Letters to the Editor - March 2008

A return to the good old days of the Milk Marketing Board

The recent admissions by some of the supermarket chains on price variations of dairy produce, including liquid milk, produced a comment from one farmer that he wished that the Government would be the price-setting organisation. Most people will have forgotten that an Act of 1933 set up the Milk Marketing Board to rationalise the price and distribution of milk. The management was wholly vested in the farming community with MAFF represented on the board.

In the 1930s farmers who were unable to sell milk because of distance from the market or uncertain transport, now found that the MMB contracted to buy all their milk and organise collection and distribution. A vast network of railways and road connections covered the whole country and farmers were advised, each month, of the ‘pool’ price of their milk – the ‘pool’ price being the combined income from sales of liquid milk and milk for manufacture, i.e. cream, butter, milk powder etc.

From this network of milk collection and distribution grew the most advanced cattle breeding organisation in Europe, benefiting the farmer with top quality bulls at twenty-two cattle breeding centres providing artificial insemination for a nominal fee. A strong team of advisors offered help in management and recording. The organisation entertained foreign delegates and the pattern of milk marketing and cattle breeding became a model for many countries.

Farmers felt part of a reliable and national organisation but the spectre of European involvement in agriculture convinced an urban-based administration (the Government) to dispense with the Milk Marketing Board – one of the most efficient co-operatives in farming – and, within a short space of time, prices began to escalate and to underline one of the most unrealistic and unpatriotic decisions made by our Government. Now it seems we are back in the 1930s. I was employed by the MMB for twenty-four years, lecturing to many of the overseas visitors and stayed in cattle breeding with the Avoncroft Cattle Breeders until retirement. I have watched with dismay the infiltration of European and North American interests to the detriment of one of the finest agricultural organisations in the world.

A E Tims, Fetcham, Surrey

Pedantry among the poetry

I much enjoyed David Howard’s article (December). ‘As we looked closely at the robin’s breast’, he writes, ‘we were struck by the variations of tone: red, rose, russet, poppy and yet more than these ...more subtle’. I’ve no doubt this is what he saw but I wonder if he would permit me to question his explanation of the phenomenon?

Birds have no pigment and are factually colourless, he says. I contacted the RSPB, one of whose staff confirmed that birds do indeed have pigment. The variations in colour, whether strident as in starlings or kingfishers or more subtle as in a cock blackbird or the robin, are due to iridescence or to the presence in the feathers of the whole range of pigments beyond the dominant one – red but also; ‘rose, russet, poppy’, and of course, variations in the light to be reflected from them – sunshine, misty, laden with water vapour. The Impressionists knew all about this.

He also cited albinoism in birds, as in the crow who hangs about my local fish and chip shop. His underwings are white. How else can this be explained except that pigment is absent? The feathers are otherwise the same and the light striking them as the black one. I mention this in the interests of accuracy but have to acknowledge also a certain pedantry when it is set against the revelation offered by Mr Howard. Take no notice of the colour cliches of Christmas cards or Walt Disney, he tells us. The robin, all nature is infinitely more subtle, more beautiful. Go out and look, really look.

Donald Bastable, Long Eaton, Derbyshire

Lions led by donkeys

Robin Page’s article (October) brought to mind an incident in World War Two when my late and very dear dad had a visit from the man from the War Ag (the War Agricultural Committee). I remember him unfurling a big map on the kitchen table and proceeding to tell my dad, a farmer born and bred of generations of farming stock, which field he should plough. My dad said: “That’s my best hay meadow; it won’t grow corn. It’s been tried before.” Nevertheless the man from the War Ag had to be obeyed. My dad asked him what he’d done before the war and was told he’d been a draper’s assistant. Needless to say the crop failed and a valuable field of winter fodder was lost. It reminds me of the First World War saying of ‘Lions led by donkeys’. That seems to be what we have now in the form of DEFRA. Good luck to the Countryside Restoration Trust and God help our farmers before this green and pleasant land becomes an overcrowded concrete and tarmacadam jungle.

Mrs B Sanders, Shipley, West Yorkshire

Unnecessary attack?

Again, the resentment of the European Union by Robin Page is obvious (Dec). He says that the House of Commons has been completely bypassed by the EU council directives on the African horse sickness problem. But I am informed by Graham Watson, a Euro MP for the South West region and Gilbraltar, that Robin Page is not correct to say this, as an EU directive cannot be enforced until agreed by the ministers from all twenty-seven countries and the European Parliament.

The main job of the House of Commons is to scrutinise the work of ministers and in practice the directives would not have been adopted, before discussion, in a relevant Commons or Lords committee. Many diseases, animal and human, tend to ignore national frontiers and are bound to spread. So it is best that national authorities exchange information and work together to combat the problem. This obviously does happen in the European Union.

I always read articles by Robin Page in The Countryman with interest and usually appreciate his attacks on many of our ‘establishment’ bodies. In this case I think that his attack on the EU is not appropriate.

Ted Childs, Dorchester

Blot on the landscape

With regards to planning applications for wind farms skirting areas of outstanding natural beauty such as the Lake District, irrespective of all other arguments, financial or scientific, the obvious question to ask is: what kind of people within the energy companies sit down and purposefully decide to irrevocably adversely affect the glorious landscape of the nation in the first place? ... I know! Let's site our next wind farm right at the very edge of the Lake District! And if that's turned down, we'll find another fantastic location to wreck! What a wheeze, within feet of a national park. Aren't we clever? ... By the way, where exactly is the Lake District? Up North somewhere I hear, so that's OK.

Stephen Sykes, Tunbridge Wells

Red kite delight

In reply to the letter from Keith McDougall, Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk (Jan), in March 2007 my partner and I moved from a busy urban area to a stunningly beautiful, unspoilt, quiet area in Wales. We are new to the country and The Countryman. We are reading our first edition with great interest. We live in an old cottage surrounded by farmland, mainly pasture. The birds we have seen have been surprisingly and pleasingly numerous and varied. We were delighted at our first sighting of red kites soaring high above the surrounding fields. We were fascinated to watch them and the buzzards being mobbed and seen off by the crows if they got too close to the nearby trees. We’ve never seen them swoop down to catch anything. I suspect that as there is a feeding station nearby there is not so much need to scour the countryside for a meal. Throughout the seasons we’ve been constantly entertained by myriad birds taking advantage of our supply of seeds etc. We’ve heard similar accounts from others we have spoken to.

So we were very surprised at the contents of the letter we read from the reader in Norfolk who stated that there is a rapid decline in the numbers of farmland and moor land birds due to the increase of red kites and buzzards. I can reassure him that in our corner of Wales at least, the birds that we’ve seen seem to happily co-exist and there seems to be no shortage. I imagine that the existence of feeding stations is more likely to protect other would-be prey. If the number of mice finding their way into our airing cupboard is any indication, there is no shortage of small rodents either!

Karen and Keith Over

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