Sheep Rustling

                        

I first heard about sheep rustling on a Farming Today programme three weeks ago but the issue was brought to my attention again this morning on a Five Live discussion.

Since 2008 John Bishop from Herefordshire has had a big problem with sheep rustlers. In one year alone he lost over 200 sheep. The situations got so bad no insurance company will take him on and he’s worried the farm won’t survive.

Who does John think is pinching his sheep? He suspects his neighbouring farmers.

Why? He pointed out it was breeding ewes that were increasingly going missing. He also said it takes skill and experience to quickly and quietly herd sheep into a van.

I’m angry to hear West Mercia police are doing very little in the way of investigations.

Rural crime is real crime. Farmers put a lot of investment into their sheep. Having livestock repeatedly stolen from their land is no different from a burglar repeatedly stealing stock from a shop owners clothing store.

Perhaps sheep tagging will catch out these criminals? It’s a question I’ll raise at the EID meeting in Usk tomorrow night.

But if these rustlers are stealing the sheep for their meat, not for breeding, they’ll slaughter them away from reputable abattoirs, making it very difficult to trace the caucuses to their rightful owners.

I’ve got a gut instinct that cows will be next because healthy, TB free cattle are fetching good prices at market.

Welsh Wool: A bleak future?

First it was architecture, then it was mutton and now…it’s wool. Prince Charles wants to save the wool production industry from dying out.

Speaking at Wimpole Home Farm in Cambridgeshire he told retailers and designers of the extraordinary benefits of wool.

Something Gareth Jones from The Wool Marketing Board knows a lot about:. He spoke to my colleague Tomos Morgan from The Cardiff School of Journalism.

The future of Wool by BeckyWhitefoot

Wool production is not a viable business for farmers because the price they get for their wool is below the cost of actually shearing it.

These are the changes I believe need to be made:

1) The Wool Marketing Board need to give farmers a better price for their wool.

2) Wool needs to get back on the fashion agenda but it needs to be affordable. Why buy a wool rug from John Lewis when a synthetic one is half the price?

But if I were a farmer I’d be mighty tempted to cut out the ‘middle man’ altogether and start knitting my own jumpers, toys and hot water bottle covers from the wool and selling them over the internet or at farmer’s market.

Many thanks to John and Eyra Edwards at Lakeside Farm Park for allowing me to film on Tuesday. I’m very excited about lambing season!

Diversification: The Secret Ingredients

During November and December I travelled to  farm shops, farm parks, farmers markets and farming fairs. 

Lionel Walford, who chairs Lantra,  the  skills council  for agriculture in Wales, says farmers should farm diversify if they want to take advantage of better business opportunities.But does diversifcation really work?

This is what I found out:

Rebecca Whitefoot by BeckyWhitefoot

Where have all the birdies gone?

The RSPB say our rarest Welsh birds could become extinct unless the Welsh Assembly Government invest more money into protecting them.

Last week they handed in a petition with over 500 signatories, calling for the WAG to hold an independent enquiry.

I spoke to Delyth Wells from RSPB Cymru:
RSPBbecky1 by BeckyWhitefoot

So how can we help?
RSPBbecky2 by BeckyWhitefoot

I also spoke to our Red Kite man, Roger James from Abergavenny. He told me he’d noticed a decline in Curlew and other birds in Abergavenny.

RogerBird by BeckyWhitefoot

Fly Tipping

Illegal flytipping in Wales is costing us three million pounds a year to clear up.

Over 55 thousand cases of fly tipping reported  to Cardiff council over the past year.

It seems no rubbish is too big for the fly tippers of South Wales with car parts, furniture and household waste a regular sight.

Environment Minister Jane Davidson believes the public should be doing more to make sure their rubbish is dumped responsibly.

Trevor Morgan, who farms in Ystradowen regularly finds rubbish dumped at his gate.

It’s extra work he doesn’t need.

Flytippingblog by BeckyWhitefoot

I’ve never understood why people do it – if they can drive out into the countryside to get rid of it, why can’t they drive to a council dump?

Special thanks to Becka from Oakland Organics for helping me with this story.

Fox Hunting : The debate is heating up

As a trainee broadcast journalist I’ve noticed MP’s and AM’s are being asked what their position is on fox hunting during interviews.

