The weather at the beginning of the week was certainly a bit of a shock with the return of the white stuff.
Two inches of snow wasn’t ideal for calves and lambs being born outside, especially with the biting wind that accompanied it.
Over the last while, Erin Smith of Pink Sphynx Media has been making a film to highlight mental health issues in agriculture.
Just type Unearthing Farming Lives into your search engine and you will see the short trailer which was launched earlier this week. Hopefully the full-length version will be available at the end of next month.
Here’s a bit of background to the film. Following on from surveys carried out at Turriff Show and interviews at Thainstone and in Orkney, it was realised that mental health was a huge problem in farming.
Lorna Paterson, the north-east regional manager for NFU Scotland, organised two small meetings for farmers who had experienced challenges to their mental health. It was hoped that we could establish a peer support group as a means of helping people in agriculture who are struggling.
Funding is a major issue, especially in recent times, but we have managed to get this film off the ground as a first step. However, I still think peer support groups would be an ideal resource in the future.
Although farming businesses have, in general, been less affected by Covid over this last year, there has been a loss of any opportunity for social interaction.
Marts have had restricted access, there have been no shows or discussion groups and even farmers meetings have been held over the likes of Zoom. We have got more used to virtual meetings now, but the opportunity for banter is somewhat limited. All of this means that the mental health of those in agriculture can’t have been improving.
Roll on the easing of lockdown measures when you can go to the mart without filling in a form and the annual pilgrimage to the Highland Show can return. In the meantime, keep an eye out for your neighbours, or give someone a call if you haven’t heard from them in a while.
Meanwhile, I have to mention the plight of pig farmers. I sold my pigs to a neighbour last year and I have had many comments saying what a lucky decision that was due to recent problems.
The main pig abattoir at Brechin closed for over two weeks due to Covid. This created a huge backlog of pigs on farm. Pigs that were worth £130-140 per head and went out of spec due to being overweight were then only worth £50. They had also eaten expensive feed with cereals and soya at very high prices.
The backlog has finally been cleared, but there are still issues with the Pilgrims abattoir. They lost their China export contract due to the staff catching Covid and have been deducting £15 per pig since the end of January.
A Covid hardship fund from the Scottish Government should cover the majority of these deductions up to the end of March.
It was expected that the £15 deduction would have stopped by now, but there is no sign of this happening. The deduction is continuing and will be reviewed at the end of this month.
Pig farmers are furious with this situation as they believe the abattoir didn’t offer to pay extra for pigs when they had the Chinese export contract, but they are happy to deduct the money now.
We need a decent-sized pig abattoir in Scotland and farmers need to be treated fairly.
- Kevin Gilbert is a member of NFU Scotland. He farms at Womblehill, Kintore, Inverurie.
