Farm Diary Aug 5 2009

Having dared to raise our hopes, the Met: office is now making sure it has covered its position, and is predicting doom and gloom all round.

I am certainly hoping for some sunny days in August and September so that the maize can bask in warm sunshine and produce plenty of starch in the cobs. I have a third cut of silage to make this week, and with a bit of luck, a couple of dry, sunny days will materialize for that job.

Adrian (our herd manager) is on a well deserved two week holiday, leaving me in charge! The first week has gone well, with all the lads pulling together and the cows behaving themselves.

The job in hand is changing our calf rearing system at Tillington, from buckets to 'robot'.

Rather than feeding each pen of five calves with buckets twice a day, with all the associated drudgery of mixing milk powder, heating water to wash up etc, we are changing to a group system of 15-20 calves in a pen, with a 'feeding station' for each of the four pens. Each calf will each have a collar around its neck, and as it enters the feeding station, the robot will recognise it, and will allow it to feed from the teat.

The calves will be allowed four or five meals a day, and the quantity of each meal will be set, and measured by the robot.

During the day, the calves will be checked, bedded up, and have their pellets topped up, with water being checked. The first thing Gwenan (our daughter) will do each time, will be to check the readout on the machine, which will tell her how much milk each calf has drunk; highlighting those who have not drunk their allocated amount, or who have not fed with sufficient vigour.

Chances are that there will be something not quite right, and these calves will need checking very carefully. We are swapping drudgery with technology, in order to concentrate on the stockmanship, and the calves will also thrive on multiple feeds.

We have German workers on the building site, electricians, fitters and the engineers who look after the engine. The engineer who is in charge of the engine is a nice lady called Verena Wieling, and she will be coming back to start it up for us in a month or so.

We will be contacting Verena if we have any problems, and she will be looking after us via the link with Germany, once we get going. She told me the other day not to worry about the engine, because it is very 'intelligent', and will shut down if anything is wrong! Concentrate on producing plenty of high quality gas, and all will be fine with the engine I was told.

It has been coming their way for a very long time, and last week a knockout punch was delivered to the organic movement, when the Food Standard Agency reported on organic food.

The FSA concluded that, there is no nutritional or health benefit in organic food, which is counter to almost everything consumers have been led to believe. This is no surprise, as we have known all along that the claims were as much bunkum, as the other claims made which talk of better animal welfare and environmental benefit.

Organic food consumption will now fall further, which is a great shame as it is an important niche market, and allows those who wish to farm in a certain way, a good price for their produce; which they must have in order to compensate for much lower yields and much higher costs.

Who is to blame? Without doubt, the Soil Association and in particular Peter Melchet and others, who have in their evangelical beliefs, completely overstated the case, badly represented their farmers and producers, and pretended that organic farming was going to take over!

The economic 'bubble' of the last decade or so allowed consumers to choose organic food, and sales grew steadily, but now with an economic downturn and hardship, consumers are deserting organic, as they see local and regional food delivering most if not all of what they need. This FSA verdict will hit organic food sales, but more damaging, will stifle recovery.

Let's look at the facts; when the Soil Association were shouting about organics taking over the world at the height of the global lending spree, in this country total organic sales represented a tiny fraction of overall sales, bought in the main by older 'post family' consumers, who have (had!) higher disposable incomes.

Whilst almost half of consumers harboured the thought that organic food had health benefits this report, which is based on half a century's worth of research, will have put that myth to rest.

I predict that the Soil Association will come out fighting and cause more damage; it will blame others and major on pesticide residues, which is another battle it stands to lose.

Is this the end for organic food? Of course not; I see this as an opportunity.

Organic food needs to present value for money, quality and taste, and not trade on a misconception that consumers will buy and pay more just because it is different. Look at the successes in organic, such as 'Rachel's' (dropped the 'organic' back in April as reported in this column), 'Yeo Valley' and 'Green and Black's'.

These are great products and do not rely on 'wellbeing', concentrating on high quality and superb taste.

It is also an opportunity for organic farmers to put an end to the divisive nature of the Soil Association, which has promoted organics by denigrating conventional farming, turning the vast majority of farmers against it.

Now that the strategy (if it can be called that) has backfired spectacularly, some heads should roll. There are good (and not so good) farmers in all systems and we should all pull together; it's tough enough as it is, surely?