The Single Payment Scheme. Who Does it Really Subsidise?

It’s that time of year again, a couple of days spent in the office checking areas, split fields and where we’ve sown what to gain another big fat yearly cheque from the Rural Payments Agency for essentially doing what we do which is to, “Don’t Change and Carry On”. 

I find it difficult to defend the Single Payment Scheme amongst non-farmers as I find the arguments against it pretty compelling. Environmental payments I can stand behind until the Corncrakes come home, but a payment for just being a farmer, ‘fraid not.

Our argument that the payment subsidises cheap food really doesn’t wash, it actually makes food more expensive and will continue to do so unless it is properly targeted in the next reform.

Currently the scheme subsidies the fertiliser industry, it subsidies the agrochemical industry, and it subsidies the sales of overpriced new tractors and combine harvesters. As soon as those devils see an opportunity in our gross margins they leap in with unfathomable price increases and they steal the payment from us. As for land values, don’t get me started. The sad thing is, its us who let them get away with it.

When commodity prices are poor those who would lift the payments from our pockets lie low, but as soon as we start making any kind of profit the real subsidy sharks come and snatch it from working farmers hands, and for the past two years they have been having a bonanza.

Money that should be going into diversification projects that help to wean us from our addiction go to the real agribusinesses that we will never be able to compete with.  The UK farming business model is severely flawed.  

Sure, the NFU slaps the hands of the fertiliser boys occasionally, but they know what you can afford to pay because they’ve had a little look in John Nix or the latest report from your friendly land agent and they can see that everything is rosy. The same goes for the agrochemical industry, they leave us just enough to keep us coming back for more.

The machinery manufacturers have completely carved the whole game up by arranging that none of their dealers can offer a discount out of their area making it impossible to get any meaningful alternative quote. We are completely and utterly stuffed by them and in fact it needs a proper investigation to see how the whole game is cooked up. BBC Watchdog, are you listening?

Given what most of us have spent the money on, it amazes me that these payments in their current form have gone on for so long. You would have thought that since the start of the Single Payment Scheme in 2005 when the whole not-for-production-payment came in, that we would have used the cash to diversify into non-farming areas to replace that payment. It’s job should have been done. It’s not as if they even asked us to go cold turkey like our New Zealand friends, we are in our ninth year of it and there is a new scheme coming along any time soon.

Okay, so will I be claiming my 2012 Single Farm Payment? Yes, because like all junkies I am addicted but I want to be cured. I also want to be protected from those opportunists who seize every means to temp me away from my chance to reinvest and diversify. I need to be protected from myself.

It seems to me that the only way we are going to be able to wean ourselves off this dependency is to only be paid if we actually do something for the money. That means stepping up to the mark to put some gravitas behind that often quoted phrase that we farmers are the "Custodians of the Countryside". Although the threatened "greening" of the proposed CAP changes hardly touch that remit, it is a start. 

It is naive to think that we can continue to be paid in the way we are in these times of austerity without giving some public benefit for the money we receive. 

I see the greening element as a way of not only protecting a payment that the general public can accept as giving some public good for the long term, but also as a way of making us change management practices to get the payment, which may persuade us to use it for the long term success of our businesses rather than giving it away to those who would lift it from our wallets for short term gain. 

For the National Farmers Union website

Filling the Environmental Hungry Gap

At the end of June this year my Organic Entry Level Scheme (OELS) comes up for renewal and so it’s time to decide wether or not I should be committing to another five years of organic farming.

Over the past two years it could be argued that I would have made more money farming conventionally depending on how clever I might have been in buying my fertiliser and marketing my crops, but over the whole five year rotation of my present OELS agreement there is no doubt that on average my organic rotation has been financially better.

The difficulty I now have is that going back into my fertility building leys I do not have the cushion of the Conversion Payments that I got first time round, and with a stockless system and therefore no income during that fertility building eighteen months, it makes my budget look a little on the lean side. So I have been considering other options to see wether or not I can tap into environmental payments under the Higher Level Scheme (HLS) that value the habitat that my leguminous fertility period and preceding overwintered stubbles provide, which will also fill in my own “hungry gap.” The picture (see photo) taken of the back of our mower cutting red clover last summer indicates that my insect population is extremely healthy and is providing a wonderful food source for insect eating birds. Surely that has a value?

