Farmers Need to Exchange Knowledge to Deal with Volatility

Long-term knowledge exchange and benchmarking farms against peers are important to help farming withstand volatility, farm business experts have said.

Giving evidence to the House of Lords EU Energy and Environment Sub-committee hearing on “Responding to price volatility and creating a more resilient agricultural sector”, Sir Peter Kendall, chairman of the Agricultural and Horticultural Development Board, said that there has been a failure to provide farmers with the instruments to help farmers cope with volatility.

He called for a greater understanding of the commodity cycle and a greater understanding of risk to be shared with in the farming sector.

He said that farmers did not like the concept of benchmarking and he called for a new way of being able to explain to farmers how they should compare their businesses, both at home and around the world.

Other experts called for diversification and other income streams, niche production and better coordinated use of research – click here to read more.

Meanwhile, the UK’s National Farmers Union (NFU) has asked why dairy company Meadow Foods is paying one of the country’s lowest milk prices despite strong profits.

NFU dairy board chairman Rob Harrison said: “It’s morally wrong that a dairy posting pre-tax profits of £13.7 million in a difficult market situation continues to pay an unsustainable price for milk and takes no consideration of the voluntary code of conduct on contracts and has no formal producer representation.” – Read more.