The Lie Of the Land

[beatingisbest]

Anyone going to watch this on Thursday, Channel 4 at 21.00.

 

It is about legislation and how it impacts on countryside life.

 

I think there is a bit of shooting included in it aswell.

[beatingisbest]

Did anyone catch it?

 

I thought that it was well presented and showed city people the true countryside.

[kirky640]

yes i did

was a good program and showed it as it is

 

kirky

[dusk2dawn]

yes i did

was a good program and showed it as it is

 

kirky

 

 

 

Yes I agree it was a good program, I bet it has opened a few eyes, I had to pass the tissues at one point even though shes a country girl B)

 

D2D

[Roughshot]

just watched it

give channel 4 their credit they dont cover up the animals death like most other channels

[kirky640]

brought a lump to my throat when he just walked up and pluged that calf poor wee thing

anyone that didnt think about that isnt hunam

?

[dusk2dawn]

Anyone going to watch this on Thursday, Channel 4 at 21.00.

 

It is about legislation and how it impacts on countryside life.

 

I think there is a bit of shooting included in it aswell.

 

 

I did wonder about the backdrop when they were lamping the Fox with a .243, all I saw was the lights of the "new sports centre " some distance away over some very flat land?

It was interesting to see the way they "clipped" the poults wings, we have always used HD scissors, they just yanked them out, how stressfull must that be? B)

Also the hunt fleshmans method of skinning the calves, very quick and came off cleanly.

 

D2D

[kirky640]

Anyone going to watch this on Thursday, Channel 4 at 21.00.

 

It is about legislation and how it impacts on countryside life.

 

I think there is a bit of shooting included in it aswell.

 

 

I did wonder about the backdrop when they were lamping the Fox with a .243, all I saw was the lights of the "new sports centre " some distance away over some very flat land?

It was interesting to see the way they "clipped" the poults wings, we have always used HD scissors, they just yanked them out, how stressfull must that be? B)

Also the hunt fleshmans method of skinning the calves, very quick and came off cleanly.

 

D2D

you realy did miss the point of the program sounds as if its way over your head d2d??

 

back stop my bottom he was on a farm he has farmed for 9 years he knows what hes on !!

kirky

also any animal is easy skinned when freeshly killed

i have skinned many dead lambs and can vouch for that

[Ferretboy111]

I watched it, was a good programme, certainly shows all the nitty gritty, they didnt show the foxes getting shot, but they did the calves, which i was surprised at really, bet channel 4 will be getting some complaints from that. Lol, need it on channel 1 really, really needs to be drilled into the townies to get the message across, adventure playground for townies is about right, because lets be honest alot of people in the country commute to london everyday and alot of big game shoots have guns from the city.

 

We do relie on the alittle for tourism.

 

Alex- Bring on more like that one.

[dusk2dawn]

Anyone going to watch this on Thursday, Channel 4 at 21.00.

 

It is about legislation and how it impacts on countryside life.

 

I think there is a bit of shooting included in it aswell.

 

 

I did wonder about the backdrop when they were lamping the Fox with a .243, all I saw was the lights of the "new sports centre " some distance away over some very flat land?

It was interesting to see the way they "clipped" the poults wings, we have always used HD scissors, they just yanked them out, how stressfull must that be?

Also the hunt fleshmans method of skinning the calves, very quick and came off cleanly.

 

D2D

you realy did miss the point of the program sounds as if its way over your head d2d??

 

back stop my bottom he was on a farm he has farmed for 9 years he knows what hes on !!

kirky

also any animal is easy skinned when freeshly killed

i have skinned many dead lambs and can vouch for that

 

 

 

Thats a bit strong Kirky, From what we were shown the land would not have passed with my FAO, my reference to the skinning was the use of a vehicle to drag the skin off the carcass, and no it was not "way over my head" as you put it.

I have lived in a farming community all my life and know only too well what is happening.

 

B) D2D

[sandersj89]

I need to dwell on tonights program a bit, lots of good points made but it also missed a good few points by a long way.

 

It was good to see some honest truths though....but the representation of some of those truths I am not comfortable with.

 

The really interesting point that needs to be made though is why we have got into the state that we are in now......and possibly more importantly....where are we headed from here on in.

 

Still, hats off to C4 for showing things warts and all.

 

Jerry

Farmers son and soon to be a farmer in my own right...must be bonkers!

[dusk2dawn]

they didnt show the foxes being shot so how do you know that he didnt have a safe backstop ?

 

 

 

If you read the post properly I said from what we were shown.

You obviously havnt had much involvement in rearing game or you would know better than to say they didnt "look" any more stressed than using scissors.

