The cost of efficiency

So, I have to buy a cattle crush, which apart from the obvious pleasure of imagining who you would like to put in it, is a hefty bit of capital outlay for what will be a fairly small herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle. Luckily, my rural payment agency cheque should cover it (thank you German taxpayers) but purchasing this relatively simple device illustrates some of the difficult investment decisions farmers have to make in order to guarantee a reasonable living. 

To begin with, like everyone else, farmers are subject to the almost constant hard sell to replace, renew, rebuild and retire any old capital equipment; a new tractor every three years, lots of new fencing every 20, along with an endless variety of seed drills, slurry tankers, pressure hoses and biodigestors. The farming press draws the majority of its income from equipment manufacturers which is why some publications are nothing but wall-to-wall adverts for New Holland and Massey Ferguson. However, the real debate is whether the industry has reached a point where capital investment just isn't delivering the returns to justify the huge outlay. 

It used to be so simple. From 1945 to 2010, if you bought new equipment, dumped more artificial fertiliser on your fields and stuffed animals full of American grown soya beans your yield went up ten per cent a year, which justified the expense of a new combine harvester because the finance cost ate up only a small proportion of the increased efficiency. However, for reasons which aren't really cut and dried, around 5 years ago the efficiency increases that farming had enjoyed suddenly stopped. The rise of China as a major dairy and meat consuming nation is often cited by town-based experts as a reason for this, but here in the countryside the whispered conversation is that most of us are at the limit of what we can realistically produce without building the kind of mega dairies and beef sheds that everyone hates. The result is felt in consumers pockets as the prices for many staples has doubled in real terms in just a few years. 

Farming being the curious industry that it is, the response to the efficiency gap has been, perversely, to become deliberately less efficient. Feeding your animals by hand with a wheel barrow and a pitchfork was what my grandfather used to do, and seems both quaint and romantic, but it is also cheap compared with buying a £50,000 automatic feeder that won't deliver that extra bit of return. The imperative then becomes to preserve your margins by keeping costs as low as possible because this is inherently cheaper than chasing diminishing yields - we can also look forward to the return of hayricks and, hopefully, given the cost of hiring contractors these days, indentured serfs. 

Bizarrely this is also why it has become impossible to buy a second-hand small tractor at anything like a reasonable price; what many farmers in Devon have found is that although the new tractors have air conditioning and you can listen to Led Zepelin on an MP3 player, they are too big to handle the lanes and the steep contours of the fields. Also fixing them requires a PHD in mechanical engineering, which is why a lot of old Massey Ferguson tractors have been quietly rescued from the nettles and reconditioned at the fraction of a cost of a new model. There is one farmer in the village who's Fordson tractor is so old that it needs an emptied out shotgun cartridge banged with a hammer into a special hole in order to spark it into life. The main point is that they work and with nothing more than two sizes of spanner and a screwdriver you can maintain it yourself without too much trouble. 

In conclusion, I defer to the wisdom of my ever quotable neighbour who's views on the subject are clear cut: "Some of my gear is so old that it is starting to appreciate in value." Amen to that. 

Trusted and reliable: an old Massey Ferguson. 

 

A cross-compliance to bear

The reality that farming has becomes an industry as tightly regulated as pharmaceuticals, or arms exports, is brought home by the fact that the Government department that runs farming, DEFRA, referred to universally as "the ministry" (or more quietly as the Department for the Eradication of Farming and Rural Activity) has almost vice regal powers when it comes to the organisation of your farming business. If you take some sort of subsidy, and let's face it every farmer does, then the pay-off in return for the payment, is the requirement to follow a thicket of regulations that runs to several large file PDFs on the ministry's website. Build your muck pile slightly the wrong shape, or plough too close to a field edge and the full bureaucratic might of the State is called down upon you. 

It is the nature of bureaucracies that they only really punish the essentially law abiding, but getting to the point where officialdom is content to leave you alone requires levels of effort and concentration that can be distracting. For example, learning the precise way the government wants you to cut a hedge can seem like a waste of effort when your slurry tanker has sprung a leak. The answer is to go and listen to management consultants explain to bemused farmers what exactly is expected of them.

