By Jim Walker

WHAT a nice change to be able to comment on a positive, optimistic story in the Scottish farming sector!

I’m not talking about the first signs of a recovery in the milk price; I’m sure that soap opera has a way to run yet, albeit hopefully the worst is now past. No, I’m talking about a positive story in the sheep sector which rarely grabs the headlines.

The finished lamb trade, at or above £4 deadweight kg, is very rare indeed in late July and August. In fact, even in 1996 after the devastating BSE announcement in the spring of that year I don’t think we hit £4kg in August, but I could be wrong!

I do, however, remember taking far too much drink with Messrs Hamilton, Park, and Dickie in the hut that called itself a pub at Thornhill Market after the Scotch Mule ewe lamb sale in August 1996.

Andy Hamilton had just formed the '£80' club because we had all managed to average more than £80 per head for our ewe lambs that day for the first time and the surprise led to a fabulous night of celebration.

The finished trade just now is even more significant and maybe surprising than ewe lambs in 1996, but I’m not sure our constitution could cope with the excitement of a session in the market followed by the Buccleuch Hotel! In fact, the market no longer exists come to think of it.

Currency is obviously helping lamb exports, but it seems to be the home trade that is really driving demand for lamb, which is great news, and not before time.

With the trade so good and many farmers still facing serious cash flow issues (even though it is not headline news anymore) a lot of under finished lighter lambs are also coming forward.

Getting these out of the system early and prices encouraging finishers not to keep lambs to extra heavy weights can also only be good news for the trade moving forward which is very encouraging.

Despite poor weather recently, our lambs are finishing really well and coming forward in big numbers. We also seem to be starting to manage our recently arrived tick problems on Drumbuie Hill much better.

Interestingly though, this tick trouble has moved down the hill and onto the semi rough, semi inbye ground this year, so next year we will need to treat these lambs as well.

Isn’t it funny how a problem that was eradicated in the 1960s and 1970s has come back to haunt us 40 or 50 years later. There is no question that managing hill grazing with cattle is key to this as well as chemical treatments for the flock should tick appear in the habitats grazed by the sheep.

This wee example should act as a reminder to those clever people who believe that justifying farm support can be judged in separate compartments.

Namely, supporting food production or the natural environment and habitats. I have always believed, and argued forcefully, that such a view fails to really understand farming and its role in protecting and enhancing the countryside, whilst at the same time feeding humanity.

Dame Helen Ghosh, the director general of the National Trust in England, and more worryingly a former Permanent Secretary, head of the Civil Service Department at DEFRA from 2005 until 2010, was spouting forth this very kind of ill-considered, ill-informed nonsense last week.

Not surprisingly, as head of an environmental body in England, she was arguing for the entire agriculture support system in England to be reset post Brexit to only reward farmers for, and I quote, “managing land in nature-friendly ways. Tax payers should only pay public subsidy to farmers in return for things that the market won’t pay for but are valued and needed by the public….Farmers should get a proper return from retailers and food manufacturers.

"If they are also producing clean water unflooded streets or great holiday experiences they should also get a proper return from the utilities or tourism industry….we may need some kind of transition period but that means payments for goods that go beyond food production for the wild flowers, bees and butterflies that we love, for the farmland birds now threatened, for the water meadows and meandering rivers that will help prevent flooding of our towns…..and currently some science and technology harms nature, it increases crop yields with big machines and harmful fertilisers”.

I’ll stop now, but you get the drift. A picture postcard view of a world that might exist in the mind of a tree-hugging environmental zealot leading a comfortable middle class life in rural Oxfordshire.

But, worryingly, is bright, well-educated, and worse, used to run agriculture policy in DEFRA and is, no doubt, still connected to all the right folk.

For example, she used to be Theresa May’s Permanent Secretary in the Home Office as well!

Is she seriously going to tell those who aren’t as privileged as her that they are to pay for the butterflies and the bees at the same time as their utility bills are to increase and their food prices are to increase to really reflect the cost of production? Its ok for her with her National Trust salary and index-linked final salary civil service pension to lecture about value for money for tax payers, so will she take a cut in her pension because that isn’t value for money either?

Is it utopian nonsense which displays a total ignorance of the real world we all live in; a total lack of understanding about what actually happens in the countryside; a total ignorance of the cost of food production and how the food supply chain works and even a lack of acknowledgement of the progress that’s been made by using science and technology to improve crop yields whilst changing the environment and improving soils and habitats over the last decade and more?

A reference to harming nature with big machines and harmful fertilisers is a great example of an outdated ignorant view of what modern day farming is really about.

Low pressure tyre technology, tracked vehicles and precision equipment using the latest GPS and IT gadgets are all contributing to preventing over use of expensive fertilisers and sprays, as well as protecting soils from problems like compaction, but the Dame seems to be completely oblivious to this and the myriad of other advances for using slurry and other valuable on farm by products that have also improved the environment.

It has been clear for years that Defra doesn’t give a toss about food production, but I always thought this was because Treasury told them what to think, say and do.

Now, it seems there has been an inbuilt ignorance about the contribution of productive farming right at the heart of Defra for years as well.

This makes the announcement by the Chancellor Phillip Hammond that current farm support levels will be maintained until 2020 all the more surprising, but very welcome as it brings a little certainty in a very uncertain world – so is another good news story.

We need to use this time until 2020 wisely to learn to rely less on that support, so four quid a kg for lamb will need to be the start price in future if the Dame really is to have her way – and I wouldn’t bet against her and her kind.

Maybe, by 2020, the market really will pay for quality food produced in Scotland. Now wouldn’t that be the good news story of the century!