But environmental schemes also provide me with a financial dilemma. Do they actually stack up when comparing the income you forgo taking land out of food production against the income you get from the various arable options that the scheme requires you to embrace?

The better paying options of Pollen and Nectar Mixes and Wild Bird Cover deliver £550/ha under OELS but with current organic prices where they are it is very difficult to find even an awkward corner or a north facing headland under a high hedge that doesn’t pay more than that. Having poured long and hard over five years worth of yield maps from our combine harvester I thought that unprofitable areas would leap out at me begging to be released into an environmental scheme, but it really was not the case. With Natural England’s budget as tight as a cow’s exhaust on spring grass there is little chance that we will ever get a just reward for the expense of entering into any of these options.

So if we are not going to be paid enough to cover income forgone then there must be another reason for favouring wildlife over food. Could this be what the National Farmers Union is thinking about when they talk about “Sustainable Intensification?”

I do hope so, because with all this worry about how we are going to feed all those meat hungry Chinese desperate for our decadent western diet, has made me start to feel extremely guilty about even entertaining the thought of not working every piece of my farm to with an inch of its life.

Actually that’s a bit of a lie as my aesthetic eye has always been more fulfilled looking at parts of the farm which have been allowed to do as nature intended which should possibly be incorporated into the field and be growing a crop. The continuous mowing of tracks, field edges, difficult corners and farm yards making the countryside all look a little bit clinical has never attracted me and it’s probably why I can stomach an organic farm in May when the black grass is flowering above my cereal crops, but it seems a bit mad why anyone would spend time cutting these havens when you can actually stick them into an environmental scheme and at least get something back for them. It’s also much easier to argue for environmental payments to the village farmer basher than trying to justify your Single Farm Payment unless you make it a habit of wandering the village in rags begging for a bowl of rice.

To argue that we are true “custodians of the countryside” we do have to prove to the general public that we are just that, especially if we want to get paid for being so. Unbelievably you do not get awarded the COTC Cup for investing in a shiny new sprayer, having wheat fields as level as a billiard table and providing wildlife habitat purely for game birds.

Being in the Organic Entry Level Scheme or the conventional version does seem to be very least we can do to show that we appreciate that there are some areas of the farm that should be production areas for wildlife. The scheme’s options may not cover the Barley Barons of East Anglia’s income forgone, but it might mean that we can continue to farm the rest of our farms in a responsively productive manner.

That is surely what we all want to get on and do.

Blog for the National Farmers Union

Online Conference Boosts Office Productivity

I cannot thank the National Farmers Union enough for providing an online live feed from their 2012 conference. As the day loomed I began to regret not having committed to attend in person, and looking at my diary a few days before hand I could see that it was going to take a lot of juggling to make it, but to temp myself further I went onto the NFU website and downloaded the conference brochure to see exactly what I would be missing and spotted the link to watch all the major speakers live. I was in!

The sound on Peter Kendall’s opening speech was very distorted to the point that I had to turn the sound down and bury my head in the office work I had allotted myself for the proceedings, but following Peter was Caroline Spelman MP, Secretary of State, DEFRA and her undistorted dulcet tones grabbed my attention and it was sound perfection for the rest of the conference.

Not only was it audio heaven, but the way that the picture swapped between speaker and what was being shown to the delegates on the overhead projection was perfectly timed. I can’t help thinking that in the quiet of my own office with lashings of fresh coffee and shortbread that my experience of the conference was possibly better than those who attended.

Having said that, to actually be there for the charged atmosphere that the conference typically creates, the banter in between sessions, the cut and thrust of the bar in the evening swapping beer enhanced fanciful new directions and ideas takes some beating.

Unfortunately the deadline to get the paperwork sorted out for my pending photovoltaic (PV) installation and the looming deadline of 3rd March to achieve the 32p Feed in Tariff (FiT) weighed more on my mind.

