Staying optimistic despite industry concern over rising costs
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COLUMN: From the Farm by Victoria Ballantyne
Autumn feels like it is turning to winter, but I’ll not complain about the weather as the end of the growing season has been relatively mild and not too wet.
In fact, complaining about the weather would be a luxury compared with the current challenges hitting almost every household and business. I hate to be a pessimist, and I still believe that agriculture is one of the most exciting industries to be involved in with an excellent future – but you don’t need me to tell you that electricity, feed and fuel prices are all going to have an impact.
We are fortunate that as an extensive livestock farm we have fairly low electric consumption. However, friends in dairy, pig and poultry farming are trying to work out how they are going to keep the lights on (literally) over the next few months as electricity jumps from anywhere between 100 and 400 per cent.
Combined with feed price increases, a number of pig and poultry businesses have already closed their doors until things calm down. We used to buy in sugar beet pulp at below £200/ton. It is now over £400/ton and so we are not going to add it to the calves diet this year.
The whole supply chain is affected, including transport and processing, so there is no way food can stay at current retail prices. I can assure you that although your food shop has increased, those at this end are not making any more money – the only people benefitting from this are the oil and electric companies.
Despite the uncertainly the circle of farming continues here. The cows have been pregnancy scanned with satisfactory results. We put 67 cows and 31 heifers to the bulls for eight weeks. The heifers have done very well with 30 of the 31 scanned in calf and due to calve at two years old next May. Six of the 67 cows were not in calf. Three had a story, whilst three were unexplained, which was disappointing. Overall though a scan of 93 per cent which is just below our target of 95 per cent.
The calves were weighed, averaging 220kg at 171 days, equal to a 200-day weight of 256kg. I love putting the data in and getting information out. It helps us to compare across the years and see where we can improve. Of note was a big uplift in calf weights weaned by our heifers so that is a good sign.
At a time when a lot of farmers are putting cows off due to increased costs and lack of profitability, we have increased our numbers, hoping that our fairly low input, grass based system will see us in good stead during these uncertain times. We have also focussed heavily on cow type, breeding more compact and efficient cows which eat less and can look after themselves during challenging spells – the focus of my Nuffield scholarship.
Next week’s job is to sort the ewes in preparation for the tups going out. This is a bit of a complicated procedure with four different ram breeds used. They all have a different purpose and slot into our system one way or another.
That brings me on to #LambForStAndrewsDay. We will be donating some lamb to Golspie High School as part of the campaign which we hope their home economics class will enjoy cooking with.
On a final note, this year is 40 years since Murdo and Jane took on the tenancy at Clynelish and despite the drizzle it was lovely to celebrate the occasion with some of the people who have helped the business over the years.
Victoria Ballantyne owns Clynelish Farm in Brora with her husband Jason.
