There is a well known saying, 'no pain, no gain' and that will be ringing true in the minds of Milk Link’s 1,600 producers, who are on the brink of reaping just reward for 12 years of loyalty and investment.Dominic Naylor: Highlighting importance of UK food production
What a difference a dry and sunny afternoon can make to your well-being. If I was not the farm manager at an agricultural college, I might have joined my collies and had a good old roll about in the grass.
The grass is slowly starting to emerge and, with a week to go before we start lambing, I hope this sunny period continues.
I have brought the singles in and am pleased with their condition, housing them next to the triplets to help with the fostering. The condition score of the twins and triplets is on target, so I am hoping not to see a repeat of last year’s prolapses.
The new beef shed was completed on time and opened by Stan Ayrton of Dunbia. The cattle have settled well and the students have started preparing the show cattle for the 50th annual stockmanship competition.
The milk price rise is welcome, but for many will be too little too late. It will be interesting to see how the supermarkets manage their PR when they announce their obscene profits in the face of struggling suppliers and consumers.
A report by Swiss bank UBS appears to show it is not only farmers the supermarkets are ripping off, consumers too are paying excessive inflationary rises in the price of food.
The pigs are performing well under Gavin’s management. However, even with our Freedom Foods premium over DAPP, we are not making any money.
The college has been host to a number of industry events this month. Adam Henson was invited as guest speaker to the Masstock Arable event and is an excellent speaker and ambassador for our industry.
We also hosted a conference entitled ‘More for less’, where our Tory MP was one of the speakers. When asked about the inequality in the supply chain, he replied that the best course of action was to let market forces prevail.
I hope his colleagues at Defra don’t have such a poor understanding of the importance of UK food production to the health of the nation.
The highlight for me, however, was speaking to the Burton Agnes and Beeford discussion groups last week - a most welcoming and interesting group of farmers.
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