More and more I watch programs or news propaganda about how farmers and their production methods are affecting the climate in a detrimental manner. Farmers for some reason have become the new evil, leaders in causing climate change despite the figures to the contrary. Everyone is talking about ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ with everyone’s definition of said topic completely different in concept to others when it comes to explaining what it means.
“Until there is an agreed concise definition of ‘Regenerative Agriculture', there will be continued confusion that could eventually lead to theoretically generated impractical legislation imposed.”- Peter McSporran
The Greenies of course are advocating ‘happy’ cows grazing in daisy and buttercup-filled meadows while farmers hand cultivate grains and vegetables to satisfy their vegan eating habits which only they can afford. Of course in their equations, they only use the negative impacts never ever balancing these with the positive aspects of agriculture. People forget that farmers are the guardians of the land, they are always at the forefront of protecting the environment despite what is said. Depleted soils and overgrazing are recipes for disaster. They are not sustainable. Only bankrupt or those farmers going bankrupt ignore those rules. In essence, the Greenies are advocating more extensive low input, low yield farming. Fewer animal products or less grain per hectare. That would mean to produce the same livestock products under the farming regimes they are proposing would require 2.5 times the present land use to implement this. I say this even as developing economies' demand for livestock products is increasing more than threefold against that of the developed world. They cannot take any more land from cropping, as grain production is already in deficit against consumption for this carnivorous appetite.
“If finding a concise definition for ‘Regenerative Agriculture' is difficult, just wait until we try to measure or define the required standards.” - Peter McSporran
But just as I see this attack on farmers, I also note that regenerative agriculture very much includes the reduction of both chemical fertilisers and pesticides. This points to what we used to call extensive farming methods. To make a living you need more land either for crops or livestock. What it does mean is less food, be it cereals, corn or livestock products per hectare.
The land therefore can only come from the forests or any arable land presently not being exploited in full. Both ominous. Meanwhile, who are those clearing the jungles for oil palm, who are harvesting forests for the timber to enable sugar to be planted or cattle ranching be it in Africa or South America? Who is at the forefront of heavy industrial broadacre farming using 600 HP tractors to cultivate and plant hundreds of hectares of grains or oil seeds per day? I can safely say not the small farmer, it is the industrial corporate farming organisations who are able to broadcast social and environmental good governance claims like confetti. The real question is why? The answer is simple, the traditional farmer cannot provide food at prices the supermarkets demand to attract consumers from other supermarket chains. Despite their claims of reduced margins, the supermarket chains continue to expand, squeezing out not only the high street shops but now even the essential village store. Just this month a large chain opened another outlet just down the road from us. Of course, their marketing and opening specials attract all the locals. Hence the economies of scale of large farms being seen as the answer to ensuring lower food prices. Premiums for organic farming products are only affordable to those rich enough to eat by whim rather than need. The land for this burgeoning demand is not always available in already cultivated areas hence the demand for more virgin land. Easier to clear forests than people, although the outcry to both is converging in volume.
“The term ‘Regenerative Agriculture’ will be used as a marketing tool by all those brands that use agricultural produce as raw material bringing into place auditing systems that will make it impossible for the small farmer to implement due to cost, just as it has in forestry and horticulture.” - Peter MacSporran
It seems now the outcry in saving the forests has refocused these conglomerates into buying up traditional family farms with the aid of Governments from Britain to Sri Lanka. In fact, worldwide. In Britain modest margins coupled with rising input costs are forcing traditional farmers out of business. In the UK, to hasten their departure, the Government has brought out an Agricultural Transition Plan which allows payments of up to £100,000 as an incentive for farmers to sell or rent their land. In essence to stop farming. They say it is for a fairer agricultural industry allowing new entrants. But let's be honest who can afford to go farming at this time with the narrow margins let alone find the money to do so? Farming is a risky business, borrowing money at this time to buy land overvalued by speculation rather than the land's annual financial return coupled with the spectre of rising interest rates would be crazy. Only those with cash in their pockets can afford to do this. Who holds the cash? The larger operators, banks and corporations, not the new farmer who most likely would only get a short-term lease. Five years in farming is nothing in terms of improving and developing a farm. Already 100,000 farmers have left agriculture in the UK since 1990, many more will, meaning further consolidation of land holdings by the big boys.