Shadow Defra Secretary Nick Herbert MP was asked about his position on fox hunting when taking part in a Guardian online question forum on the 14th January.

He said,

…. the Conservative party’s position is that we would give parliament the opportunity to repeal the Hunting Act on a free vote, with a government bill in government time. I appreciate that this an issue which arouses strong feelings on both sides. However, in my judgment the Hunting Act has proved to be unworkable. In many cases, it is actually detrimental to animal welfare, especially when indiscriminate methods of control which aren’t outlawed are used instead.

“I make no secret of my own position - I’ve hunted all my life, I dislike illiberal laws and I would personally vote for repeal. But you don’t need to be a supporter of hunting to think that the ban was a mistake.

 

Since the Hunting Act, the popularity of the sport has increased. But is this because the hunting element of the sport has been removed?

Back in November, I joined Llangeinor Hunt for their first outing of the season.

Mair Hughes has been a member of the Hunt for 35 years.

Below are her thoughts on the debate.

I asked Mair how she thinks the media presents fox hunting. I also ashed her if people oppose fox hunting because they don’t understand exactly what goes on.

Foxhunting 1 by BeckyWhitefoot

Mair wants to see the ban lifted because it’s unworkable. She also thinks the ban was about class discrimination:

Foxhunting – class discrimination? by BeckyWhitefoot

The Llangeinor Hunt welcome debate and challenge. But they ask people inform their opinion by coming along to hunt.

Foxhunting 3 by BeckyWhitefoot

By following the hunt in a car or on horse and by chatting to the hunt in the pub afterwords you’ll find out what really happens.

Farting Cows – to make you chuckle on Blue Monday

 

Scientists in St Mellons are ready to hand out a garlic extract to cows, that’ll reduce carbon emissions. 

 In Wales a third of the farming carbon footprint is from Methane Gas, released when cows break wind. 

But Mootral can reduce this, as David Williams from Neem Biotech explains.

Farting Cows by BeckyWhitefoot
 

Cows produce up to 500 litres of Methane a day! But how does the garlic extract work?

  The Methane produced by the cows is the product of fermentation.

The garlic extract alters the balance of the various microbes within the cow, reducing the methane and increasing the percentage of good bacteria.

So, the garlic extract is skewing  the balance of the microbes, making the cows digest their food more efficiently. 

 

Neem say their extract is ready to roll out but farmers will have to wait up to two years it will be made available.  

  

 

 

The Red Kite: My first encounter

On a very snowy, wild Saturday afternoon I travelled to Abergavenny with Red Dragon’s  Chris Halpin to meet Roger James, a professional falconer and country man from The Black Mountain Falconry Centre.

It was the first time I’d got up close to one of these:

In the 16^th the Vermin Act allowed some gamekeepers and landowners to wipe them out in England and Scotland and by 1905 there were only about three breeding pairs left in Wales.

In response the RSPB set up a dedicated Red Kite programme which still exists today. The Red Kites’ successful reintroduction has meant species from abroad are now breeding in England and there are over 600 breeding pairs in their native Wales.

So, why were the Red Kites’ persecuted in the first place? Red Kites’ are powerful birds, with a wing span of up to two metres. Already labelled as pests, some farmers and landowners believed they were killing their sheep and set about shooting and poisoning them.  In reality, Red Kites’ are scavengers, their main food being carrion.

 

As numbers continued to fall, the price of their eggs went up. An egg collector could get well over £1,000 for finding one.

Roger told me the situation became so desperate one nest was guarded 24/7 by Gurka soldiers and volunteers.

Now, their main threats are illegal poisoning by bait left out for foxes and crows, secondary poisoning by rodenticides, and collisions with power cables.

Blacky, Roger’s well trained Red Kite, named after his tail that looks like it’s been dipped in ink, braved the cold conditions to allow Chris to film. Blacky was a pro, having starred in car adverts, blockbuster films and Countryfile. And as he flexed his wings and allowed me to stroke his belly it really struck me how magnificent these birds are. It’s difficult to comprehend how close we came to loosing them.

Chris, whose our environment blogger at CJS asked if there was any truth in the idea that onshore wind farms, like the one in Ogmore Valley, are acting like giant scarecrows.

Roger says he’s seen videos on You Tube of birds being killed in the propellers.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwVz5hdAMGU

 He went on to explain birds use the same wind currents as the turbines and so larger birds like swans, buzzards and curlew are avoiding flying and nesting nearby.

