Sir, - As an English farmer, I have been following the recent protest by Irish farmers with great interest. They are concerned, for example, about a price of 80p per kg for pigs. The biggest processor in the UK - Malton Bacon Factory - which handles 36 per cent of all pigs in the UK, has recently cut its contract price to 55p/kg. One of our local NFU members has publicly stated that he is losing £20 per pig. His throughput is 40,000 pigs per year. By my reckoning that meant a £16,000 per week loss.
The situation has not been caused by domestic overproduction - we are only 70 per cent self-sufficient. It has been made more acute by the higher welfare standards to which we now adhere - pigs kept loose in straw yards, with a ban on the use of sow stalls and a tether - and by the additional cost of the ban on feeding meath and bone meal. Incidentally, meat and bone meal is now exported to the Continent and fed to pigs over there, which are then imported to compete with our products. Some farmers are gassing pigs as their cheapest option.
The beef sector has been in crisis since the BSE scare. A price of 75p/kg is about what our producers are getting, and on top of that the NFU has calculated that Irish beef producers have an advantage of £70 per beast, because of the charges - for example, various inspection charges - which we have to meet out of our own pockets and which you do not. Not only has there been a ban on beef exports, but the strong pound has encouraged a flood of imports from all over the world. A year ago, our Minister of Agriculture took the extraordinary step of banning the consumption of beef on the bone. You can imagine the consternation that caused.
The sheep sector has been described as being in meltdown. On Shetland, farmers are destroying healthy animals because that is cheaper than the cost of taking them to the mainland for sale, as they would not cover the cost of getting the sheep to market with the return they would achieve. In Wales, children are being fed lamb from Uruguay for school dinners, whilst their fathers are dumping sheep on the RSPCA because they cannot afford to keep them. One West Country farmer sent 20 ewes to market and came back with a cheque - for the lot - of £5.
Dairying has been profitable, but now Milk Marque, the successor of the Milk Marketing Board, is having to reduce its prices because of pressure from its customers, the processors. When it was set up, it was only allowed to deal in liquid milk, not in processing, so it is at the mercy of the processors, who are also competing for milk from farmers, and who are now reducing prices because they have weakened Milk Marque sufficiently.
My own farm is entirely arable, and our most profitable crop is sugar beet, the price of which decreased by 25 per cent overnight because of the strength of sterling and the exchange rate with the green pound. This has also had the effect of lowering cereal prices, and this has been made worse by two successive dismal harvests. The lowest price I have heard for barley from last year's harvest was £37 per tonne - after deduction for drying, low bushel weight, transport and storage.
The effects of the crisis in the livestock sector is not yet fully reflected in the price of cereals, but next year could be a lot worse. We have no intervention system for feed wheat, only for feed barley, so that safeguard is denied. Last year, incomes of cereal farms dropped by 47 per cent. It remains to be seen what the figure for 1998 and 1999 will be.
Our present government, and its predecessor, have refused to apply for the agri-monetary compensation to which we are entitled, because they have no understanding of how bad the crisis is in farming, and, furthermore, since farmers represent only about 2 per cent of the population, they think we do not matter. Presumably, as your numbers decrease, the same attitude will be taken.
You are fortunate that you can take up the generous EU-subsidised retirement scheme. Our government has not seen fit to implement this. Whereas owner-occupiers can sell up and live reasonably, the prospects for tenant farmers are terrible. Many are keeping going because they at least have a roof over their heads. Their stock is the only asset they have to sell, and in no way would that fund buying somewhere to live, never mind provide an income.
My message to Irish farmers is that you may think you are badly off and treated with contempt by your government, but from our side of the Irish Sea, you are not doing badly, and we would swap places any day. - Yours, etc., Mrs Joan Burnett,
The Elms, East Cottingwith, York.