But I have had a major problem. Because the energy company that I have to deal with has taken around three months to come back to me with confirmation of what I can actually feed into the grid, it has taken me an abnormally long time to be able to commit to the offer that my chosen PV company has made me. Because the FiT is being funded by energy companies who in turn have to raise their energy charges to us to pay for them, makes these tariffs unpopular which means the energy companies have little or no incentive to get back to prospective PV customers, especially at the tail end of the higher tariff. Even I have calculated that it would be insane to put up a 50kW installation to discover that I could only feed in 30, so I was completely ham strung until I had got that information. The cynic in me says that the energy companies know it and hope that with the confusion that the government created by messing around with their FiT promises will unsettle us all and we will all go away until the tariff has been lowered.

The only benefit from the delay has mean't that all this uncertainty has brought the price of PV panels down meaning that it now looks like a bit of a financial no-brainer for farmers even at this late stage. This unexpected windfall is not without risk and may be construed as opportunistic by the general public, but whatever the man or woman in the street thinks of this green tax, the whole green energy revolution has to be kick-started and the most effective way to do that is with government incentive, even if this one now looks over egged. Governments have been subsidising coal and nuclear power for decades, so why should renewables be any different?

The downside of the delay means that I have not yet applied for planning permission which means that it will have to be made retrospectively, and that planning application was what was distracting me from the conference. This might all seen like planning suicide, but a call to my local planning department gave me some solace in stating that although they could not definitely say that I would get it, given the information that I gave them they felt that my circumstances indicated that it would be difficult to find a reason why it would be turned down. So, the materials arrive imminently and we are standing by our beds.

However, the scoop I am dreading in the East Anglian Daily Times is:

"Local Organic Farmer Refused Green Energy Plans".

My only hope is that there are too many cuddly words in that potential headline for the planners to refuse me. Fingers crossed!

Less Meat and Three Veg

Christopher Stopes, president of the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements’s EU Group told us at the Organic Research Centre’s conference in Birmingham last week that DEFRA had become production-orientated saying that, “The production narrative is not enough. We need to confront issues of consumption.” He went on to say of our Secretary of Sate for DEFRA that, “I don’t accept Caroline Spelman saying we need to increase production. We can feed ourselves, but we need to change.”

Consumption has been foremost in my mind having only just survived the excesses of the Christmas period. The two stone I lost in 2011 has been severely compromised, so Mr Stopes’ call for change got me thinking about my own diet again.

A family walking safari in Kenya last February gave me a bit of a wake-up call as far as my own daily food intake was concerned. While we were treated to a full western diet before and after our daily trek, our Samburu guides survived on their staple of maize cake and cabbage. I asked them how much meat they ate and was told that they ate it maybe once a month at the most. It seemed incredible to me that men as fit and healthy as they were could live on such a basic diet and essentially without meat.

The meat thing is interesting. I eat meat at least once if not twice a day, but it hasn’t always been like that.

When I was a child my family ate very little meat. For Sunday we would have a roast of some kind and if it was a chicken it would last for days. On Sunday it would be carved at the table and there would be the usual fights over the leg, thigh and wings. On Monday there would be sandwiches or cold chicken with a salad using mainly the breast meat. On Tuesday it would be Chicken Fricassee which was made with chicken leftovers (or the flappy bits as my wife calls them) with vegetables in a white sauce and a breadcrumb topping. On Tuesday night the stripped bones would go into the soup pot with whatever vegetables were around and some seasoning which would simmer overnight to then be made into soup for Wednesday. A single foul would provide our family with the meat we ate for over half the week. These days the tasteless pumped up equivalent is lucky if it lasts a day in most households.

Now I am not saying that I returned from Africa and immediately went out and bought a catering sack of maize and cabbage, but it did give me a bit of a reality check on how my own diet was unhealthily dominated by meat. I spent the next few months weaning myself onto smaller quantities, and although I still make the Samburu look like militant vegetarians and am still no threat to livestock farmers, my intake has definitely gone down. 

Learning to make dishes just out of vegetables, albeit with some meat stock lurking in there somewhere, has also been a bit of a challenge, but I have to say I am getting there. When I started exploring all the pulses that are out there to get the meat protein equivalent in my diet I was amazed at the variety of what was on offer - see picture of my bean casserole!

