By Charles Bourns, broiler grower, Gloucestershire
I have at last started to get out and about after about three years of various health problems. I went to Harper Adams, where I was told by one of the speakers that we as farmers have never had it so good. Needless to say, he was not a farmer!
I do have concerns with this thinking because we have needed an improvement in margins as our costs are all rising. Any extra earnings we may have had have gone and in fact, we need another increase.
But what is really concerning me is the move to 30kg stocking. Not because I think it is necessarily a bad thing, but the piecemeal way it is being done and the speed of the transition.
We are told the industry will need 600 new houses to keep production where it is. Is that likely to happen? I think not, so we will pull in imports. And so, after 14 years of doing everything to keep chicken consumed here British and having to adhere to ever more onerous Red Tractor standards, we will end up having mixed sourcing policies – probably the fresh chicken in supermarkets will be British and the rest will be imported, as used to happen in 2006. What a shame.
But do the big companies care? You only have to look at their ownership: Brazilian / American; American/ British; and EU/British. Their structure means they have access to imports to satisfy any shortfall.
We farmers need to start to promote our chicken and tell the consumer why a 30kg chicken is better than a 38kg chicken and build loyalty to our home-produced chicken.
When my chicken leave the farm they are in the shop three days later with my name on them. Surely that is the way it should be, not being transported here via a long boat trip.
Sadly, I have to end by saying how sad I am to hear that Sir John Campbell has died. He was an inspiration to many. He was always friendly to me and took an interest in what I was doing. He achieved so much in his lifetime and now he will be missed. He was one of the pioneers of our Industry.