I often want to cry when I hear a farmer getting excited about a dedicated contract to a wholesaler, processor or even retailer. These fixed contracts are for the benefit of the buyer, it removes the risk of sudden price increases, to promote sales he can drop the price or even does so just to increase his margin. His delivery requirements ensure his supplier carries the cost of storage and the risk. His delayed payment system ensures the farmer finances the product until sold on. They dictate how you farm and what you produce, be it age, quality and weight in livestock. As we saw in the tobacco and cotton industry in Africa the farmer is losing his market freedom, loses choice and always is a price taker even more so now, never the price maker. If he does not like it his customer will take over his production and compete against him using the very profits he made from him or her. By the way, my use of ‘him’, please read as any gender.
Now I have no gripe against the need for better farming practice, I could have done a lot to improve my own methods and more to conserve my soils. That I have no doubt, perhaps it is my biggest regret about my farming days on reflection.
Most of us may not know but the world in recent years has not been producing food surpluses. See The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) chart above. So the Greenies and the politicians want to see a reduction in food when we are already in deficit. Their argument is that it is climate change that is threatening food production, not so much the other factors including those policies led by the loony-green-left or the burgeoning population growth. Do not include in your argument against the farmer, the world's swelling population’s demand for more food, the demand of our cities for the water that could be used for irrigating crops in mitigation to climate change, nor the soaring input costs which will lead to a reduction of input use and therefore reduced yields coupled with their demand to leave more land fallow or planted to trees. Just like the energy crisis Governments are good at blaming others, not themselves for poor planning. When the food crisis arises, will the Greenies or politicians accept blame?
I found this interesting bit of information below.
“According to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, China is expected to have 69% of the globe's maize reserves in the first half of crop year 2022, 60% of its rice and 51% of its wheat.” - Global Food Systems Forum, Feeding the World 2050 Challenge
So Russia has the oil and gas while China has the food reserves even when there is no global surplus of food. While we quibble over gender matters, historical parties during Covid-19 and what we should eat, the strongest national threats to our well-being are locking up both the world's mineral wealth and agricultural production. In case you think Russia is just rich in oil and gas it also produces more than double the grain it can consume annually.
All this is despite the following warning from the FAO:
“The projections show that feeding a world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70 percent between 2005/07 and 2050.” - Global Food Systems Forum, Feeding the World 2050 Challenge
Food for thought.
Blue Base
I have not mentioned our local security which despite call-ups was ongoing. All the farming districts over and above the army and PATU operatives in their area relied on their own reaction sticks made up of all the farmers in each community. As most of us younger people were spending a lot of time on call-ups the majority of these duties fell onto the older members who were mostly Police Reserve. Notwithstanding this, they also did call-ups to other areas, perhaps not as frequently as army territorials or PATU. When we were at home we were expected, by rotation, to act as a reaction stick in our own farming area requiring us to report to your own local security base. In our case, this was ‘Blue Base’ which was sited in an old farmhouse on Chris and Lorraine Bell’s Delamore Farm, near the middle of our area. We all had radios with each farmhouse having a base set. This radio system was known as ‘Agric Alert’, one of the most important security tools for farmers during the war. Each morning and evening the local police station at Darwendale would do a roll call to ensure we were all safe. The radio was also there to alert of any security issues from thefts to farm attacks. Sometimes we could overhear farm attacks taking place in other farming areas when frequencies overlapped. Luckily our area never had one farm attack. One of the very few areas in the country that could claim this. To enable us to react and patrol we were supplied with a land-mine-protected vehicle called a Rhino. This was a converted Land Rover. In Rhodesia, many types of vehicles were converted into mine-protected vehicles.
Normally the reaction stick consisted of four people sometimes to make this number up, a BSAP (British South Africa Police) regular constable or reservist from Darwendale Police would join us. We all had our issued FN rifles, either from the police or army, along with ammunition including grenades and rifle grenades. As most farm attacks or store robberies occurred in the evening to allow escape time for the CTs before possible follow-up in daylight the next day, we nearly always would spend the first few hours doing a vehicle patrol around the area as a deterrent.
