Angelika von Heimendahl has been farming in the heart of Cambridge for 20 years. Her cattle are a local East Anglian breed known as Red Poll and are genetically hornless.

At the start of April, 50 of her cattle made their return to the commons after spending the winter months at a farm in Royston. This isn’t because it gets too cold for the animals. It’s because they “poach” the ground.

Angelika explains: “They’re heavy animals, and if they walk somewhere all the time, it would be an absolute mud bath and there wouldn’t be any grass left for the summer.”

The practice of grazing cattle on the commons is centuries-old. Midsummer Common has been used to graze cattle since 1381. In areas that were too low and marshy for construction or farming, fields were set aside to graze livestock.

In the 1890s, the area which is now the Cambridge Leisure Park was a cattle market. These pens could hold 700 bulls and 2000 pigs or sheep. The site closed in 1976, when the city council developed the area into the arts hub that it is today, a world a way from the noise and smells of the old cattle market!

Today, the cattle can be spotted enjoying the sunshine on Midsummer Common, Coldhams Common, and Barnwell East nature reserve. The best way to enjoy the cows are to look at them from the paths.

Despite the small number of people who agitate the cattle, or try to feed them grass, Angelika says that the best part about city farming is the people who look out for them.

She said: “If there’s ever any problems, I get hundreds of phone calls immediately, which is great. Many, many people look after them.”

Angelika now has even less to worry about after the council funded a new collar that tracks the movement of each cow and creates an invisible fence. This can be tracked from an app installed on her phone.

“We have one nature reserve that has quite a deep ditch and we’ve been worried about cattle maybe getting stuck. Now we can fence off things like ditches.”

The fence can also be used to protect flowers from being trampled over. It works by playing an unpleasant siren sound from the collar when the invisible fence is crossed.

Another benefit of keeping livestock in the city centre is the connection residents can have with their food. The meat from the cattle is sold at the Cambridge market every Sunday.

Angelika said: “I love the fact that people can have that connection between where their food comes from and how it’s kept. When you go to the supermarket you completely lose that connection.”

For the summer months ahead, the cattle will be enjoying a bit of city life from the serenity of Cambridge’s commons. You can take a trip to see them yourself, or take a look at our gallery below of them basking in the sun.

Source: Cambridgeshire

The post UK’s most metropolitan cows moove into Cambridgeshire city appeared first on Agraria Today.

The EPP conference, held in the Woodford Dolmen Hotel, Co. Carlow, will hear from European policy-makers, farmers, agricultural specialists and commentators.

The first panel will be chaired by MEP Colm Markey, and will be based on the EPP’s vision on farmer-led productive, sustainable agriculture and farm diversification.

Panellists include: Irish Farmers Association (IFA) deputy president, Alice Doyle; chair of AgTech Ireland, Padraig Hennessy; President of the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA), Denis Drennan; and chair of Tillage Industry Ireland, Andy Doyle.

The second panel will be chaired by Agriland editor, Stella Meehan and opened by MEP Maria Walsh.

It will be based on the EPP’s vision on profitability and social sustainability in agriculture.

Panellists include: Macra president, Elaine Houlihan; director of Meat Industry Ireland (MII), Dale Crammond; associate professor of University College Dublin (UCD) School of Agriculture and Food Science, Dr. Helen Sheridan; and committee member of the Irish Grain Growers’ Group (IGGG), Pat Cleary.

Taoiseach Simon Harris will also be in attendance to give the keynote speech.

Opening the event this morning, MEP Seán Kelly said: “Our farmers are the custodians of the land.”

He said there was a “need to revisit” the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) budget, secure family farm incomes, and pay farmers to deliver EU sustainability strategies.

“They are the ones who put food on the table, support our major export industries, but also they are the ones who can deliver the transition to sustainability.

“They must be paid properly for doing so. We need to revisit the CAP budget, secure family farm incomes, and pay our farmers to deliver EU sustainability strategies,” Kelly said.

“There is a way to have productive, profitable, and sustainable farming. To do this, I believe we need to increase CAP funding to support farmers, food production, and food security,” the MEP added.

Source: Agriland

The post EPP agricultural conference gets underway in Carlow appeared first on Agraria Today.

The driver, Trevor Shaw, had been put on notice of redundancy after the Government moved in 2022 to make driving most ministerial cars a Garda job on security grounds – reversing a decision taken to civilianise the position as an austerity measure a decade earlier, the tribunal heard.

