Dairyman John Adams has been voted farm worker of the year at a national awards ceremony. Mr Adams, 63, who works more than 12 hours a day at Iron Pear Tree Farm, in Rowde, won the title in the Farmer’s Weekly 2010 awards at a ceremony at the Grosvenor Hotel, London, on Thursday.

Mr Adams has worked on farms all his life and has spent the last 25 years at Iron Pear Tree Farm where he looks after 200 Holstein cows. His gruelling day begins at midnight when he gets up to milk and feed the dairy cows and then muck out. He returns home at about 9am for an hour’s sleep and is back at the farm at midday for another four hours of milking and mucking out.

On most other dairy farms the work is divided up but Mr Adams is content doing it all, although in the afternoon he is helped by a colleague. He works seven days a week and has every third weekend off plus the Friday and Monday. Mr Adams said: “It’s quite pleasant when you go out in the morning. It’s lovely watching hares running in the fields and barn owls hunting for mice.”

Read the full story from the Gazette and Herald.

Hemp is an excellent spring sown crop that requires no chemical treatment post emergence and offers farmers a profitable alternative break crop. It achieves a remarkable rate of growth often reaching a height in excess of 3 metres by mid August when it is cut.

source: hemp technology

Hemp provides a good barrier to pests and diseases. It is of particular use as a break crop in situations where resistant weeds are becoming a problem. Its deep roots are also very beneficial for soil structure. Slug activity after hemp is minimal compared with oil seed rape.

The hemp plant has two constituent parts: the fibre and the woody core or “shiv”. Demand for both of these products continues to grow rapidly.

Hemp fibre continues to be used in the automotive sector, primarily in the manufacture of door panels and other parts but in addition to this it will be increasingly used in the manufacture of natural fibre insulation.

Demand for shiv is also growing strongly in construction. Hemcrete® a sustainable, thermally efficient hemp lime bio-composite is now a certified and accepted product in both the commercial and domestic construction market segments. Recent and future projects of note are:

• Marks & Spencer’s Store – Cheshire Oaks
• Coworth Spa
• The Triangle 42 Code Level 4 Housing Development in Swindon
• 114 code level 4 houses at Diss in Norfolk
• The Institute of Sustainability Thames Gateway
• Kanes Foods Warehouse

To meet the demand Mike Duckett, Managing Director, of Suffolk based Hemp Technology is forecasting that 7,000 acres will be needed in 2011 an increase of over 100% on 2010.

For more information call Hemp Technology on 01986 835 678

Global Warming or just seasonal changes, whatever the reasons behind Russia’s drought and Pakistan’s floods the effects are being felt globally with the rise in wheat prices.  The price had reach a two year high, but has now fallen back slightly.  Good news for the cereal growers in the UK, but with rainfall in the UK lower than average will yields be down here too.  With other crops hitting records prices amongst them Palm Oil, should the British growers be looking for further diversification into unusual crops?

Demand is growing particularly for Hemp.  This spring-sown crop requires no chemical treatment post emergence and offers farmers a profitable alternative break crop.  It also provides a good barrier to pests and diseases especially in situations where resistant weeds are a problem.  Ground breaking usages by Suffolk based Hemp Technology are driving this demand.  Their thermally efficient composite is now accredited for use in the commercial and domestic construction industry.

Farmers and farming are potentially the UK’s most useful asset for the future, producing not only food and bio fuels, but now main stream construction materials.

At a prison not that far away from me, an inmate made a bold escape for freedom on the prison’s very own tractor! He must of been doing quite well as the alarm was only raised after an ex-employee at the prison spotted the inmate driving down the A361. Police gave chase across a golf course and finally cornered the vehicle [prisoner escapes on a tractor].

I would really like to think that the police pursued the offender using their latest crime-fighting vehicle, a John Deere 6630 tractor. [Operaton Fusion]

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[source: lincs. Police force

I have heard of ‘Singing for the Brain’ to improve the quality of life for those suffering from Altziemers, but improved milk production when offering Shakespeare to Dairy Cows?

Apparently its true, the 170 herd of Holsteins living near Maidstone in Kent have been treated to regular performances by The Changeling Theatre Company of exerts from the Merry Wives of Windsor amongst others.  During the time of the rehearsals milk production rose by 4%.  In 2001 Leicester University undertook a study to show that stress on Dairy Cows was reduced when exposed to the calming effect of classical music.

If you are looking for new was to boost your milk production and provide a little bit of culture for your workforce you could do worst than offer rehearsal space to your local theatre group.