Our area boundaries were Norton in the south, Nyabira to our east, the Great Dyke to our west and Concession and Barwick to our north, an area of some 150 square kilometres. The furthest farms were about thirty minutes from our base. As Chris Bell was the owner of the farm where the base was situated he was the bona fide base commander, an onerous task trying to coordinate a group of farmers who all claimed to know more about military operations than any General. Unfortunately, many of them have now passed. I mention them as they were all good friends and neighbours. Hamish Black, Johnny Walters, David Stokes, John Gordon, Clem Bruk-Jackson, Peter Horsman, Robin Gilmore, Paul Tapson, Francis Rosier, Mike Bedford, Kestrel Bezuidenhout, Gerhard Breytenbach and Chris Bell. All of these men have passed with only John Jones, Earl Burger, Louw Coetzee, Russel Smith, Gavin Smith and myself being surviving members of that original group. In fact, I am not sure if Louw Coetzee is still alive he having left the country after a very nasty contact we had towards the end of the war with him selling his farm to my good friend, drinking, fishing and gambling mate Henry Bezuidenhout, also deceased. You can see from our numbers we were on duty nearly every third night when we were not on call-up. Of course, our wives and children were left at home alone. Funny when we were on duty we were expected to use the mine-protected vehicle while in our civilian life we drove around in unprotected cars and pickups on the exact same roads. I should mention there were a number of local residents beyond call-up age being in their sixties and above including George Taylor, the local mechanic at Darwendale Garage, Jimmy Odendaal the Stationmaster, Ray Waghorn father of Charlie, the Vet, Jack Reeves a retired policeman, Trevor Gordon, Mr Arnold ex-Kenya and latterly Chris Vermaak. The reason there were so few farmers in our area was that most of the old tobacco farms north of the Salisbury to Kariba road had sold up due to poor viability and had been bought up by three individual families that did not live in the area, the Beatties, Arnotts and Blacks. I know all these names are meaningless to most of you but in writing this it offered me a good memory check in trying to recall our farming community.
The other half of Darwendale, on the other side of the Great Dyke, had many more farmers than us, which was regarded as a much better tobacco-growing area prior to the advent of irrigation. Their base was known as ‘Yellow Base’, their radio station operated by local women including my now mother-in-law Shirley Cary. I should mention our telephone exchange was also operated by local ladies being hand operated as in Doctor Finlay's Casebook. Our number was 3023. The 3 represented the line and the 23 our number. So our ring was two short rings followed by three long rings. Of course, some were known to listen into others' conversations while the telephonists knew all our secrets.
The conversation while on duty most nights was mostly about the war, farming and fishing. Politics were banned, after all, we had weapons. A couple of beers were allowed and on the odd occasion, someone would bring whisky which was a very rare treat in sanctioned Rhodesia. When it was available the brands were virtually unknown such as Haney Bannister and Gold Blend. The latter being a flavoured cane spirit guaranteed to give you a hangover if more than two were foolishly consumed.
Sadly, with our land being acquired, not paid for, by the Government, our remaining friends and their families are now spread all over the world.
Njombe
After departing Iringa and stopping off at Mafinga to visit Green Resources - SEGD, an expanding forestry company, we then moved on to a night in Makambako, at the junction on the main road to Songea in the south. Here, one driver and his vehicle had decided he had gone far enough and in refusing to go any further we had to wait for a replacement. There was not much to see here despite our visits to the local Government agricultural offices. The next day we set off for Njombe where we passed through the tea estates belonging to the Rift Valley Corporation, their roots based in Zimbabwe. Its estates including factories at Mufindi and Kibena have now been sold to a Kenyan magnate. Unfortunately, people are drinking less tea and Tanzania was unable to obtain the premium prices that Kenyan tea producers achieve. Noticeable for me having been a director of Tanganda Tea Co in Zimbabwe was how flat the estates were, therefore lending themselves to much easier machine harvesting. This was a real challenge on the slopes of Chipinga.
We were also surprised at the level of smallholder production in the Njombe area with its good rainfall and temperate climate relative to the lowlands of central Africa. Before booking into our lodgings for the night we visited Steve van Aard, an ex-Zimbabwean, and his wife Morag at Ndolela near the bottom of the southern escarpment. If anything the bus drivers were seen to be even more reckless on that road, plenty of bus carcasses bear truth to this.
Steve and his wife, a canny couple, had successfully opened up a farm by growing irrigated seed beans for the Dutch market. His yields were exceptional, testimony both to his management and the excellent soils. They had decided to sell up and try to purchase a farm in Scotland, Morag’s birthplace. I was really impressed with the water resources and soils, not so happy with the isolation nor the number of re-entrants on the land. I felt this may make irrigation development and land clearing expensive. At that time Rift Valley was planning to purchase the land to plant clonal tea but eventually, it ended up in the hands of SilverStreet Capital LLP who have developed it into a highly productive commercial and seed production unit. A further attraction was a very good micro hydroelectric site. Hats off to SilverStreet Capital LLP which have created food production and jobs utilising the natural resources available in a very isolated part of the world.
Disclaimer: Copyright Peter McSporran. The content in this blog represents my personal views and does not reflect corporate entities.
Comments