FARM DIARY

POLITICIANS are very similar to our peacocks. They proudly display their colours, strut around making quite a lot of noise (most of which is highly irritating), defend their 'patch' viciously, not afraid to involve themselves in a bit of unarmed combat (like John Prescott), but take flight at any sign of real danger to the highest tree in the vicinity.

We choose those who display the colours we like, be it blue, red, green or yellow, and then we are faced with that difficult question (just like the peacock again); what are politicians for?

Once elected, victorious politicians form a government, and it is their job to then run the country. Whilst they may huff and puff, spout about grandiose ideas, their primary function is to run the country, and those who are rejected by the electorate promptly lose their magnificent tails, and need to grow a new one whilst holding those who govern to account.

Good governance does not involve allowing two laboratories to argue for four years about whose responsibility it is to pay for repairs to dodgy drains, whilst continuing to flush live Foot and Mouth viruses down those very drains. It is the worst example of negligence that I have come across in a very long time, and quite frankly it is indefensible.

Milk prices continue to rise, with Tesco announcing 27.5p per litre to farmers in September, Milklink Co-op increasing by a whopping 4.6p per litre, Sainsbury's and others following suit.

I can see that the required premiums for organic milk are difficult to maintain, with around 8-9p per litre required to cover the extra cost of production. Should this fail to be maintained, organic milk producers can switch back overnight to conventional production, which would shorten an undersupplied market even more.

Organic farmers are not likely to do this in a hurry, and most will take a long term view of a market that has rewarded them well for quite some time now, and of course they would need to undertake the conversion back to organic should they wish to resume in the future.

However, they could carry on farming the land organically, but switch the feeding of their dairy cows to conventional grain, which means that the conversion back to organic would only be nine months. Given the current price of conventional grain never mind organic grain, this must be tempting for some.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette September 12