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The Irish too

When subsidies account for a third of your revenues, you become accustomed to them keeping pace.  The problem is that in Europe the one thing that has more than kept pace is the sea of paperwork.  Farmers in France spend 15 to 20 hours a week doing paperwork to keep their masters happy.  

Politicians live off statistics, and statistics have to be created.  As new farmers (established in 2019) our crash course on farming paperwork was brutal.  Think of doing your taxes every single month.  Incredible amount of repetitive work, that you are convinced no one will ever read.  At best, it makes work, at worst a complete waste of time.

For our farm paperwork was in your face from zero to 100 in 2 seconds.  However, we quickly realized that a lot of the paperwork was keeping track of stuff that could be entirely and cheaply automated in a new farm like ours.  GPS monitors, and tracking tools, on the animals and in our feedlots.  automatic tracking of our milking process, all these things could, at a cost, be automated.  The data could be collected and collated automatically and then we could generate the necessary reports, on time and in the correct format,  The total cost for the farm was nearly £ 150,000 but again we benefited from the prevalence of widgets and Applications, and the cloud.  We did it all in one go, and the implementation was done by a team of professional programmers.  In nearly 5 years of operation, not a single form has changed, thank god, and we have produced all the necessary reports with almost no human intervention.  

As an example, we need to report tons of data on our milking cows, for health and safety and report milk production.  There is no human interaction.  The only interaction is with Jennifer who at the end of the month received an email message that showed, the new month's results, the past month's results and 12 months ago results.  If it looks OK she signs off.  The total time spent by Jennifer was about 30 seconds.  Jennifer does this for at least 5 reports per day.  Total office time on these reports no more than 2 minutes of her day.

Preparing each report by hand, at least an hour per report, assuming the information is at hand.

In addition, we receive no subsidies.  Our farm is 100% subsidy-free.  All our activities are driven by profits.  We have a huge advantage, economies of scale.  A few years ago we travelled in France and I was shocked to see how small French farms are.  You can see it by the size of tractors being used in their protest.  

Subsidies have stopped European farm consolidation because subsidies promised the possibility of a better day.  How many times have I heard at farm shows:  Two more years and we will farm without subsidies.  You hear the protests here too when farms are being consolidated.  British farms are better than French ones, but we cannot hold a candle to American farms.  

Still, the whole farm subsidy mentality that is at the base of the EU was always going to end in tears.  When the money runs out, that's it.

On a side note, we will plant wheat this year.  We have 400 acres on the new farm that we don't yet need for pasture or sillage, and Jennifer told me that the wheat futures for August delivery are insane.  I spoke to our neighbour and he agreed, at a price, to sow our land for wheat this year and also to harvest it.  He's a wheat farmer with about 1,000 acres.  Good for both of us.

Note:  I got a lot of comments about how we should share the software we have with other farmers, and that are capitalist pigs for keeping it all to ourselves.  First, I should point out that we don't own the software, it is commercially available to anyone who cares in a multitude of languages... it's not even expensive.  Setting up each form is complex our supplier provides updates to each form we have under an annual update contract.  Secondly, we have one or two farmer groups come to the farm to see what we do, the software company said that no more than 20% follow our steps... for many farmers, it's not worth it.  Finally, and more importantly, if you use bad words, I will ban you, end of story no appeal.  You can scream at the Ref while watching Premiere League.

Note2:  A lot of the cost of automation is related to physical infrastructure rather than software.  Cattle have to be chipped and monitored, and monitoring stations have to be installed all over the farm and linked via ISP protocol.  That's the expensive bit, the equipment and installation (and maintenance) costs.

   

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