 

D2D

[dusk2dawn]

haha not much experience in rearing game. yes ok mate, only reared about 60,000 birds last summer working on a gamefarm. now an underkeeper rearing about 16,000 birds.

 

and what am i meant to say you cant do alot more than 'look' when your watching TV....

 

 

 

Yes righto......... worlds full of I done this and I done that

 

D2D

[LEFTY478]

I missed it. Anyone know if it's being repeated?

[Baldrick]

I thought that it was a very bleak outlook on rural life and the prospects of farmers (not, as was made clear, bleak prospects for landowners). A very interesting documentary though, but I was fuming with anger and frustration afterwards. There didn't seem to be a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel for a lot of the men and women featured on Dineen's programme.

[sandersj89]

I hope the viewing figures are good for the program but I suspect that they wont be great for a number of reasons but mainly it was on channel 4 and fairly late in the day.

 

Also I doubt many of the viewers were the average shopper, people who made the effort to watch would I expect, in the main, have an interest in the subject or know some of the hard truths already.

 

Still as I said before, hats off to the makers and C4 for showing it.

 

You all know I am from farming stock so I have first hand experience of living/working on a farm, indeed within the next couple of years I will be back on the family farm in Devon running it to gain an income and preserve it for my kids…..must be bonkers!

 

So a few of my views on the program.

 

The start of the film in Cornwall showed very well the pressures small farms are under, if they have no scope for diversification then they are at high risk of going under, the Single Farm Payment will not save them. The number of farmers and their families who hold down 2 or more jobs off the farm is testament to that fact. Farming in such disadvantaged areas is getting harder, buying more land to increase the farm size and to take advantage of economies of scale is not a common option, land prices are still strong and a lot of small parcels of land in such areas are being snapped up by non farmers at very high prices, we recently tried to buy a small parcel of bare land, land with no farmhouse, in Devon and it was sold prior to auction for in excess of £15k per acre. The land was permanent pasture with no water and one old stone barn within the boundary of the Dartmoor National park, our view was the land was worth no more than £3k. The new owners wanted the 4 paddocks for some horses, no farmer can compete on those grounds.

 

Diversification is also always not that easy, correct location is vital especially for tourist based expansions, and access to reasonable finance is not easy in the current climate.

 

The culling of the bull calves was an interesting point, this is a fairly recent change, when I say recent I mean within the last 15 years or so. Previously bull calves from the dairy herds, normally Friesian, Ayrshire, Holstien, etc where produced from a bull from a beef line other than those herds who were breeding replacement calves to take into the milking herd. A Friesian cross south devon for instance will produce a decent beef animal. Even a Friesan bull on a dairy cow producing a bull calf can produce a half decent beef animal, not as good as a beef cross though.

 

What is happening now is beef bulls are often not used, they are crossing with Jersey/Guernsey to produce follow on heifers to take into the milk herd that produce a milk with higher cream/fat content which the cheese makers like. Any bull calves produced wont make a decent beef animal and are close to worthless, however they do have a market now. The lifting of the beef export an means they can be exported, often to Spain/Portugal for rearing as veal. Most veal production is now on a extensive basis with crates banned.

 

The program then moved onto a large intensive beef farming in a more favourable area of the country, it was obvious the scale of this guy was large. He had room to diversify into game farming in a big game area and I am guessing he was running a good few hundred acres if not thousands. I am sure he had a few other enterprises on the go as well.

 

It was obvious he was using Belgium blue bulls/semen on his cows. Belgium Blues are the body builders of the bovine world, they look like they work out in a gym from the day they are born, they have huge shoulders and massive rumps, they have been selectively bred for centuries to produce a heavily muscled animal.

 

As a result they also produce large calves, that dead calf was huge, twice the size of many I have seen. The mother was a Hereford/friesan cross at a guess, white face and hocks with a dark body. They make good suckler cows and mothers but they don’t have massive pelvises and can struggle when covered by a Belgium, I would want to be on hand for all births. With Belgium bulls the instances of caesarean sections is often high. In such a large herd he is not always going to be there and that will cause problems.

 

If it were me I would be looking to use a native beef bull such as a South Devon, the trouble is while these produce excellent meat with a very good confirmation and flavour they produce less of it slower. Economics are against him and I don’t blame him in anyway for going down his route.

 

Where our food comes from is important, trouble is few in Sainsburies or any of the supermarkets, with the probable exception of Waitrose, know or really care where it comes from.

