Desperate hill farmers face bleak winter

BSE crisis: Beef producers to lobby Westminster as stagnant prices threaten financial disaster for many

Hill farmers in the north-east of England are taking a financial hammering in the traditional autumn cattle sales as the price of calves has tumbled by up to pounds 150 a head in the wake of the BSE crisis.

Today, more than 2,000 farmers from across Britain will converge on London to lobby MPs after the opening of Parliament. Sir David Naish, president of the National Farmers' Union, is due to go to 10 Downing Street to urge the Prime Minister to do more to help the stricken beef industry.

Farmers who fatten beef animals have suffered serious financial losses since the crisis broke in March, with auction prices down by about 25 per cent. Beef bulls, which typically might have sold for pounds 675 a year ago, have been fetching around pounds 500 - barely covering the cost of the calf, let alone its feed.

The knock-on effect is being felt with a vengeance by hill farmers, many of whom sell the offspring of their suckler cows to lowland beef finishers in autumn sales. According to a report issued by the NFU's North East region yesterday, early sale prices have fallen by up to 29 per cent on last year.

"Many mixed upland and livestock farms rely heavily on cattle production and cuts in income from finished and store cattle [which include suckler calves] have come as a devastating blow," said Kevin Pearce, the region's senior policy adviser.

Traditional hill farmers are between a rock and a hard place. They usually only have sheds to over-winter suckler cows and their new calves; feed costs are high and winter lasts a long time on the edge of the moors. They must sell stock in the autumn, but this year beef finishers are wary buyers.

Richard Thornton, who farms at Kirkwhelpington in Northumberland, has sold 80 animals since the crisis broke at prices pounds 120 to pounds 140 a head down on last year. "It doesn't take a genius to work out that that is an awful lot of money straight out of the farm's profit margins. Nobody can go on making the sort of losses we have suffered this year."

Mr Thornton will not be at tomorrow's rally. If he was, his message to ministers would to be to begin a selective cull of cattle judged at highest risk in order to get the European Union ban to lift the ban on British beef exports. "We have to make a start because the EU won't move otherwise," he said. "At the moment, the moment the door is slammed shut and there is nothing but darkness."

Mr Thornton's view was shared by the majority of farmers involved in the NFU survey - covering Yorkshire, Durham and Northumberland.

Mr Pearce said there was "an overwhelming need" for an increase in the subsidy to hill farmers - to be announced in the Budget - but the survey revealed farmers "increasingly disillusioned" in the ability of politicians to address their long-term concerns.

Farmers in Wales are threatening to drive their message home by fielding candidates against Tory MPs in marginal seats. The power of the rural vote could be decisive in the Vale of Glamorgan and Brecon and Radnor which the Conservatives hold by 19 votes and 130 votes respectively.

Writing in the Western Mail, Bob Parry, president of the Farmers' Union of Wales, said fielding candidates would be "an extreme measure" but he was not prepared to see agriculture "sacrificed on the altar of political expediency".