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From the Wellies - May 2008

A sunny warm Bank Holiday Monday, 5 May and it finally looks like spring has arrived.  Grass is growing at last and farmers with spring sown cereal crops have finally been able to complete sowing. 

Potato planting is now in full swing across the country, seedbeds are far from ideal and tractors haven’t been operating in clouds of dust, unlike last year’s near perfect conditions. 

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It’s becoming a very expensive occupation running a tractor these days with fuel costs rising by 2-3 pence/week and now close to 70p/litre mark.  This rebated fuel may seem cheap compared to diesel purchased at the pumps at well over £1/litre but large four wheel drive tractors have fuel tank capacities of 200-300 litres depending on the make and model.  A long day driving a power hungry cultivator will use the best part of a tank of fuel.

This means that a large tractor or cultivator for a full week could easily use £1,000 worth of fuel.  Figures like these are making farmers look at every step in the cultivation process and the trend to ever larger tractors with wider machinery seems to be on the increase.  A large tractor which can cultivate and sow in one pass with machines hitched on the front and back will use less fuel than 2 smaller machines covering the same ground doing different operations.  Large pieces of kit can be justified by contractors, larger farms, or 2-3 farmers clubbing together to share large machinery and so spread the costs. 

In a spring like this, when weather often stops play, a farmer relying on a contractor often has to put up with crops being sown in less than ideal seedbeds or risk going to the back of the queue if the contractor pulls out and goes to work somewhere drier.  Conflict can also arise between neighbours when everyone’s fields dry up and need sowing at the same time.

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Whatever crops are grown, fertiliser of some sort will be required, either at sowing time or “top dressed” onto the growing crop later in the season.  We recently received two quotes for turnip fertiliser of £390/tonne or £439/tonne, depending on analysis and trace element content.  This has gone up from £155/tonne last year.  

This massive rise in costs coupled with a doubling of fuel prices in a year has more than wiped out the much talked about increases in food prices.  Fertiliser salesmen are already doing the rounds telling people that only 50-60% of next year’s fertiliser will be available and anyone not ordering soon will be left disappointed.

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The Scottish Government is currently trying to develop a national food policy for Scotland.  The stark facts are that, unless farmers receive a decent return from the market place to cover the previously mentioned dramatic rise in costs, there will be very little food produced on Scottish farms to warrant a food policy. 

At a recent conference held by the Scottish Association of Meal Wholesalers, the warning was given that many slaughter houses and meant plants are finding it increasingly difficult to source raw materials.  Census figures show that the Scottish beef herd has fallen 11% in the last ten years.  A decline like this takes years to reverse and will only be done by strong market signals – not glossy reports gathering dust on a shelf or warm words from politicians. 

Figures published recently, show that the retail price index over the last 10 years has increased by 30% while food prices had only increased by 16%.  The most worrying figure from a farmer’s point of view is that red meat has only risen by just 8%.  Here’s hoping that Agri-inflation becomes a much more familiar phrase and gets a place in the Oxford English dictionary, especially in relation to that 8% figure!

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