| NEW showroom and office.
At last we have moved from our old
leaky portacabin and into a new fully insulated office with
loads of room to show you our full product range. Gone are the
draft excluders and buckets to catch the rain and instead we
have a large bright and warm office. We had great fun
demolishing the portacabin with the rough terrain forklift and
this went off in 2 trailer loads to our local re-cycling
depot.
Please come and see us and take a
look at all we can offer, hours are 9am to 5pm Mon - Fri.
Government Funding.
Our CSS is finishing in September and
we need to get in HLS even though we have ELS in conjunction
with our SFP and the CAP, so we got a FEP done which NE will
look at to see if we have enough points !!!??? OK, OK it's
simple really our Country Side Stewardship (CSS) conservation
funding ends soon and it's replacement is Higher Level Scheme
(HLS) which is difficult to get in mainly because funds are
low and the farm needs a "target species". Ours is
the Cirl Bunting and so we stand a good chance in joining but
have to have a Farm Environmental Plan (FEP) drawn up first,
this has been done by the RSPB (Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds!) in readiness for Natural England (NE) to
look at. Meanwhile I have joined the Entry Level Scheme (ELS)
which is helpful in clawing back some of the Single Farm
Payment (SFP) that is part of the Common Agricultural Policy
(CAP) payments to farmers so they all don't go broke and
starve the whole of the European population. Did you
know that 97% of farmers profit is down to the Single Farm
Payment!
Commodity prices through the roof.
First
the good news, we are experiencing a great improvement in
prices of our crops that we sell. Wheat is over £150 per
tonne as I type this and all other grains are just as good. It
was only a few years ago when wheat was only fetching around
£50 per tonne and the cost of growing it was over that once
all the overheads were included. So we will be celebrating to
a certain extent although still keeping a sharp look out to
our costs that are always going up.
Now
the bad news, the whole of the world market is experiencing
sharp rises in agricultural commodities from sunflower to
peanuts and indeed peanuts are becoming a real problem to
source. Quality peanuts are scarce because of growing season
problems and when they are there they are being crushed for
oil.
We
have tried very hard to keep our costs to Soar Mill Seeds as
low as possible and this of course benefits you, however the
crops we cannot grow ourselves will inevitably have to rise.
Harvest Time. Aug 2007
My wheat will be the first crop to
come off the fields. It is now fit to harvest and all I need
is some good drying weather so I don't have to dry it myself.
Next will be my barley some of which is for malting. I entered
a contract for this at a fixed price which at the time was
£15/ tonne above feed barley prices but if it doesn't make
malting would then revert back to feed price. Now feed barley
has gone through the roof and made the malting price look
ridiculously small. I think my barley crop this year is sub
standard and will all go for feed!!
I liked this, it say's a lot about
our manufacturing industries. Jun 2007
NIGEL JOHNSON-MILL
Rt
Hon David Miliband MP
Secretary
of State,
Department for
Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA),
Nobel
House
17 Smith Square
London SW1P 3JR
16
May 2007
Dear
Secretary of State,
My
friend, who is in farming at the moment, recently received a
cheque for £3,000 from the Rural Payments Agency for not
rearing pigs. I would now like to join the "not rearing
pigs" business.
In
your opinion, what is the best kind of farm not to rear pigs
on, and which is the best breed of pigs not to rear? I want to
be sure I approach this endeavour in keeping with all
government policies, as dictated by the EU under the Common
Agricultural Policy.
I
would prefer not to rear bacon pigs, but if this is not the
type you want not rearing, I will just as gladly not rear
porkers. Are there any advantages in not rearing rare breeds
such as Saddlebacks or Gloucester Old Spots, or are there too
many people already not rearing these?
As
I see it, the hardest part of this programme will be keeping
an accurate record of how many pigs I haven't reared. Are
there any Government or Local Authority courses on this?
My
friend is very satisfied with this business. He has been
rearing pigs for forty years or so, and the best he ever made
on them was £1,422 in 1968. That is - until
this year, when he received a cheque for not rearing any.
If
I get £3,000 for not rearing 50 pigs, will I get £6,000 for
not rearing 100?
I
plan to operate on a small scale at first, holding myself down
to about 4,000 pigs not raised, which will mean about £240,000
for the first year. As I become more expert in not rearing
pigs, I plan to be more ambitious, perhaps increasing to, say,
40,000 pigs not reared in my second year, for which I should
expect about £2.4 million from your department. Incidentally,
I wonder if I would be eligible to receive tradable carbon
credits for all these pigs not producing harmful and polluting
methane gases?
Another
point: These pigs that I plan not to rear will not eat 2,000
tonnes of cereals. I understand that you also pay farmers for
not growing crops. Will I qualify for payments for not growing
cereals to not feed the pigs I don't rear?
I
am also considering the "not milking cows" business,
so please send any information you have on that too. Please
could you also include the current Defra advice on set aside
fields? Can this be done on an e-commerce basis with virtual
fields (of which I seem to have several thousand hectares)?
In
view of the above you will realise that I will be totally
unemployed, and will therefore qualify for unemployment
benefits.
I
shall of course be voting for your party at the next general
election.
Yours
faithfully,
Spring has Sprung. Apr 2007
Even
though we have all been basking in this warm weather,
something just didn't seem right. Perhaps it was the length of
the days or the intensity of the light but now it defiantly is
spring. So, myself and Rheece my son have been out around the
farm armed with drill and screws putting up nest boxes on all
our likely trees. At Southdown we have a problem finding
proper trees and a tit nesting box on a gorse bush just
doesn't look right!
We
have also been getting ready for the cattle and sheep about to
descend on us from our neighbour. We needed several bits and
pieces of fencing putting right, because I knew how busy I was
going to be I asked the National Trust if they could help out
back in January. as I write this we have 4 days to go and they
have just started!! Perhaps its a new Right to Roam policy,
not sure the locals will appreciate it though.
Time to sow. Mar 2007
Even though it's pretty cold outside
and the weather men predict snow, I have ordered my Spring
Barley and intend to drill it as soon as I have been able to
plough the fields. I also have some Kale on it's way and this
will be used to replenish my Wild Bird Cover in two fields,
this has to be sown with cereal also, to give the birds that
use it food during the winter months. Some of the
"dirty" fields we left this winter will be sprayed
off and then either ploughed or cultivated. Most of this work
will be completed by the end of March, my last crop to be
planted will be the White Millet probably around mid May.
Through the hoops once more. Aug
2006
Wheat is starting to reach over £80
per tonne for the first time in ages. So this year I've
decided to plant a few acres, and make my fortune! Of course I
need to become "Assured" before I can sell the
product so I have entered into the complex and expensive world
of protocols, inspections, tests and MOT's. (Since we sold the
pigs and grew wild bird seed I left my two assurance schemes).
To sell my wheat into store £900, I join a scheme £135, to
do this I must be registered with NRoSO (National Register of
Sprayer Operators) £26, they require an MOT on the sprayer
£120, I must also have all relevant paper work and DEFRA
handbooks £30, then I get inspected. If I pass I get stickers
to put on crop passports that go with every load of wheat I
sell. Meanwhile if my merchant runs short of wheat they import
it without any assurance at the same price and it is used for
the same purpose as mine ?? I'm budgeting on making about
£1500 net profit on 200 tonnes ----- perhaps a night a week
shelf stacking in the local supermarket would be less hassell
! |
