just that very few of them will actually make it all the way to practical policy. Taxation changes are sorely needed. Agricultural Holdings legislation could do with being reformed or even repealed ... with more imaginative options introduced.  The subsidy system protects the established and punishes the new.

Yet the conference convinced me that the only person in the room that was going to help me ... was me. The historic battle between landlord and tenant rumbles on, each taking a stance the other can’t accept.  George Dunn from the TFA was really impressive, a very clear thinker and excellent communicator.  I wish he was on my side ... but he’s not. He started off by saying it was vital that the calibre of entrants into farming had to be high .... hear, hear!  Then he proceeded to put forward the assertion that succession tenancies - where the only test of your calibre is who your father was - were the BEST farming ladder ... were THE farming ladder.  

Succession is the key to the farming ladder! [cue sigh of exasperation] .... And so the land constipation of this country will continue to cause discomfort.

Trying to draw parallels with diarrhoea prevention and interventionist legislation ... probably stretching it

If the tenants were the Imodium with a high level of intervention in the letting process ... the landlords seemed to take the more prune juice approach of the free market. Freedom of contract rules OK!  I sympathise with this attitude far more.  Yet it dramatically depends on trust. Trust hasn’t been prolifically used in this ancient struggle. Also, and crucially, freedom of contract tends to put off the issue of investment to another day ... ad infinitum.  When tax incentives were discussed and it was suggested that certain loop holes be closed ... some landlords got a bit edgy. “Lets have a system that suits us” was the message my cynical ears heard. 

Essentially, it was a conference where vested interests were vocalised ... albeit lined with good intentions.  It is useful to talk and outline your position ... jaw jaw rather than war war, and all that. 

What struck me, though, was that before legislation ... before policy ... attitudes need to change ... paradoxical cultures need to develop and recede.  The conference was helpful in chipping away at this.  But as we talk, we are also part of a huge orchestra of fiddles ... we play intently ... as Rome burns.  The bastions of the past will be the bastions of the future.  UK agriculture ... its quality ... its merit ... its pride is being suffocated by short term views, short term greed and an inability to see beyond our own, very personal, navels. 

Nero "fiddling" while Rome burnt ... I always thought it was a violin

Going round the world - where no one looks to the UK for agricultural guidance - is a humbling process.  No one rates us!  This is the country of Townsend and Bakewell ... this is the country that was the stud farm to the world ... this is the country that invented the tractor, the plough and the threshing machine.  We have been distracted by chasing subsidy ... where a meeting on a new support scheme attracts an audience of 200, whilst a technical seminar gets an audience of 10.  We are disabled by our historic struggle for the control of land. We now think in individualistic terms ... our farm business ... our land owning business.  We only think of "our industry" when it comes to supporting it with payments with other peoples money.  All the lobbying ... all the talk ... is to do with subsidy, intervention and regulation.  We don’t seem to have a communal pride in our real industry anymore and we no longer judge it on production or on innovation.

Bakewell ... in my Top 20 Hero List

A perfect storm is brewing.  Food is going to be a big issue in 2030 ... and big business.  In the UK we'll probably still be talking at conferences, fearful someone else might benefit slightly more than us ... whilst the rest of the world have left us behind. We were once a world leader in production, we had an industry to be proud of in a worldwide context.  Unless we think ... and, more importantly, act ... to free land up, to make an industry that is merit based, where the best farmers farm - whoever their father was ... we will never have that pride again.