So it was with the heaviest of hearts that I had to go to a so-called "cross-compliance" presentation in Ogwell (another place in Devon that I had never heard of). I put on my best tweeds, fired up the Isuzu and prepared myself mentally to be bored rigid for three hours, with the only comfort being that Defra had thoughtfully organised the conference in the local pub. 

In the event, it was more interesting than I had expected. I turned up late trailing papers and cradling a glass of freshly bought cider only to realise that A) I was radically over-dressed in pristine check shirt, newsboy flat cap and Barbour shooting waistcoat to be anything other than a former townie B) I was the only one visibly drinking. The old Devonian in front of me turned around, looked me up and down and said: "s'pose takes all sorts" with a practiced air of resignation. 

The major issue in farming is how farmers can be weaned off the European subsidies that many have come to regard as their natural right. The next big reorganisation is in the offing, hence the frenetic round of meetings. The problem is soon that as you subsidise anything the distortions in the market start to creep in. 

For example, subsidy used to be paid per head of cattle to the point where carcasses were being held in cold storage for up to five years because of massive over-production; milk lakes and butter mountains were all a side-effect of the CAP system in the '80s and '90s. The system has since been reformed to emphasise land stewardship, but the side-effect has been that it is now more profitable to build luxury ponds for newts and five star flower accommodation for butterflies than actually do any farming. The resulting falls in headdage of sheep and cattle has contributed to the near doubling of meat prices in the past five years, which is why a lot of restaurants now serve Bavette, or flank of beef, as it is a cheap enough to preserve their margins but has the approximate taste of a prime cut. 

Anyway, the conclusion of three hours of talking was that we are all going to lose up to 11 per cent of our EU grants by 2015. This caused surprisingly little reaction from the audience, which I quizzed my next door farmer neighbour about - he had also come to the conference. He said "You have to remember that farmers are fundamentally positive people." I laughed so hard that people in the front rows turned around. "What about that farmer from Trusham who is so negative that people will only socialise with him over silent games of whist?." 

"There are always exceptions," came the reply. 

Back to Devon

The suspicion that colour supplements in Sunday newspapers sell an unrealistic and idealised version of country life lurks behind any decision to leave London and settle back in the provinces. Not only are you leaving an absurdly wealthy city state that offers a plethora of cultural and employment opportunities, but the fear is that once made, it is a choice that will inevitably lead to regret.

In blogging my experiences of giving up a career in journalism and taking up farming during possibly the financially least stable periods in the modern history of agriculture, I hope this will be inspirational to some people, or a salutary warning on the folly of trying to find that greener patch of grass. Either way, I hope to prove that a satisfactory life outside of a major conurbation is possible and available to people who aren't already wealthy liberals. 

Devon is a huge and diverse county, but for point of reference, the action takes place in the Haldon range of hills just outside Exeter. The contrast is huge, the very inaccessibility of the steep sided valleys that dominate the approaches to the Teign valley makes development almost impossible on a large scale and has helped to preserve some of the area's natural charm. But, while outwardly little has changed since the Norman invasion, there is a sub-strata of subtle shifts in lifestyle and population that is mirrored in the wider countryside.

To begin with, it is interesting that farming survives in the valley with a surprising resilience that can only be described as astounding Partly it is because the land has little alternative use. It can't be flattened, building new infrastructure is a nightmare and Devonians are a fairly cussed group of rugged individuals anyway. It has always been the case around here that small family farms averaging around 100 acres of land have barely been able to support their occupants. Hill farming in whatever context has always been tough, which is why everyone has a supplementary skill. 

There aren't many small-scale farmers that don't hire out their skills as contractors or builders to the highest bidder and, having had to do this for generations, in a way strengthens the sentimental (with the emphasis on mental) bond to the land. It is true that grazing horses are an increasing feature of the landscape, with pony paddocks and their odd, intrusive fencing marching across the landscape like an invading army, but the essential spirit of small-scale farming seems to permeate the valleys in a way that is strangely comforting.