Jan 2011: Tales From The Teifi...
Life on the Pembrokeshire/Ceredigion border continues its steady pace. Several people warned us that SW Wales would impose its own timescale upon us but manic Manchester is still amidst us, so far.If Shaun Ryder (sounding chipper of late) can go round the block again then we definitely can. Our grasp of Cymraeg (Welsh) is edging along although which language the teenagers of the area dream in is a question. Renovation works on our house continue to consume lots of time but much of the work looks great. Being miserly has inevitably increased the time element but has preserved funds for horticultural kit in due course. We await a decision on our planning application to create a new safe field entrance and continue to dodge the traffic zooming past the existing one!
We have, as time allows, stayed in touch with regional growers new and old and the potential capacity for crop production of SW Wales remains clear to us. The official recognition is there in Wales to a large extent with Welsh Assembly Reports, Strategies and some funding on the table. While this is much better than the continuing laissez-faire in England, policy measures remain less promising. Eg Single Farm Payments remain available only to larger holdings while many horticultural ones are intensive small acreage, planning policy remains poor at protecting cropping land.
Two other big issues also loom large. Firstly land ownership is concentrating after a period of relatively cheap land prices, a trend bound to continue as food costs rise relative to other aspects of life.Innovations such as post-WWII state smallholdings, incentives for longer term tenancies and serious soil management seem nowhere on the horizon. Those thinking historically will note the correlation between countries with diverse land ownership, stability and food in the shops and less happy tales. It is not an issue taken seriously by many.
Secondly food retail in Wales is concentrating as elsewhere with multiple supermarkets continuing to overpower other traders, local politicians and planners. Options for growers to sell to in the immediate remains a concern. Horticulture does not lend itself to rapid changes in output or overnight training miracles.
More positively the Scottish Parliament bared its teeth (albeit under desperation for cash) and put a Business Rate levy on edge of town supermarkets in their recent budget. The last minute measure had the unintended effect of wrongfooting the big four, in contrast to the disgraceful lobbying used against the sober alcohol measures proposed during 2010. Perhaps John Gummer's efforts earlier to run them out of town are not forgotten. Whether proposed new powers for the Welsh Assembly might include this option we shall see.
A great local example of action has seen the allegedly mean (maybe prudent would be fairer) Cardis buy a substancial central site for locally owned food trading and shoring up the town centre shops. With a planning application by Tesco to effectively take over much of Cardigan's non-food trade awaiting a decision this may be timely.400 shareholders (including us) raising £200,000 is a tremendous achievement in a town of 5000 people.There is some parallel to the Unicorn site purchase in 2001 made possible by customer loanstock buying of a similar sum. Similar public backing must be possible in many areas of the UK with collective control of the resulting assets.While this mirrors historical action such as Building Societies the challenge is to manage such a site well and find commercial users. Food retail skills seem scarce when one looks at the rump greengrocery trade or the all too randomised ranges found in most farm shops.
Guy Watson from Riverford Farm sensibly pointed out this month that rising fuel costs are in all our interests and recent nudging of the $100/barrel for oil similarly nudged the Glebelands Optimistometer. Timescales as ever remain hard to call but $150-200 soon wouldn't be such a surprise. The effects continue to be difficult to model with continuing effort by technoheads to promote GM plants as providing bigger yields (from the same land) while largely ignoring all the fuel (the nitrate fertiliser not the diesel!) such a triffid would need to consume.
Amidst a number of issues a lot of effort on carbon usage of late has pointed up the farm machinery as underestimated as a cost.This means the dearer energy inherent in specialist metals has some potential for significant cost increase.This might well be a trend pushing farm scale down in due course.What state global soils will soon be in is of course debatable, only dearer oil seems to have the muscle to stop erosive practices and depletion of organic matter levels to "dustbowl" levels.Let's hope the Organic Trade Board remember to put it in the ads.....
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