Off for the Nuffield Interviews Again........

I am so very excited again.

Mid November I posted off my application form for a Nuffield Farming Scholarship Award, and yesterday I had my letter explaining I had been selected to attend an interview in London between January 21st - 23rd, my subject is still the one most passionate to my heart which is 'To Investigate the Future Potential and Economic Viability of the Untraditional SME'.
An SME is a Small, Medium Enterprise which has fewer than 250 employees..... I think that would cover most farms!!! Untraditional? - well in the good old days we would have been called family farms however this is now the term under which we are all classed whether we like it or not. All paperwork which comes from the Welsh Assembly government asks us to clarify which category we fall into... and I'm afraid this is it.

I am still of the opinion that farmers have to take their business by the scruff of the neck and break it down into logical and radical thinking... however this can only be done with support and backing from many agencies, as this is not how many farmers have been encouraged to work in the past. You may think that farmers deserve all they get but what has happened to the farming industry over the past decades is that the government have felt that their enterprise is deserving of public monies to encourage and increase food production but also to play a major role in protecting, sustaining and developing the ecological and environmental areas which we all associate with our beautiful British countryside. All of a sudden these cash incentives have been drastically reduced. Farmers, who are hands on people working and tending their animals, were suddenly prone to ever increasing amounts of paperwork dropping through their mail box, which had to be filled out, very often having to employ a representative to do this, as the forms were so complicated, and often when filled out would be input incorrectly at eh public offices they were returned to, making even more problems that the poor farmer must sort out. Also an ever increasing amount of licenses and therefore training which had to take place and be paid for, no choice about this legislation dictates.........The farmer who still tends his animals is now forced to be an administrator, secretary, marketing genius and accountant, which is fair enough but all this needs encouragement, quite cajoling and time for generations of good farmers to be able to take up this new challenge in order for their business to succeed.
In the meantime they have seen their product reduced to a pricing point which is under their cost of production.....How many business men would be able to continue to trade if the steel they made their swing frames out of cost more than the swing retailed at when complete? not many and certainly not for long, however the sheep farmer has been doing this for nearly 30 years. Market prices have not increased in this time, how many of you would be able to live today on the wage you were paid 30 years ago? not many assume.
Yet the brave farmer has carried on, unrelentless in his task, for that is what it is it is a lifestyle, which is hard and unrelenting, a 365 days a year job and I hate to say it but 24 / 7. It is all he knows and in the main he is good at it. He tends his ancient hedges, he ploughs his fields he sits with his flock at night, yes he has to make money as do all business' but they may need help to do this.
Lets not forget the plight of the dairy farmer who very recently have begun to see the price of their product.- milk.... rise to reduce the deficit between cost and profit, but this came too late for may dairy farmers who opted out of the industry leaving Britain short of this essential commodity. there is no longer enough milk produced in this country to supply our own demand..........I think that is a very sad state of affairs, and I want to study what other countries are doing to ensure this declining trend in British farming does not continue....................