Winter Planting: AHDB’s Winter Planting Survey shows a decline in crop area across England and Wales, for the second year running. As at 1st December 2015 the total area of winter wheat, winter barley, oilseed rape and oats is estimated to have been around 100,000ha lower than reported in December 2014 and 300,000ha lower than December 2013. Winter oilseed rape stands at 548,000ha which is 10% lower than 2015 harvest. Unless spring plantings are substantial this will be the lowest English oilseed rape area since 2009. The reduction in plantings across all crops looks to be driven by poor commodity prices and agronomic factors rather than poor planting conditions.
Grain Markets: Cereals and oilseed prices remain under pressure as a result of high global stocks, although markets have seen some recovery since the New Year this has been short lived. World stocks are predicted to remain high moving forward into next season, despite concerns about the impact of El-Niño on production elsewhere in the world. The weakening pound since the turn of the year has been positive for UK exports, but exports will have to continue at this pace if we are to clear the current surplus ahead of harvest 2016.
New regulation of forward grain sales (MiFID II): The NFU is working to hold onto successes won in lobbying to allow farmers to continue using forward contracts and futures markets. While the areas the NFU identified as problematic have been addressed in draft legislative and technical documents, some in the European Parliament and NGO groups are unhappy with the proposed solutions. The European Parliament is a particular challenge as some Members see all ‘speculation’ as bad and do not recognise the role it can play in providing counter parties and liquidity to the futures markets. There is a further proposal to delay some of the implementation by 12 months and this will give us time to ensure that those making the decisions fully understand our position. The NFU will keep in front of legislators to ensure farmers can continue to protect themselves against price risk without committing physical grain sales.
Biofuel: The NFU has continued to meet with MPs and civil servants to influence the formation of policy due to be included in the forthcoming Government consultation. This consultation will include the contentious issue of where the UK will set the ‘crop cap’, which will seek to limit the volume of crops able to be used in biofuel production. In February NFU met with the Minister with responsibility for biofuels and we will continue to explain to MP’s and policy makers how important the biofuels market is for UK agriculture. The NFU has actively supported the AHDB in their work to recalculate the greenhouse gas emissions attributable to UK oilseed and cereal crops. This has now been submitted to the Department for Transport for approval by the European Commission and if approved the new values will help keep open valuable EU biofuel markets that the NFU has previously won access too. NFU has also responded to the European Commission’s recent consultation on the Renewable Energy Directive post 2020 and will be contributing to the second stage of this which is due in May.
Seeds: Following the announcement of the closure of Crossnacreevy, a grass variety testing station in Northern Ireland, the NFU has been in regular communication with APHA expressing the concerns of the NFU Herbage Group in a bid to ensure grass varieties continue to be tested under appropriate conditions suitable for UK growers. NFU has been liaising with the British Plant Breeding Society (BSPB) to ensure industry presents a unified position to the Northern Irish decision makers. Ahead of the forthcoming EU debate the NFU has developed a paper expressing our concerns over the use of patents as a form of intellectual property for plant breeders, and this position is mirrored by Copa-Cogeca. Intellectual property concerns also tie into with the ongoing discussions over the New Breeding Techniques (NBTs), which the NFU has been involved with both nationally and at European level.
Farm Saved Seed: The Fair Play campaign between UK farming unions and the British Society of Plant Breeders was 10 years old in 2015. Where over 95% of arable crop seed has royalty paid, UK farmers have returned millions in revenue to plant breeders, and made the UK one of the most attractive countries in Europe for breeding investment. In recent years, in response to a number of drivers, certified royalties have sharply increased. This underlines further the importance to farmers of continued access to the use farm saved seed, as farmers were able to switch to home saving if certified royalty was out of step with economic benefit.
Fertiliser: In the face of stubbornly high fertiliser prices in the UK, the NFU has met with representatives from the European Commission to challenge the existence of fertiliser tariffs on P and N fertilisers. The NFU has raised the matter with Defra Secretary of State Liz Truss ahead of discussions at the March EU Agriculture Ministers’ Council in Brussels and the NFU has taken the issue to the Prime Minister as one measure that could be used to help reduce the lack of profitability in agriculture. NFU has also successfully lobbied for increased transparency in fertiliser markets, with new information now available to farmers from two independent sources, the AHDB in the UK and AMIS internationally.
Glyphosate pre-harvest use in cereal and oilseed crops: The European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the EU member states finalised the re-assessment of glyphosate in December. The report concluded that glyphosate was unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and proposed a new safety measure to tighten the control of glyphosate residues in food. This conclusion has been used by the European Commission who has proposed the re-approval of glyphosate to the EU list of approved active substances, and it will be used by EU member states to re-assess the safety of pesticide products containing glyphosate. The evaluation considered a large body of evidence, including a number of studies not assessed by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which is one of the reasons for reaching different conclusions. The official decision on re-approval was recently delayed and although they have no official role in re-approval the European Parliament voted on the 13th April on whether to ask the European Commission to remove its proposed re-authorisation of glyphosate, pending further analysis of the environmental and human health impacts of the herbicide. This motion was defeated and last-minute amendments to the resolution, lobbied for by the NFU and adopted in the European Parliament, provide a clear mandate for the European Commission and member states to proceed with the re-authorisation. Ahead of this vote NFU encouraged members to write to their MEP’s in order to explain the importance of glyphosate to their farm businesses in an aim to stop this issue becoming further politicised.
Oilseed rape pest pressure: Plantings in 2015 have again been affected by widespread infestations and damage from cabbage stem flea beetle (CSFB), likely to result in a significant additional cost for foliar applications against insects over using seed treatment and replanting failed crops. On behalf of members, the NFU successfully applied for emergency use for two insecticide seed treatment products, Modesto and Cruiser OSR for 2015 planting of winter oilseed rape. NFU has once again run its OSR survey to better understand the extent of the problem, and the initial results show that respondents comments on reasons for reducing area of winter oilseed rape plantings in 2015/16 were almost all linked to the risk of damage from CSFB. The survey showed that farmers are trying a number of alternative, agronomic practises to control the pest but their confidence in these changes is not reflected in anticipated yields for 2016 harvest.
Cereals Development Programme: The NFU is once again running the Cereals Development Programme this year in partnership with Openfield. The 2016/17 scheme is currently being developed but the programme will likely look similar to the previous years including visits across the supply chain and a number of training courses for participants. It is currently planned that applications for the 2016/17 scheme will open at the Cereals Event in June.
E-Grain Passport: AHDB has recently released the results of the eGrain passport trial which looked at whether it is feasible to move the current paper-based grain passport onto an electronic platform. The project was run over 2014/15 and was run using live loads in the milling wheat and malting barley supply chains. The decision on whether to switch to an electronic grain passport is now out to consultation with industry and the NFU is currently consulting with members in order to form a view.