By the way, just in case you don’t already know, the argument for eating less meat runs along the lines of the disparity in the amount of plant protein you have to feed an animal to get the equivalent amount of protein out in the form of meat. Same stuff but with added blood. If all the land we currently used for growing animal feed on was converted to land that we could grow food for ourselves on, it that would solve the global food security problem. I know that it’s far more complicated than that, but it’s the gist of the argument. Unfortunately it’s normally Sir Paul McCartney who trots out this fact and we carnivores don’t like being preached to by a veggie. However, I do have sympathy with Sir Macca’s protestations, and although he eats revolutions for breakfast, it would take one to effect such a change and it would have to be the developed countries of the world to show the rest the way. We can’t judge the Chinese for wanting to eat a more Western diet if we are not prepared to hold our hands up and say, “Sorry chaps, we got it wrong, it’s just not sustainable”.

OK, that is the meat consumption down, what about everything else. 

Going back to the Samburu. It seemed to me that they ate what they needed to get through to the next meal and that was it. Now I realise that that is a risky strategy especially in Africa as the risk is if you don’t get the next meal things can get out of control, but in the UK with a supermarket around every corner and food as cheap as chips it’s not so risky. So why do we all eat far too much?

The easy answer is that even though food prices have risen recently, food is still relatively cheap and our local supermarket is just around the corner and it’s brimming with the stuff. Two-for-one deals are at the end of every isle and we all like a bit of a bargain. In any case, there is no point in having that new massive American fridge if it’s not stuffed with food. Talking of massive Americans, have you seen how many are getting into our market towns these days…. if they are that fat they must be Americans… aren't they?

Food can only be cheap if it is produced with the ruthless axe of cutting costs to the bone and invariably that means something has to give. The usual candidates are animal welfare, taste or nutrition and in some cases all three. Good food is not and never can be cheap, you get what you pay for. 

So, the key to tackling consumption is to eat less and eat better quality food produced to the highest animal welfare and environmental standards. You don’t necessarily have to buy organic, but if you do it already ticks all the boxes. Good food is going to cost you more per kilogram, which means more return for your friendly farmer, but you will be eating less. The really good news is that not only will you be lean and healthy, but your weekly spend will be no more than when you were eating rubbish.

OK, so this is the thinly veiled launch of my UK food revolution (stand aside McCartney), and the mantra goes like this, “All we are saying, is give peas a chance”. 

My keep fit video will be launched in March.

Social Networking. Get with The Now Granddad!

When I first came home to farm in the mid 1980’s our local market town still had a livestock market and was the weekly collecting point for farmers to meet and chew the cud. I didn’t actually have any livestock, but I knew a few who did so I would still go for a chat and to see how their prices faired.

The auctioneers also had a barn there with odd bits and pieces for auction, not all even agricultural but it was always fun to poke about and see if you could pick up a bargain. As well as that there was a chap who used to sell plants and fruit trees and most of the apple trees we have on the farm today originated from that market.

After the sales we would wander down to the Market Tavern for a pint and a gossip before returning home feeling refreshed and having gleaned a little information from friends and neighbours about wether or not they were caught up with spraying, a moan about the wheat price or a good boast about how good your yields had been that harvest.

As is the way of many livestock markets ours is now a huge shopping centre ionically named “The Arc”, rendered stockless by the acres of paving slabs and shops.

Since the market’s demise the only place that farmers regularly meet in our area is on either the hunting or the shooting field, but recently with social networking that has all changed.

Now I know that there is no substitute for meeting in the flesh whilst participating in something that we all enjoy, but I probably know more about what my contemporaries are doing at any given time now than I ever did. My new farmer “friends” are generally not my neighbours and not even necessarily in my own country let alone county, but none the less, they go some way in providing that farming contact and information that I used to get at the market.

At the end of August this year after a big family sort out, I decided to record a year in short video clips of my farm with the aid of my video recording mobile phone. Because time is short, none of my clips are rehearsed and they are strictly single-take events to avoid the process being too much of a burden. If something occurs during the day that I think might be interesting to farmers or non-farmers alike, I whip out my phone and talk over a brief clip of about 1 to 2 minutes long to explain and show what we are currently doing. 

The original reason for doing it was so that I could give my children a recording of the first year of me owning the whole farming business, but then I thought that it might also be interesting to put the clips on YouTube so that I could share them with others. 

