Guest Speaker Chris Walkland “Robin to Ian’s Batman”

Firstly it’s a great pleasure (and, er, a first!) to be officially writing for the IPMS Bulletin. There have, over the years, been several occasions when Ian sent me stories he was proposing to write, but which he thought might land him in the legal doo-do, and where he wanted a few tweaks to keep him out of it! And also, perhaps, the odd unofficial contribution from time to time! Those were the days, and how we still miss him.

He'd certainly be relishing what’s going down in the industry today, with several important stories to report and comment on. There’s AHDB’s levy rate rise, for example, which I’m sure he would have supported, as he believed in milk promotion and promoting positive vibes for the industry, plus the prospects for new dairies such as Mona Dairies in Anglesey, the Haverfordwest creamery, plus Freshways’ interesting announcement that it is building a new factory in the Midlands. All are new projects, but new doesn’t always guarantee success as we have seen in the past with Westbury Dairies when that was built, and Amelca.

He'd also be all over the huge spat this week between the NFUs (plus other organisations) and Red Tractor over the latter’s development of a sustainability module IN CONJUNCTION WITH the retailers and their trade association ONLY, and not with the NFUs, nor Red Tractor’s Technical Advisory Committees (TAC’s). Although the NFU Board members and the TAC’s knew about the general direction of travel of the proposed Greener Farms Commitment they did not know the detail until documentation emerged this week, effectively as a fait accompli in a highly detailed 37-page document.

Farmers and their representatives are rightly outraged at this, as it will now be a heck of a lot harder now to get money out of the retailers to compensate farmers for green initiatives. The retailers will simply say “The Red Tractor GFC is ‘the norm’. We aren’t going to pay you extra for ‘the norm’.”

As one farmer summed it up to me: “the milk processors have been going in through the front door of the retailers – our customers - trying to negotiate a market premium for what we are doing on sustainability, while Red Tractor has gone in through the back door, in secret, and done a deal behind our backs.”

Serious questions have to be asked as to what has gone on. Because the situation now – as I said on Friday’s Kite podcast – is that Red Tractor - which is charged with promoting and progressing respect and trust in British food and food production - is now no longer respected and trusted by the supply side of the industry, including farmers and ALL of its major representative bodies!

That it has come to this is astounding and should, in my mind, be a resignation matter for the people at the top of Red Tractor, and I’m pretty sure Ian would agree. But I know they won’t resign and nor will heads roll: the hierarchy at Red Tractor are stubborn indeed, and immune to criticism. They bow to no-one, and this imposed environment module is an absolute classic example of that.

But it is hard to envisage a positive future for the organisation when some farmers and industry representatives view Red Tractor as an out of date, out of touch, out of control dictatorship than as a co-operatively-minded organisation that works with others for the common good. The fact is that to many Red Tractor is now increasingly seen as an organisation that does the retailer’s bidding, not as an organisation supporting farmers.  Think this story will play out for many moons yet.

Finally, I know if Ian were writing this he’d mention something about the market and milk prices. The good news is that commodity prices are moving in the right direction, and the market is a lot more positive than it was. However, it could be many months before we see milk prices increase for most farmers as the commodities are, in general, only recovering to levels that equate to current farmgate prices. They need to be a lot higher yet in order to increase them, I’m afraid.