NFU: Rooker visits flooded farms
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Monday, 30, Jul 2007 12:00
Food and Farming minister Jeff Rooker was today given the chance to hear about, see and smell the impact of the recent, devastating floods on farming during a visit organised by the NFU to flood-hit Worcestershire and Gloucestershire.
First stop was a visit to Gordon Halling’s Brookridge Farm in Twyning, Tewkesbury, where he has 65 suckler cows on 200 acres. Normally he would look to make 1,000 big bales of hay but this year he has not been able to make any because 140 acres of his grassland is under water - and he only has six bales of hay left.
His neighbour Derek Roberts also met the minister and is equally as badly affected, with 75 acres of meadow under water. Sixty acres are inaccessible because of the floods and he is having to keep 220 sheep on only five acres of dry land he has near his farm.
While on the farm Lord Rooker met two people who have been playing a key role in bringing relief to farmers in the area. RSPCA inspector Chris Simpson and his boat team have rescued dozens of farm animals during the floods and NFU Tewksbury branch chairman Carl Gray who has been organising, together with help from the regional office, water supplies for farms that have lost their mains’ connection.
Lord Rooker was then taken by truck and trailer, through stinking flood waters up to four feet deep, to Red House Farm in Longdon, the home of the Jeynes family, father Trevor and sons Terry and Tim. They milk a herd of 70 dairy cows on 200 acres. They told Lord Rooker today was the first day the milk tanker had been able to get through to the farm since Sunday, leaving the family with no option other than to tip the milk into the slurry lagoon.
Today was also the first day a mains water supply has been restored to the farm. Previously they have been relying on bringing in tankers full of water to wash their milking parlour down and water their cows.
After lunch Lord Rooker was taken further north in the Severn Valley to Severn Stoke where more than 2,000 acres of grass land, vegetables and potatoes are under six feet of water.
Steve Watkins, of Sheepcote Farm, Sandford, has lost 1,000 acres of potatoes, spring onions, peas, sweetcorn, parsnips and carrots. His neighbour Peter Surman, who has an organic dairy herd of 200 milking cows, has lost virtually all of the grass land from which he was intending to make silage as winter forage.
He asked the minister to put pressure on for the relaxing of the organic standard to allow farmers who will not be able to make organic forage to buy conventionally grown hay as silage to feed their cattle through the winter.
The minister also visited David Revell who has lost 20 acres of runner beans, ten acres of pumpkins and six acres of broad beans. Lord Rooker was told the total losses for this part of the Severn Vale could end up at half a million pounds.
After the visit Lord Rooker said he was grateful for the opportunity to see the extent of the devastation for himself. He gave no commitment to making any emergency payments and said that Government would need to measure the scale of the problems across the country before making any decisions but that Government would certainly give it serious consideration.
He was also sympathetic to the point made strongly by the number of farmers he met, that the one thing Government could do - that would not require authority from the EU - is to make sure the single payment is made early and in full.
The NFU has also welcomed the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee inquiry into the 2007 floods which was announced yesterday, and is keen to use the inquiry to provide evidence to identify where there have been failings and to help to provide constructive solutions to prevent any similar problems in the future.
The NFU champions British farming and provides professional representation and services to its farmer and grower members.