Farm Diary

The cows are still munching their way through the huge grass covers and have over a week of this material still in front of them.

Silage aftermaths will be ready for grazing after that, which will be tastier for them. We are busy rolling the cow tracks with a 'vibra-roller' so that any stones can be crushed and pushed into the tracks, making them more comfortable for the cows to walk on.

The New Zealand farmers always say that the test is to run up the track bare-footed; ours need a little attention before we attempt to do that.

We have a forest of cow parsley on each side of the farm drive, and mayflower everywhere in the hedgerows.

The nightingale is singing every night (and in the daytime), and a fox has killed the cockerel in broad daylight. There are foxes everywhere, and until now have not caused me any problems.

Taking my cockerel at 3pm is a declaration of war, and there are fewer foxes on the farm already! If one is seeing foxes in broad daylight every day on the farm (as we are), there are too many of them and numbers need managing '“ just like all wildlife.

Our vet has been training staff for mastitis control in cows. Mastitis is a problem for all dairy farmers and we would like to minimise the number of cases for obvious reasons.

Skills and training are something that as an industry we are not good at, and we need to address and improve the levels of competence on our farm. If by training we can prevent things going wrong it will pay for itself 10 times over, and the lads are keen to be taught.

All the slurry has been separated now and we are still pumping the liquid on to the silage aftermaths, having watered it down with dirty water.

It really gets the grass going, and with chemical fertiliser at over 300 a tonne it is saving us a fortune. I'll be an organic farmer before I know it!

We are also busy filling in gateways with crushed concrete, making good the ruts made by silage trailers and heavy silage-making kit. It's a perennial problem on clay and we don't need to try very hard to make our gateways rather better than the public highway around Plaistow!

Food inflation is making the news every day and is now getting silly. Oil and commodity prices are of course very high, but we need to be careful not to talk ourselves into despair.

China takes most of the blame for rising prices because of its 'insatiable demand' and growth but the facts are very different. Soft commodities such as wheat, rice, pork are already 20 per cent to 30 per cent cheaper than they were two months ago and milk prices are falling in Europe.

Industrial commodities such as zinc, lead and nickel are 40 per cent to 60 per cent lower in price than they were.

Oil of course is still rising '“ but for how much longer? Is the price now becoming detached from the commercial and economic reality on the ground?

A report by Mike Rothman of ISI (a leading New York consulting group) states that the Gulf is crammed with oil tankers, storing oil that cannot be sold '“ or at least suggesting it cannot be sold at today's prices.

He claims that the increase in global demand growth is now less than last year, with China's consumption of oil also falling.

Future wheat prices are rapidly falling to very near the cost of production at around 115-120 (from around 180+) per tonne. Northern Ireland milk auction prices are just over 24p (back from 32p+) per litre this month, which is only a penny up on last year, while costs on farm are up nearer 5ppl.

UK milk prices continue to rise slowly for one reason only: there is a shortage of milk being produced. Production is still falling, and we are way below the spring average this month.

As production falls slowly during the summer, some are already asking if there will be enough milk in the 'trough' period during the early autumn to keep the liquid sector fully supplied.

It's too early to say but milk buyers are concerned '“ very concerned indeed.