Farm Diary September 17, 2008

We never flood at Crouchlands normally but the woodland above the farm turned into a massive lake and water gushed through all the cattle sheds.

The cows in the large loose yard watched as the water poured down the feed passage, washing away seven tonnes of food that they were about to enjoy. The silage pit had 5ft of water in it, with half-tonne bales of straw floating around, and we could not get from one end of the yard to the other because of the force of the water.

It took 16 hours of pumping to get rid of all this water and we have spent most of the weekend cleaning up.

The dry cows had to go hungry until Saturday morning as there was no access to any food, and it took all night to get the silage pit pumped out.

It rained so hard that a half-tonne bag of sand in the yard is now half empty, both my telephone lines were knocked out and our garden was under water '“ something that never happens normally.

At least six cars were stranded between Plaistow and Kirdford, having tried to drive through the many areas of road under water, the worst of which was halfway up the front wing of the Land Rover.

Farmers Weekly had six pages dedicated to bad weather and floods, as harvest is under huge pressure, with costs going through the roof, especially for drying the grain.

Straw will be in very short supply as thousands of acres rot in the rain and the standing crops turn black.

Milk supply has crashed by more than two million litres a day below last year (which was a bad year), as grazing cows becomes very difficult.

We are facing a challenging winter, and I suspect that we will record yet another record 'low' in milk production in this country this year.

Milk buyers are desperate for milk and spot prices are around 34p per lire, with little to be had even at that price. How this squares up with retail discounting I don't know, and one has to wonder if retailers, in their desperate fight for consumers and market share, have lost touch with reality.

Milk buyers and processors most certainly have! At a time when they need milk supply as never before and in the 'trough' period of the season, when milk is very short and this year falling off a cliff, what do they do?

Dairy UK, the processor's political representative body, which has been an honest attempt to include farmer representation (yours truly and one other) on its main board over the past four years since it was founded and chaired by an independent person, suffered a coup last week when its chairman, David Curry, was unceremoniously ousted.

A handful of board members had decided that the chairman was too biased towards farmers (not something we would agree with!) and they could stand it no more.

David Curry was visited by his vice-chairman '“ Mark Allen, chief executive of Dairy Crest '“ while on holiday in France and told that he would not be chairman after the annual meeting last week. A very upset

Mr Curry informed leaders in the industry of what had happened and the NFU had no option but to pull out of Dairy UK last week, as it is now chaired by one of the processors and obviously not a body that seeks to represent more than one sector of the dairy industry.

The timing and political naivety of such a move is breathtaking. Not only has Dairy UK lost any chance of being seen as anything other than a processors' organisation but at a stroke it has also lost the chairman that opened all doors with his political and wider contacts.

Furthermore, as a Tory MP, he would have been part of Government in less than two years by the look of things.

Dairy farmers have been shocked by the news that David Curry has been sacked, especially the way it was done.

He did a very good job of walking the tightrope between processors and producers, attempting to genuinely represent the dairy industry, working hard to resist the pressure on dairy products from the food fascists who want to control what we eat.

He will be missed, and I think it will slowly dawn on Dairy UK that without an independent chairman and without the NFU all credibility with farmers has evaporated at a time when they need them more than ever. Or maybe it simply doesn't care.