I was convinced that nobody would ever find my channel, but it was amazing how quickly people stumbled upon it. I have only had it up and running since 30th August this year and I have had nearly 4,500 uploaded views and have 22 subscribers who are mainly from the UK, but also from Ireland, Denmark, Austria and from Greece. Looking at the data from the uploads, nearly 60% are from the UK with the majority of the remainder coming from the US, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Slovakia, Finland, Slovenia and Greece. 

Even though it is interesting to look over the hedge to see what your neighbours are doing, it’s even more interesting to see other farmers clips about what they are doing in other parts of the UK or in other European countries. Somebody is always planting seed or harvesting crops somewhere. 

Then there are the possibilities for exchange of information. I have just started getting a few comments about some of my clips, mainly asking why we do things the way we do, but also suggestions of how to over-come problems that I have publicised during recording a clip.

The other social medium that I am really enjoying is Twitter. The common misconception is that that “Tweets” are solely used for telling your “followers” that you have, “Just been into the kitchen to make a cup of tea”. In my experience nothing could be further from the truth. I use it for letting people know when I have just put another clip up on YouTube, but mainly I use it for sharing articles that I think that the people who follow me might find interesting and reading articles that people I follow think that I might find useful.

In the farming world there is plenty happening on Twitter. For example if you follow The NFU, Farmers Weekly, Organic Farmers & Growers and Openfield you very soon start to build up your own farming news source. Most of these organisations use Twitter for breaking news and so the information you receive is unbelievably current, enabling you to stay ahead of the game with farming news and commodity prices. You really to have to try it to understand how valuable it is.

With smart phones with larger screens all of this can be easily read and accessed on the hoof, and with their ability to record and upload videos as well, it is possible to do all the above without sitting in front of a computer.

If after reading this you are still sceptical about the wonderful possibilities that social networking can deliver, in the words of a “yoof” I heard on a debate on the radio the other day, having just been criticised by a gentleman on the panel for indulging in the perceived “banality” of Twitter, he was told by the said yoof to “Get with the now, Grandad!”

To find out more, see me on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/JohnPawseySPF?feature=mhee or on Twitter @hanslope and get with the now!

Blog for National Farmers Union website - October 2011

Herbicide Intolerance

Herbicide Intolerance

I went to a very interesting meeting at the NFU headquarters at Stoneleigh earlier this month to meet some farmers from America representing the Illinois Soybean Association (ISA) to talk to us about their experience with growing genetically modified (GM) herbicide tolerant (HT) soybeans. That’s Roundup Ready soybeans to you and me. 

The organic “movement” has been very vocal about it’s opposition to GM and being an organic farmer attending many organic conferences and meetings, I have heard pretty much all of the arguments about why GM crops are the work the the devil, so I was keen to go to the meeting with an open mind to get a balance to those views.

Most of the meeting was conducted by two hands-on farmers from the Association who I have to say delivered their presentations with openness and honesty. 

We were told that in 2010 93% of soybeans grown in the US were of the HT trait from a base of only just under 10% in 1996, so plainly American farmers adoption of GM soybeans has been nothing short of monumental.

For UK farmers, the ability to spray a single pass of glyphosate on a growing crop to tidy up the ever increasing list of herbicide resistant weeds, saving time and chemical costs has long been a dream, and it is what I have always considered to be the major selling point of HT crops. But, with only a little delving during the meeting and a frank discussion with one of the US farmers in the lunch break, the single spray myth was soon dispelled.

The reality is that many weeds in the US have now become resistant to glyphosate, mainly due to the fact that early adopters of the technology cut application rates of the chemical to save money thus selecting “super-weeds” which reproduced, set seed and spread. To deal with those miscreants “conventional” chemistry now has now been reverted to. 

The herbicide strategy adopted by most soybean growers now revolves around a 3 to 4 spray system. The first spray is with a residual herbicide, the second with paraquat pre-emergence and then a full rate of glyphosate post-emergence. I was told that you had to put your glyphosate on when the weeds got to about 4 inches tall, as any taller than that they become difficult to kill and you may find you have to go back with a second dose.

