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BUILDING A HOUSE OUT OF straw may not have been the best move ever made in a nursery rhyme featuring three pigs seeking adequate safety from a rampant wolf - but for a number of essentially farmbased enterprises , building a business out of trading hay and straw has proved a useful diversification ; and in some cases has become their core activity . It could be said that in turning to the trade those involved may have also kept the wolf from their own doors .
The British Hay & Straw Merchants ’ Association was formed 100 years ago when the war effort was on and horses needed to be fed and bedded down as they played such a vital part in WWI . The official line regarding the Association ’ s birth is that it proved necessary to assist the government with the logistics involved ; and while this has validity there is also a feeling in some quarters today that it proved useful in ensuring the future of existing traders in coming together as an organisation to ensure the correct prices were paid . There are those who believed that the Ministry would end up putting merchants out of business as a result of requisitioning stocks to feed the horses .
For much of the past 40-50 years the hay and straw trade - and particularly the straw trade
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in the north of England - has seen a traditional east to west movement of straw from the plentiful arable crop growing areas along the UK ’ s eastern seaboard in Yorkshire to the livestock producers in Cumbria and the south-west of Scotland and Wales . Every winter still sees wagonloads of big square bales being hauled across the Pennines , but times have changed in more recent years and specifically , in the past decade .
The largest single change has seen the straw market incorporate a new sector of supplying power stations and both large and smaller scale industrial processors . The farm demand for straw has changed too . Today there has been a greater shift towards straw to be incorporated in cattle rations rather than as winter bedding and the onset of dairy herds being kept indoors 365 days a year has accelerated this move and expanded what was once a winter haulage trade to an all year round movement .
I met several British Hay & Straw Merchants ’ Association ( BHSMA ) members at the start of winter at David Johnson ’ s Northern Straw Company business at Great Heck , near Goole where he and his wife created a business that today sees nearly all of their supply going in to power stations . David believes the BHSMA
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‘ a greater shift towards straw to be incorporated in cattle rations ’
today has now become a vibrant and far more appealing organisation to be part of than when he first decided to get involved .
‘ We don ’ t farm anything . This was originally a governmentowned Borstal farm that we purchased . I ’ ve had 36 years in straw and longer if we count another career I had when involved with it through BOCM . We trade a large tonnage of straw purchased from other farms and have most of our own wagons . When I first came along to the BHSMA I really wasn ’ t impressed but things have changed with new membership and greater realisation that in talking to fellow straw merchants and sharing experiences all of our individual businesses can benefit .’
Mike Evison is the current Association BHSMA president and trades as JW Evison & Sons at Moat Farm , Fitling in Holderness with his brother , Andrew . They have been baling and trading straw for 25 years , and their other business is fattening 3500 pigs .
‘ We set off with just a baler and our straw trade has now
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grown to such an extent that we now have eight and supply local greenhouses with straw for biomass and the rest is split around 50:50 between livestock farms in Scotland and industrial straw for power stations . We trade with all of our fellow members in Yorkshire too as we seek to fulfil demand throughout the UK .
‘ The demand from power stations has brought our Association closer together as we can help each other and by liaising we can sometimes achieve payment on both parts of haulage outward and back-loading by concentrating on logistics . Another area that has grown is selling to mainland Europe . We can sell 150,000 tonnes a year abroad sent on ferries . That ’ s already happening again this season due in no small part to the exchange rate .
‘ Our Association meets regularly to exchange information and highlight problems that warrant further attention . Our primary concern at this time of year is supply and where that supply is based all around the UK . There were 33 members at our October meeting in London . Most merchants in the Association are based in the south with a handful up here in Yorkshire and we all gave our views on what kind of harvest we ’ d had and found out where the straw
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