Giving evidence on a complaint under the Unfair Dismissals Act 1977 against the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Mr Shaw said he was left with “no other option” except to take a severance package because the only option given to him was to transfer to the Department of Social Protection and work as a clerical officer.

His solicitor, Ellen Walsh of Sean Ormonde Solicitors, said the Department of Agriculture’s handling of the matter was a “fiasco” which failed to honour her client’s employment rights, branding it a “sham redundancy”.

The complaint had been denied by the State, with barrister Declan Harmon BL telling the tribunal it was the result of security advice.

“What else was the Department to do in the circumstances? The role no longer existed, because it was going to be fulfilled by Garda personnel, there’s no dispute on that, there was no role for the complainant to fulfil, so it was necessary to terminate the employment,” Mr Harmon said.

Only ministers sitting at Cabinet got garda drivers under the new security arrangements, the WRC heard. That meant civilian drivers stayed on the Department of Agriculture rota to serve Minister of State Martin Heydon, who does not sit at Cabinet.

Giving evidence, Mr Shaw said: “When the two financial ministers lost their civilian drivers, in January [2022], all the rest of the drivers, every Tuesday when Cabinet was on, the talk would be going round about what was happening. We tried to get answers but couldn’t. Drivers tried to get answers from their individual ministers,” Mr Shaw said.

“Some guards had moved in. We’d been told: ‘Lads, the writing’s on the wall, you’ll all be gone by summer’. It was an absolutely horrible time for us, we didn’t know whether we were coming or going,” the complainant added.

He said he only got official notice himself in November 2022.

Mr Shaw said there were no firm details given to him on the proposed transfer to the Department of Social Protection, and any prospect of office work was “absolutely” unsuitable for him, explaining: “I don’t have computer skills… The thoughts of going into an office and being asked to do something on a computer terrified me.”

In his decision, adjudicator Breiffni O’Neill said that if an employer was going to cite redundancy as the reason for a termination, it had to show that there was a situation of redundancy and also that it had acted fairly.

The Department of Agriculture “acted wholly unreasonably” by dismissing Mr Shaw in a “peremptory” manner without any sort of consultation process on alternatives to redundancy, Mr O’Neill wrote.

The only alternative presented by the department, the temporary clerical officer role, was suggested without any discussion of Mr Shaw’s skillset, Mr O’Neill noted. He noted further that there had been no avenue of appeal offered to Mr Shaw.

“It is symptomatic of the egregious treatment of the complainant throughout this process that the date of the termination of his employment was Christmas Day, namely 25 December 2022,” Mr O’Neill added. He ruled the dismissal unfair.

Setting compensation, Mr O’Neill noted that Mr Shaw had offered “little evidence of mitigation” of his loss of earnings but rejected the State’s argument that he could only award a “minimal” sum on this basis. He said the extent of Mr Shaw’s efforts to find new work had to be weighed against the conduct of the respondent. This, he said, had been “egregious”.

Mr O’Neill awarded €30,000 for the unfair dismissal, stating that this sum was to be paid in on top of the worker’s statutory redundancy entitlements and the undisclosed ex-gratia payment already made.

During the course of the hearing, Mr O’Neill had put it to the sole State witness, Ray Corbett, an assistant principal officer in the Department of Agriculture’s HR section, that it would be normal to offer voluntary redundancies in such circumstances.

“There was no provision for a voluntary redundancy package in the government decision,” Mr Corbett said.

“That suggests to me, Mr Corbett, that there was absolutely no regard for their rights under employment law,” the adjudicator said.

“I don’t accept that; they had fixed-term employment contracts coterminous with the government ministers,” the witness said.

Asked by the adjudicator whether there had been an appeal offered to the decision to terminate the contract, Mr Corbett said there had been none.

“That flies in the face of natural justice,” Mr O’Neill said.

Source: RTE

The post WRC awards former ministerial driver €30,000 over treatment appeared first on Agraria Today.

Just 3 percent of farmers say they trust the Welsh government as tensions continue to rise between Cardiff and rural areas over future funding schemes.

The ‘damning evidence’ is included in a new poll commissioned by the Country Land and Business Association in Wales (CLA Cymru).

It comes as Welsh farmers are increasingly concerned over the proposed Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS), which will replace direct farm payments.