According to the farmer I spoke to, the biggest advantage of HT crops was that it allowed him to use No-Till techniques which gave him three major advantages. With No-Till there are no seedbed preparations so he makes considerable savings in machinery and fuel costs, helping him to lower his carbon footprint. Secondly, not cultivating the soil can improve the structure of the soil and thirdly, the technique was helping to build up organic matter with all the benefits that it delivers. When he started No-Tilling 30 years ago his organic matter levels were at 1%, they were now 2.5%.

A major complaint was that US chemical companies had rested on their laurels for too long thinking that developing GM crops and glyphosate was the complete way forward. This has meant that research and development into “conventional” herbicides has fallen on to the back burner. Now that glyphosate resistant “super-weeds” were becoming more difficult to control, it was felt that more focus should be put on other herbicides to fill that gap.

If you are able to dismiss the multitude of environmental arguments that are levied against GM crops, the farmer representatives of the Illinois Soybean Association felt that the argument for the environmental benefits of HT soybeans of “reduced labour, savings in diesel fuel, reduced machinery wear, increases in earthworms, organic matter, soil moisture and in soil condition, reductions in soil erosion, improvements to water and air quality” should be the selling point that the peddlers of GM crops should major on to encourage adoption by the doubters.

Interestingly they did not talk much about yield increases. The graphs that we were shown showed an increase in yield of about 2% per year from the mid 1990’s, but from the late 1980’s it looked like about an average of 1% per year. Even though yield in UK crops seems to have flattened over the past few years, conventional UK agriculture could boast a similar performance. 

Having heard the presentations and discussed the ins and outs with the ISA farmers, I found it difficult to understand why any farmer in the UK would want to adopt genetically modified herbicide tolerant crops. There seemed to be very little savings in herbicide costs and no great yield benefit. As far as all the environmental benefits are concerned, most UK farmers now adopt at least Min-Till techniques which address most of the No-Till environmental advantages.

So, why were soybean farmers over here extolling the virtues of a crop that at present we are unable to grow in beloved Blighty?

When I discovered that the other farmers in the room were predominantly involved with large livestock operations the penny dropped. 

Up until the last couple of years the EU has been the largest importer and consumer of soybeans. It is also one of the slowest to authorise the avalanche of new GM varieties that could potentially arrive from over the pond. On average it takes the EU up to 45 months from application to approval of a new GM variety. Apparently we are still questioning the first generation of GM crops while the biotech industry are moving onto the second generation. 

This is enormously frustrating to American farmers as their second biggest market is not playing ball. One slightly feels that it would have been better to ask your customer what they wanted first rather than trying to persuade them what they need after the product has been loaded in the delivery van ready for despatch with all the costs involved. But hey, that’s what we farmers do, stick it in the ground and hope somebody wants it come harvest time.

It is also hugely frustrating to UK livestock farmers, especially ones whose systems require huge amounts of imported protein to grow even more protein, as most of the soybeans out there are GM and are increasingly GM varieties that the EU is still working through the system. This is a supply and demand situation that adds risk and cost to their intensive operations.

The only solace that US farmers can take comfort in is that their new biggest customer is China. Any boat that arrives at Europe's shores that is found to contain a GM material not approved by us can sail full steam ahead to Shanghai where it takes the Chinese approximately 45 minutes for approval. A slight exaggeration maybe.

I know that I might seem like a stuck record (see my previous blog about the Processors and Growers Research Organisation - PGRO), but given the increasing global demand for protein and if we are really serious about food security surely we should be encouraging the government or our levy bodies to invest in more research and development into proteins that can be grown successfully at our latitude. We need to be doing something to stop the decline in the pea and bean acreage and the only way we can do that is to develop higher yielding, higher protein, better disease resistance and more palatable varieties.

UK livestock farmers have to become less reliant in imports and look more to home grown protein to feed their animals or change their system.

Interestingly, the chair at the meeting was Jonathan Tipples from the Home Grown Cereals Authority who was surprisingly enthusiastic about quickening the pace of importing GM soybeans and adopting GM crops in the UK. It might have been more interesting if the NFU had persuaded someone from the PGRO to do the job instead. 

Blog for National Farmers Union website - September 2011

Get On My Land!

Get On My Land!

