For the Birds

MrsM and I both left the farming industry over three decades ago, but of course we still look over the hedges. Today we met an old friend that we have not seen face to face for too many years, who is still actively rearing livestock in their own right and embedded deep in the farming social network

We spent some time discussing the alienating nature of being a modern farmer, especially a small-farmer. The tangle of regulation that straight-jackets farm practice. The feelings of powerlessness and impotence in the face of bureaucratic control by institutions that have no insight into the realities of day-to-day farm life. The conflict between what is still most farmers' core motivation - to produce food - and a political climate that they feel devalues that desire, and so devalues them as people. To tell a farmer how to farm is to tell an artist how to paint, a musician how to play, a decathlete how to tie their laces

Add to this the isolation of many farmers' daily lives, the unpredicable volatility of markets and the inherent risk of working with biological systems in a fickle climate. It is easy to see why mental health is low and suicide risk is high

I don't know enough to foresee where this is leading, but one consequence we discussed briefly is the sometimes eccentric (but logical) choices that entrepreneurial farmers may make in the face of ill thought-out subsidy policies. Our friend mentioned in passing that their step-son is growing 'bird-seed' - unthinkable 30 years ago - and none of us had a very clear idea of what that actually meant

On the journey home, we were confronted by this. Even now, I recognise most crops I see from the road, but this - literally - pulled us up short, on to the verge and out of the car, camera in hand. "Well, it's a grass", I ventured authoritatively (but so are wheat, barley, oats, rye and maize!). We turned to the Internet: it is Phalaris canariensis, 'canary grass'. And yes, it is sown in the spring, harvested for its seed in late August...and fed to birds (including canaries, I assume). At the moment, UK imports a lot from the US, so the market already exists, and presumably the price and the costs now make it competitive with food crops

From discussion to demonstration within an hour