Now with the power to determine its own agriculture policy, the Welsh government has been developing the funding scheme to pay farmers for delivering environmental improvements.

The CLA’s poll, released on Friday (16 February), found that 87% of farmers believed that SFS would neither support their business nor deliver positive environmental outcomes.

And just 6% said they would opt into the schemes in their current form, which many consider to be unnecessarily prescriptive and complex.

CLA Cymru director Victoria Bond said the poll’s findings were ‘damning evidence’ which should lead the new First Minister to ‘hit the reset button’.

“It only proves what we already know – rural communities feel ignored and let down by the Welsh government,” she said.

“As farmers, we work tirelessly to produce high quality food, and we are on the front line in the fight against climate change and nature decline.

“It is perfectly reasonable to expect the government to work with us constructively in the national interest.”

While similar schemes have already been rolled out in England, slowly securing the support of farmers there, the SFS is only at formal consultation stage.

Ms Bond pointed to schemes in England, which she said had been improved by constant collaboration between Defra and rural organisations.

She added: “We know that schemes to support environmentally friendly land management practices can work when developed in a spirit of mutual respect.”

It comes after Welsh farmers protested outside the office of the Rural Affairs Minister earlier this week as anger brews over the future direction of the industry.

Dozens of tractors and other farm vehicles drove up to the constituency office of Lesley Griffiths in Wrexham, North Wales on Monday (12 February).

This followed a meeting of over 3,000 farmers at Carmarthen market where the Sustainable Farming Scheme proposals were discussed, with many believing the industry will be hit hard.

Source: Farming UK

The post Just 3% of farmers say they trust Welsh government, new poll finds appeared first on Agraria Today.

The proposed measure was a key plank in the commission’s European Green Deal and its Farm to Fork strategy, intended to make the EU carbon-neutral by 2050, make agriculture more environmentally friendly and preserve biodiversity.

Von der Leyen’s sudden U-turn on one of her signature policies was not just an attempt to defuse a spreading continent-wide rural revolt over rising fuel costs, burdensome environmental regulations, retailers’ price squeezes and cheap imports. It was also a sign of growing panic among the EU’s mainstream parties over the seemingly inexorable rise of far-right nationalists ahead of the June elections.

Von der Leyen, a former German defence minister, is vying to lead the centre-right European People’s party’s campaign for the elections even though she is not herself seeking a European parliament seat. Her coronation at a party congress on 6-7 March as the EPP’s Spitzenkandidaten (lead candidate) to run the commission from 2024 to 2029 is a formality, since there is no other contender. But she has had to water down her green policies to placate a party so spooked by the “greenlash” against net zero legislation that it is rushing to reposition itself as the voice of gradual adaptation at a pace that citizens can accept and afford.

EU leaders tried to take another contentious issue off the table by agreeing in December on a long-stalled migration pact that includes stricter external border controls, faster procedures for processing asylum seekers and expelling those whose applications are rejected, and sharing the burden of the refugee crisis among EU countries. But populists such as the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, continue to rail against being forced to choose between admitting unwanted migrants and paying for other countries to take them in under the new system.

I have seen unpublished opinion polling conducted for the European parliament in January that showed Eurosceptic, sovereigntist or populist parties have taken the lead in eight of the 27 EU members, and are in second place in four more. Moreover, the countries where the far right is polling most strongly include those with the most seats in the legislature – Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Romania and the Netherlands.

This is getting scary, and events such as the farmers’ furore are playing into the hands of populists such as France’s Marine Le Pen, Germany’s Alice Weidel and Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, who thrive on grassroots grumbling against the metropolitan elites.

“The (pesticides) proposal has become a symbol of polarisation,” von der Leyen admitted to parliament in Strasbourg. “To move forward, more dialogue and a different approach is needed.” She may have been slamming the stable gate after the horse has bolted.

Farmers have traditionally voted for mainstream conservative and Christian Democratic parties, while the socialists and social democrats had their bastions in industrial urban areas. Remember former president Jacques Chirac, the Gaullist farmers’ friend, jovially slapping the hindquarters of cows in his southwestern Corrèze constituency or at the annual Paris agricultural fair. Nowadays, those voters are more likely to vote for Le Pen’s National Rally, recent polls suggest.