3 Irish Farmers have formed an alliance to try and establish a 3000 head dairy herd in Lincolnshire.  This new proposed SuperDairy comes hot on the heels of the previous application for an even larger unit which failed to get planning consent.  It would appear that whether we like it or not larger dairy units are coming to the UK.  In the US herds of 10,000 plus are common place so why is the UK so reluctant to follow suit.  Is it because the public dont like to think  one of their staple foods is produced on an industrial scale, or are animal welfare issues upper most in their minds.  Whatever your thoughts it would appear that it is only a matter of time before an application is accepted.  Do we need these larger units to produce our milk and cheese at a price that the consumer and supermarkets what to buy at?  Lets hear your point of view.

Mention Iceland to someone working in the UK food industry and normally they will think of a retail store where Mums go.

But in the last seven days that has all changed. Suddenly, Iceland has become synonymous with ‘erupting volcano’ and that means ash clouds and no flights.

Not only is this inconvenient to travellers (although personally I can see the attraction of being stuck on holiday in warmer climes) but it has the potential to become pretty tiresome for food retailers and consumers too.

Why so, you may think.

Well it just so happens that many of our favourite food and grocery items arrive on our shores by air. Fresh flowers and vegetables are flown in, particularly from Africa. Exotic fruit comes in from the Caribbean and from other far away destinations.

Yet for now at least the mangoes are as firmly grounded as the holidaymakers. And, whilst plucky Brits are travelling for days across continents in taxis to get back to our ash-laden shores, flowers, fruit and vegetables are slowly rotting in their countries of origin, costing their producers large amounts of money and leaving garage forecourts across the land short of cheap carnations.

What’s more the Freight Transport Association is suggesting that it might take up to two weeks to get air freight moving again once the ash cloud clears, so it is looking unlikely that Kenyan-grown green beans will be on the dinner menu for many British families for the next few weeks.

But though it is improbable that many of us will find these short-term shortages anything more than mildly inconvenient it does highlight an important point. Go back three or four weeks and no one would have anticipated the UK’s airspace being shut down for an hour, let alone a week. If something else happened that shut down our transport links, would we have enough food? The answer is probably yes, but it does demonstrate how we mustn’t take food supplies for granted.

Anyone for a Ghanaian pineapple chunk?

Figures released this week by the Soil Association show that sales of organic products in the UK fell by 12.9% in 2009 to £1.84 billion.

The Organic Market Report showed that shoppers spent less on organic food during the recession. The three biggest categories of organic food – dairy, fruit and vegetables, and fresh meat – saw supermarket sales fall by 6.5%, 14.8% and 22.7% respectively. In contrast, organic milk bucked the trend, with dairy sales growing by 1% resulting in 2009 being the best year for organic milk sales on record.

Against this market backdrop, organically managed land area in the UK increased to 743,516 ha in January 2009 – up 9% on the previous year – and now represents 4.3% of UK farmland. Luckily for organic producers, the Soil Association remain confident that organic demand will recover, anticipating growth of up to 5 per cent in organic sales this year.

You may have heard about recent proposals to build a new 8,000 cow dairy unit on land in Lincolnshire. This high profile project by Nocton Dairies Ltd will see a new herd of 8,100 cows established on a greenfield site, with cows housed apart from during the dry period and fed with forage and by-products from the surrounding area.

A bold proposal for sure but is this kind of intensive development good for the industry or will it simply draw negative attention that will ultimately harm the reputation of the whole sector?

Undoubtedly Nocton Dairies are not proposing anything wrong. There are plenty of herds where milking cows are continuously housed and there are many in the industry that would advocate this as a high welfare system because cows can be closely monitored and cared for. But this kind of approach does not necessarily chime well with consumers, who like to think of dairy farming as a pastoral enterprise with cows happily grazing. Already, emotive media coverage has spoken of ‘large scale factory farming’ in the same breath as ‘Nocton Dairies’.

But in fact their proposals are commercially sound and cow welfare should be exemplary, particularly when a full time vet will be on site – something that not many dairy units can lay claim to. The proposed development also has the potential to be a flagship for the dairy industry, something that other dairy farmers can learn from and be proud to be associated with.

Ultimately, one thing is for certain – this kind of enterprise will have a high profile and will attract attention towards dairy farming in a more direct way than we have perhaps ever seen before. The development therefore carries a huge reputational responsibility unlike that ever seen before on a UK farm. If Nocton Dairies is a successful business, with good welfare and performance standards then it will represent the very best of our dairy industry. But, should things go wrong, the problems will be hugely visible and this could have implications for every single farmer in the country. The public’s ignorance about farming may also be a threat and Nocton will have to be open and communicative to the public to garner support.

It will be interesting to see these exciting proposals develop in the coming months – for it is perhaps the first farming enterprise in this country where every farmer has a vested interest in it being successful.

The European Commission has announced a new logo that will become obligatory on all pre-packaged organic products produced within the EU from July 1, 2010. The ‘euro-leaf’ logo (pictured) was chosen following an online competition that saw some 130,000 people voting, and is intended to become an easy way for consumers to quickly identify organic products.