 

Beef imports from S America are increasing, the meat is cheap but I have concerns over how it is produced. The use of Feed Lot systems in the Americas is increasing, these mean huge number of beef animals can be produced cheaply, not something I would ever want to see here.

 

Milk, the price per litre at the farm gate is low, very low. The price in the supermarket is low but they still make a decent margin. Would the average consumer notice if a couple of pence was added to the farm gate litre price by the way of the price in the shop….I doubt it very much but the supermarkets wont do it. We are now importing milk from Europe as we cant produce enough in the UK to meet the demand…madness.

 

And all those vegetarians out there that drink milk, I hope they realise the number of bull calves that get killed is party down to them.

 

Why are we in this mess? To long to go into but it centers around a number of keys facts.

 

The governments, not just the current but everyone since the end of WW2, desire to provide cheap food for the population, fine to begin with but then the growth in power of the Supermarkets and how this changed the buying and eating habits of the British housewife.

 

Europe and subsidies, this divorced many producers form the real economics of the industry and changed the focus of the producers.

 

Globalisation, cheap imports from other areas of the world, often produced to lower welfare standards than we have imposed on our producers.

 

Is there a way out….I sincerely hope so but there will be casualties along the way. Adapt and change has to be the order of the day/decade but it is not going to be easy.

 

Jerry

[Baldrick]

Top-notch comments, Jerry

[Hodmedod.one]

I hope the viewing figures are good for the program but I suspect that they wont be great for a number of reasons but mainly it was on channel 4 and fairly late in the day.

 

Also I doubt many of the viewers were the average shopper, people who made the effort to watch would I expect, in the main, have an interest in the subject or know some of the hard truths already.

 

Still as I said before, hats off to the makers and C4 for showing it.

 

You all know I am from farming stock so I have first hand experience of living/working on a farm, indeed within the next couple of years I will be back on the family farm in Devon running it to gain an income and preserve it for my kids…..must be bonkers!

 

So a few of my views on the program.

 

The start of the film in Cornwall showed very well the pressures small farms are under, if they have no scope for diversification then they are at high risk of going under, the Single Farm Payment will not save them. The number of farmers and their families who hold down 2 or more jobs off the farm is testament to that fact. Farming in such disadvantaged areas is getting harder, buying more land to increase the farm size and to take advantage of economies of scale is not a common option, land prices are still strong and a lot of small parcels of land in such areas are being snapped up by non farmers at very high prices, we recently tried to buy a small parcel of bare land, land with no farmhouse, in Devon and it was sold prior to auction for in excess of £15k per acre. The land was permanent pasture with no water and one old stone barn within the boundary of the Dartmoor National park, our view was the land was worth no more than £3k. The new owners wanted the 4 paddocks for some horses, no farmer can compete on those grounds.

 

Diversification is also always not that easy, correct location is vital especially for tourist based expansions, and access to reasonable finance is not easy in the current climate.

 

The culling of the bull calves was an interesting point, this is a fairly recent change, when I say recent I mean within the last 15 years or so. Previously bull calves from the dairy herds, normally Friesian, Ayrshire, Holstien, etc where produced from a bull from a beef line other than those herds who were breeding replacement calves to take into the milking herd. A Friesian cross south devon for instance will produce a decent beef animal. Even a Friesan bull on a dairy cow producing a bull calf can produce a half decent beef animal, not as good as a beef cross though.

 

What is happening now is beef bulls are often not used, they are crossing with Jersey/Guernsey to produce follow on heifers to take into the milk herd that produce a milk with higher cream/fat content which the cheese makers like. Any bull calves produced wont make a decent beef animal and are close to worthless, however they do have a market now. The lifting of the beef export an means they can be exported, often to Spain/Portugal for rearing as veal. Most veal production is now on a extensive basis with crates banned.

 

The program then moved onto a large intensive beef farming in a more favourable area of the country, it was obvious the scale of this guy was large. He had room to diversify into game farming in a big game area and I am guessing he was running a good few hundred acres if not thousands. I am sure he had a few other enterprises on the go as well.

 

It was obvious he was using Belgium blue bulls/semen on his cows. Belgium Blues are the body builders of the bovine world, they look like they work out in a gym from the day they are born, they have huge shoulders and massive rumps, they have been selectively bred for centuries to produce a heavily muscled animal.

 

As a result they also produce large calves, that dead calf was huge, twice the size of many I have seen. The mother was a Hereford/friesan cross at a guess, white face and hocks with a dark body. They make good suckler cows and mothers but they don’t have massive pelvises and can struggle when covered by a Belgium, I would want to be on hand for all births. With Belgium bulls the instances of caesarean sections is often high. In such a large herd he is not always going to be there and that will cause problems.