In France, the centre-right Republicans, Chirac’s heirs, are polling at barely 8%, while the National Rally stands above 30% in latest surveys, and anti-Islam ideologue Éric Zemmour’s even further right Reconquest! bags another 6-8%. Le Pen’s list is led by the charismatic 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, already an MEP and party president, while Zemmour’s is topped by Le Pen’s niece, Marion Maréchal, 34, a favourite of US far-right political strategist Steve Bannon.

In the Netherlands, farmer discontent over curbs on nitrogen emissions led to the sudden rise of the Farmer-Citizen Movement, a party that came from nowhere to win the most votes in regional elections last March. Many of those protest voters have since switched to Wilders’ Freedom party, which topped the poll in a general election in November and has gained more ground since then.

Appeasing rural revolt may stop farmers blockading motorways or burning bales of hay outside government offices, but it is unlikely to herd them back towards the mainstream centre-right, given the depth of their discontent.

Indeed, abandoning green policies at the first sign of trouble is only likely to embolden opponents of other aspects of climate protection policy such as replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy, building windfarms and solar parks, limiting polluting vehicles in cities or taxing carbon at the petrol pump or on home energy bills.

Ironically, the party that seems likely to suffer most from the farmers’ fury is the Greens, who are not even part of the coalition of mainstream centre-right, centre-liberal and centre-left parties that dominate the commission and the parliament. Recent polling suggests that the ecologists are set to lose up to one-third of their 72 seats in the 720-member legislature due to the “greenlash”.

On the other hand, the far right still has plenty of potential upside, according to a political consultant working on the campaign. Incidents involving migrants, amplified by xenophobic politicians and social media disinformation factories, may be exploited to inflame public opinion in the run-up to the June poll. Both Russia and Belarus have sought to use refugees at the EU’s eastern borders to create scares, most recently in Finland. The threat of terrorism could also drive voters towards parties promising harsher law-and-order and migration policies.

The meagre consolation for von der Leyen is that the rightwing populists cannot agree to sit in a single group in the European parliament because of personal, ideological or national rivalries.

So Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party sits in the rightwing sovereigntist European Conservatives and Reformists group along with Jarosław Kaczyński’s Polish Law and Justice party, the Finns party, and the Sweden Democrats, while Italian deputy prime minister Matteo Salvini’s League is allied in the hard-right Identity and Democracy group with Le Pen’s National Rally, Weidel’s Alternative für Deutschland and Wilders’ Freedom party.

Unless the far right makes more spectacular gains than the surge already predicted, it will remain divided and marginalised in EU governance by the coalition of pro-European mainstream parties. But as von der Leyen’s U-turn on pesticides shows, it may already be winning some of the policy arguments in Europe.

Source: Yahoo News

The post Farmers are in revolt and Europe’s climate policies are crumbling. Welcome to the age of ‘greenlash’ appeared first on Agraria Today.

“It’s up 33% more than it was last year.”

Cary Sifferath tells Brownfield “their livestock industry, corn starch and sweetener industries continue to grow. And Mexico has had some drought conditions and their local crop is down and will likely decline as harvest happens in June.”

But Sifferath says U.S. white corn exports to Mexico are declining because of the country’s GMO corn ban. However, he says additional business in other countries could offset some of the impacts.

“Colombia, El Salvador, a little into Venezuela and Guatemala where they also have white corn import needs. That demand has actually grown a bit.”

He says a dispute settlement panel continues to work on resolving the Mexico GMO corn dispute to remove Mexico’s GMO corn ban with a final ruling expected in November.

The U.S. Grains Council met in mid-February for an International Marketing Conference in Guatemala.

Source: Brownfield

The post Mexico Buying More U.S. Yellow Corn appeared first on Agraria Today.

Exports of Ukrainian wheat amounted to 10 million 333 thousand tons, which is 377 thousand tons less than last year.

Ukrainian farmers also exported 1 million 541 thousand tons of barley and 1.0 thousand tons of rye.

Exports of Ukrainian corn amounted to 14 mln 597 thsd tonnes, which is 2 mln 613 thsd tonnes or 1.17 times less than last year.

In addition, 71.5 thou tons of flour (or 95.3 thou tons in terms of grain) were exported, which is 21 thou tons less than last year.

Preliminary data on grain and legume exports were published by the Ministry of Agrarian Policy on February 14. According to them, in 2023/2024 MY 26 mln 269 thsd tonnes of grains and pulses were exported.