In 1998 I wrote an article for the Suffolk Preservation Society’s magazine ahead of the Country Landowners Association’s failed attempt to bring more land into voluntary public access under their publicly funded Access 2000, designed to ward of the Right to Roam. The Ramblers’ Association were predictably sceptical about the CLA’s attempts and their assistant director at the time David Beskine was quoted in The Independant as saying, “Access 2000 has been a sham from the outset. It has been running for more than two years and yet the CLA cannot point to a single acre of land where the public has been given new access.”

My article was entitled, “Public Access - A Farmers View” and read as follows:

Farmers are territorial animals and like to stamp their mark on their land, and I’m afraid that I am no exception. When I was eventually given a free whip on our family farm I developed an eagle eye for walkers enjoying their freedom to traverse my new territory. One foot off the footpath and they suffered the full effect of my wrath, “Get Off My Land!” People on horseback were my pet hate and I would watch them from a distance and wait until they strayed. Screaming through the gears of my Land Rover I would arrive scarlet faced, voice trembling with anger and demand that they should, “Rejoin the bridleway immediately!” 

It was beyond my comprehension why a law-abiding citizen would leave his house an innocent man and criminalise himself by straying from a public right of way. 

One Sunday my energetic wife suggested that we might like to walk to the pub at lunchtime via the footpath across my neighbour’s farm. Half way there the footpath suddenly came to an abrupt halt in front of a large field of wheat. There was no footpath sign and no evidence that the path carried on. My wife informed me that the path should go straight across the field and proceeded to walk across the growing crop shouting, “I hope your footpaths are in a better state than this one!”

The next day I bought an Ordinance Survey pathfinder map and discovered where the true public rights of way were on my land and to my horror I found that they were incomplete and poorly signed. The penny dropped.

A February article in the Farmers Weekly entitled “Footpaths: obstruct at your peril” said that “some landowners feel that a public right of way is no more than a conduit for legalised trespass” and this was the attitude I subscribed to before I began to walk my local footpaths. The long and short of it is that a public footpath is just that, a path that the public are entitled to pass along just as a public road is a road that the public are entitled to drive their cars along. The only difference is that although a landowner might struggle to divert a B road that dissects his farm he can divert an awkward footpath, so there really is no excuse.

If the Country Landowners Association are planning to produce a national register of public access sites as part of it’s Access 2000 scheme to persuade the government that the statutory right to roam legislation is unnecessary, we had better make sure that our footpaths and bridleways are open, or our argument is going to sound a little thin.

Needless to say Access 2000 was not a success and even today farmers attitude to public rights of way are arguably no different to those cited in the Farmers Weekly at the time. It is no wonder that walkers groups still get hot under the collar over the attitudes of some landowners.

Before I wrote that 1998 article I had just successfully diverted a cross field path with little or no opposition, and although the operation took two years to complete and cost in the region of £1,500, in the long term the time and money is a small price to pay.

This year I successfully concluded another diversion and a creation with only a single local objection to the diversion. The creation fills in the gap on the St Edmunds Way which I did allow under permissive access, but now it officially a Public Right of Way and runs adjacent to the drive to my house.

The only positive recognition I have had locally for the new footpath is an email from the Chairman of our Parish Council who congratulated me on the new bridge I have put up over a deep ditch, but the surprise came in a letter from the local Ramblers group. It read as follows:

Dear Mr Pawsey

I am the Local Footpath Secretary for the Ramblers Association in this area of West Suffolk.

It seemed appropriate to write to say how much our Association and the Bury St Edmunds Group appreciate the creation of Footpath 12 on your land, which fills a missing link in the St Edmunds Way. This is part of a long distance footpath across Suffolk.

You probably felt like ourselves that it takes a very long time to resolve local objections, such as those affecting changes to Footpath 9 that delayed the creation of Footpath 12.

The new footbridge where the footpath joins the Shimpling Street road C686 is very impressive. We would be grateful if you would pass on our appreciation to your fellow Director when the opportunity allows.

Yours sincerely

Brian Bagnall

Love or hate the Ramblers in my experience they are the people who always stick to the footpaths, don’t bring hordes of dogs to foul the path for other people and have a genuine interest in being in and enjoying the countryside. 

To see from my tractor cab a trial of people appreciating what the great outdoors has to offer come wind, rain or shine brings a warm glow.

Brian Bagnall……...Get on my land!

Blog for National Farmers Union website - August 2011