 

If it were me I would be looking to use a native beef bull such as a South Devon, the trouble is while these produce excellent meat with a very good confirmation and flavour they produce less of it slower. Economics are against him and I don’t blame him in anyway for going down his route.

 

Where our food comes from is important, trouble is few in Sainsburies or any of the supermarkets, with the probable exception of Waitrose, know or really care where it comes from.

 

Beef imports from S America are increasing, the meat is cheap but I have concerns over how it is produced. The use of Feed Lot systems in the Americas is increasing, these mean huge number of beef animals can be produced cheaply, not something I would ever want to see here.

 

Milk, the price per litre at the farm gate is low, very low. The price in the supermarket is low but they still make a decent margin. Would the average consumer notice if a couple of pence was added to the farm gate litre price by the way of the price in the shop….I doubt it very much but the supermarkets wont do it. We are now importing milk from Europe as we cant produce enough in the UK to meet the demand…madness.

 

And all those vegetarians out there that drink milk, I hope they realise the number of bull calves that get killed is party down to them.

 

Why are we in this mess? To long to go into but it centers around a number of keys facts.

 

The governments, not just the current but everyone since the end of WW2, desire to provide cheap food for the population, fine to begin with but then the growth in power of the Supermarkets and how this changed the buying and eating habits of the British housewife.

 

Europe and subsidies, this divorced many producers form the real economics of the industry and changed the focus of the producers.

 

Globalisation, cheap imports from other areas of the world, often produced to lower welfare standards than we have imposed on our producers.

 

Is there a way out….I sincerely hope so but there will be casualties along the way. Adapt and change has to be the order of the day/decade but it is not going to be easy.

 

Jerry

 

 

Jerry,

 

Thanks for taking the time to write this excellent post.

Livestock farming creates a totally different set of problems to the ones arable farmers face.

Very informative and interesting.

 

Chris.

[dusk2dawn]

Informative and well presented, obviously from a man who knows his stuff, it did portray a very bleak future not only for farming but for the rural communities involved.

 

D2D

[Tony9r]

I missed it. Anyone know if it's being repeated?

 

Ditto...

[peter-peter]

Anyone going to watch this on Thursday, Channel 4 at 21.00.

 

It is about legislation and how it impacts on countryside life.

 

I think there is a bit of shooting included in it aswell.

I got it in the nick of time brought back a lot of memories of my life on the farm

[Baldrick]

Not sure how many of you (have the time to) read Farmers' Weekly online, but the forum has a small thread and a blog intsallment about the programme. And predictably, there are some remarkably narrow-minded and misinformed views posted on there: http://www.fwi.co.uk/DiscussionForumThread...f-the-land.html

[Owenwill]

To put things into perspective regarding milk price as touched upon in the above post by Sandersj89, in 1995 we were getting on average between 26- 28 pence/litre for our milk,now we're lucky to get 17-18 pence/litre, it doesn't take a genius to work out what a massive difference this makes to our bottom line, especially as most other costs have obviously risen such as feed/vet costs. My dad took over the herd at a young age when his father died in the late forties, he started a very lucrative milk round, which the supermarkets prices put a stop too in the 70's, at the age of 70 he still milks most days, taking turns between myself and my brother. Sad to say but we will be selling our herd of 150 Fresian cows this year, as much as we try to make money in the job it seems we are fighting a losing battle with milk prices as they are, a lot of our cows yield over 12000 litres per lactation, the average yield is about 9000litres. We are actually lucky because we have many redundant buildings to sell for development,something I never thought we would have to do, but at least we will have some capital to plough back into alternative enterprises, a lot of dairy farmers round here don't have this luxury and are really struggling. Oh dear, if there's one thing I hate it's a whingeing farmer and I seem to have turned into one!

[Teal]

For what is worth Owen- the competition review is looking at things this year, and Tesco have said (probably to pre-empt a damning report) they will up the price they pay farmers for milk. Given that they scuppered the previous agreement (which the other supermarkets were ready to go ahead with)- some light... perhaps.

[Owenwill]

For what is worth Owen- the competition review is looking at things this year, and Tesco have said (probably to pre-empt a damning report) they will up the price they pay farmers for milk. Given that they scuppered the previous agreement (which the other supermarkets were ready to go ahead with)- some light... perhaps.

 

Too little too late afraid! Yes I know Tesco have said this, but the higher prices will only go to farms in there catchment areas and on a years trial basis ( don't quote me on this but it is my understanding ) Too many times we have heard the line things will get better but we're fed up fo hearing it for 10 years!!