As a reminder, the exports of agricultural products in the first half of 2023/24 MY are 17% lower than last year.

Source: UkrAgroConsult

The post Ukraine exported over 26.7 million tons of grain appeared first on Agraria Today.

Farmers in the northern states of Haryana and Punjab held sit-ins near toll plazas on major highways in the strike, supported by some trade unions. Authorities advised commuters to plan routes carefully to avoid blocked roads.

Tens of thousands of farmers began a protest march toward New Delhi earlier this week to demand guaranteed prices for their produce, but were stopped by the police about 200 kilometers (125 miles) away from the capital. The farmers are camping on the border between Punjab and Haryana after being blocked by concrete and metal barricades. Police detained some protesters.

Authorities have also suspended mobile internet service in some areas of Haryana, blocked social media accounts of some protest leaders and used drones to drop tear gas canisters on the protesters.

The farmers’ march comes two years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government faced similar protests that continued for more than a year. At that time, farmers camped on the capital’s outskirts to demonstrate against new agriculture laws that were later withdrawn.

At the heart of the latest protests is a demand for legislation that would guarantee minimum support prices for all farm produce.

Currently, the government protects agricultural producers against any sharp fall in farm prices by setting a minimum purchase price for certain essential crops, a system that was introduced in the 1960s to help shore up food reserves and prevent shortages. The farmers want legislation that will apply the protection to all produce.

The protesting farmers are mostly from Punjab and Haryana and are relatively better-off than farmers in other Indian states. But increasing cultivation costs and rising debts have led them to overproduce rice and wheat, crops for which they get a minimum support price, or MSP. However, those water-guzzling crops have also depleted the water table in the two states and forced farmers to look for other alternatives. Farmers say a guaranteed minimum support price for other crops would stabilize their incomes.

Farmers are also pressing the government to follow through on promises to double their income, waive their loans and withdraw legal cases brought against them during the earlier 2021 protests.

Some economists say that implementation of the demands could risk food inflation. However, experts also point out that a key cause of the farmers’ frustration is the lack of implementation of policies that are already in place.

“The system of MSP is already there, but the government doesn’t follow through on what it is promising,” said Himanshu, an economist at New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University who goes by his first name.

The system of guaranteed prices — which applies to 23 crops — has been in place for decades, but the government mostly pays those prices for crops like rice and wheat, he said. “For the remaining 21 crops, the government hardly buys at those prices. That’s a problem. That’s why they want a guarantee.”

Several meetings between farm leaders and government ministers have failed to end the deadlock.

Agriculture Minister Arjun Munda, who met farm leaders on Thursday, said the talks were positive and the two sides will meet again Sunday.

“We believe we will all find a solution together peacefully,” Munda told reporters.

The protests come at an important time for India with elections to be held in a few months. Modi is widely expected to secure a third successive term.

In 2021, Modi’s decision to repeal the agricultural laws was seen as a move to appease farmers, an influential voting bloc, ahead of crucial state polls.

Source: Yahoo News

The post Indian farmers strike to demand guaranteed crop prices as others attempt to march to New Delhi appeared first on Agraria Today.

Strategie Grains forecast EU soft wheat production, the bloc’s main crop, at 122.6 million metric tons, down from 122.7 million projected in January and 2.5% below last year’s crop of 125.8 million tons.

“Excessive fall rains, already hampering planting operations, are still a concern in terms of impact on yield potential,” Stategie Grains said of soft wheat in its monthly EU grains report, Reuters reported

The consultancy cut its forecast for EU barley production this year to 53.1 million tons from last month’s forecast of 53.4 million tons, still 12% above last year’s drought-affected level.

The EU corn crop forecast was raised to 64.0 million tons from 63.6 million tons last month, up 4.6% from last year.

EU farmers are expected to increase sowing of spring barley and maize after rain prevented some growers from completing sowing winter cereals such as wheat.

Excess moisture has also hampered early spring barley sowing in France and Spain, although there have been no major problems so far at EU level, Strategie Grains reported.

Source: UkrAgroConsult

The post Strategie Grains has lowered its forecast for EU wheat production appeared first on Agraria Today.

The post USDA Predicts Lower 2024 Crop Prices, but That Won’t Immediately Show Up at the Grocery Store appeared first on Agraria Today.