His opinion is backed up by scientists from Scottish Natural Heritage who found evidence for localized reductions in bird breeding density around upland wind farms.

Roger is not a nimbie. He supports renewable energy but like the RSPB he wants to see energy companies citing wind farms more carefully.

If you’d like to see a Red Kite you can visit one of their feeding stations:

There’s Gigrin Farm in Rhayader, the Llanddeusant Red Kite Feeding Station in the Brecon Beacons, Llanddeusant feeding station in Carmarthenshire and the Bwlch Nant yr Arian Visitor Centre in Ceredigion.

 

Supermarket Watchdogs

The Conservatives have pledged to introduce a Supermarket Ombudsman to settle rows between farmers and supermarkets.
Nick Herbert, the Shadow Enviroment Secretary  says supermarkets have too much power and undermine farmers. He wants to see an end to retrospective discounting. This is when supermarkets go back to farmers and say they want to drive down prices which have already been agreed on.

But is an Ombudsman the answer? Can they really ensure fair practice? I’m not convinced.

For an Ombudsman to work, they need to have teeth.

Peter Tyndall is the Ombudsman in Wales. You can go to him if you have a complaint against a public authority, the WAG, or your local Council.  In 2007 he received nearly 500 complaints from the public.

 He’ll look to see if there has been maladministration; a big word that means: the negligent or incompetent running of local services.  And if he thinks there has, he’ll start an investigation.

Let’s say this is a complaint against Cardiff Council.

He can take up to a year to do this and will reach one of three conclusions:

1)      There’s been no maladministration. Cardiff Council off the hook.

2)      Cardiff Council have behaved badly but the complainant hasn’t suffered.

3)      Cardiff Council have behaved badly and the complainant has suffered.

For 2 and 3 Peter will write a report and release it to the press for publication.

Cardiff Council can accept the report or ignore it. If they ignore it, Peter will release another report to the press. But that is as ferocious as it gets. After the second report, the Ombudsman can do no more and the complaint is dropped.

As it stands, The Ombudsman’s power is in his ability to shame by going to the press. In over eighty cases in 2007, the Council made peace with the complainant the moment they saw Peter was looking into a complaint against them.

But will supermarkets blush so easily? If supermarket ombudsmen are going to make sure  there is fair practice they’ll need more powers than are  available to the Public Services Ombudsman in the UK.

Otherwise, it’s just going to descend into a childish, bullish squabble:

Scene 1

Ombudsman: Stop breaking promises to farmers!

Supermarket: What you going to do about it?

Ombudsman: Stop breaking promises to farmers, or I’ll, I’ll…

Supermarket: Or you’ll what?

Ombudsman: Or I’ll write a report saying your mean

Supermarket: Oooo, I’m scared. I’ll give my customers loads of BOGOF deals instead

Ombudsman: I’ll write another one

Supermarket: Not listening, not listening!

Supermarket has hands over ears.  Begins throwing potatoes at Ombudsman.

 Ombudsman bruised from potatoes. Tries to throw papers at Supermarket but don’t quite reach. They fall into a big, crumpled pile on the floor.

Fino

Home for Christmas

Bedroom view

I’ve returned to Herefordshire for my Christmas holidays today. I’ll be staying with my parents and catching up with friends in my favourite pub, The Barrels. You’ll find it on St Owens Street in the city. It serves Stowford Press. I don’t think anything can beat it. Except Westons Vintage, perhaps.

My Uncle has spotted muntjac deer, introduced from Asia, living in the fields beside my house. They’re very timid creatures and about the size of a small dog. I find there’s something almost magical about them. So, I’m going to do my best to spot one of them in the thickets.

I’m fitting back into my family’s eccentric ways. Dad grew a beer belly whilst out cycling today. This is not unusual.

“What have you got underneath there, Trevor?” my Mum asked, as Dad stood in the doorway covered in mud. “It looks like you’ve been rolling around in a ditch.”

Dad has produced : toads,  birds, hedgehogs,  foxes, rabbits and apples from underneath his jumper before .

“A pheasant?” I guessed.

Two dropped to the floor. He’d found them on the side of the road.

They’ve already been skinned so I guess I know what I’ll be cooking for dinner this evening. Best of all, Dad’s kept me the feathers to stick on my hat.