Island Life Magazine Ltd December 2007/January 2008 | Page 60

life COUNTRYSIDE, WILDLIFE & FARMING Changing Face of the Countryside? By Tony Ridd - [email protected] ‘Why Beef and Sheep Farming Matters’, is the latest campaign being run by the NFU throughout the country. It highlights the decline in grazing animals in our countryside which is having an immediate knock-on effect to the quality and appearance of our landscape. Matthew Legge, ‘County Secretary for the Isle of Wight NFU’ takes time to talk with Tony Ridd about this very important campaign. We started off by hitting some pretty serious figures, with Matthew telling me 60 that over the last ten years, the national sheep flock has fallen by 24% and the beef herd by 9%, leaving the UK only 78% sufficient in Beef and 89% sufficient in Lamb and Mutton. With the current economics in this sector, there is a chance that these losses will accelerate. “If something doesn’t change in the next two-three years we will see a dramatic reduction in livestock numbers and an increase in land that appears to be abandoned” he said. This is the first year since the common agricultural policy was introduced in 1962, that there is no compulsory set-a-side, yet we still have many empty fields across the island. Farmers like the rest of us have to make a profit to survive, and because of this they either have to be supported by subsidies, or get a realistic price for their produce. Without subsidies being linked to the production of food, there is a need for any production to be justified by the “farmgate” price (the amount the farmer receives). Historically, the farmer has been able to sell beef, for example, at a price of £2.10/kg when the cost of production was £2.55/kg because the difference has been made up by a direct subsidy payment. With this no longer being the case, the farmgate price must exceed the cost of production to make any sense of continuing in production. The “Why Farming Matters” campaign highlights the growing gap between farmgate prices and retail prices (the amount the consumer pays). Island Life - www.isleofwight.net