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From the Wellies - January 07

THE FIRST PART of 2007 will be spent clearing up the damage caused by flooding and gales at the end of 2006.  Seven inches of rain in November, followed by 9 inches in December took the total rainfall at West Park to 42 inches for the year. 

Those further west will have had much more, as a rule of thumb there’s another inch of rainfall for every mile that you go up the valley towards the much wetter west.

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Questions are being asked all over the country about building on flood plains as rainfall patterns become increasingly unpredictable.  The only certainty seems to be that, if there was water there at some time in the past, then no matter how high the flood defences are, there’s a fair chance that there will be water there at some point in the future. 

The contentious issue of dredging river beds has again been raised.  At present SEPA regulations make this activity almost impossible.  Historically, local builders, farmers and landowners extracted sand and gravel from the riverbed during the low water summer periods.  Extracted material was used locally for concrete making, road building, upfilling foundations etc. 

One of the main concerns now about gravel extraction is from the salmon fishing industry.  Opinion is, however, divided on this issue, with ‘experts’ both for and against river dredging.   One proposed solution to flooding is to remove some flood banks and allow land to flood, instead of trying to keep water in the river channel.  The main drawback with this, though, is that valuable crop production land is lost as flooding can occur at anytime of the year, making growing anything other than grazing grass, almost impossible. 

Whatever decisions are taken in the future to try and control flooding, it seems that in many cases, if climate predictions are accurate and winters become milder and wetter, it’s going to become increasingly difficult to farm on alluvial flood plains and inhabit properties built on them.

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Many people starting 2007 will have made New Year resolutions and plans for their future.  Among them be young farmers trying to get a start on the farming ladder.  It’s a well-used statistic that the average age of farmers in Britain is late fifties. 

Over the last few decades a number of factors have come together to make it increasingly difficult for new entrants to the farming industry, to get any change of a tenancy, much less buy a farm. 

Existing farms have been told to get bigger to spread costs over more acres and become more efficient.  As many smaller farms have come on the market, they have been bought up by people with no farming interest and bare land is let out or sold to an existing business. 

Economics also plays a major part, as farm incomes have fallen, many farmers sons and daughters have taken jobs away from the farm, as the existing business cannot give them a decent wage.  Once these potential new farmers leave the industry for better wages and shorter hours, it’s very difficult to tempt them back again. 

It is with all these factors in mind that the Scottish Association of Young Farmers Clubs are proposing that this country comes into line with other European states in offering subsidised loans and aid packages directed at getting new entrants into the industry.  In an election year, all sorts of promises will be made by politicians seeking re-election.  I’ve no doubt that the Young Farmers, supported by other farming organisations, will keep up the pressure on all parties to ensure that promises made by politicians in order to keep their jobs are actually kept.