Adam Bedford: Expect the unexpected

I do seem to get roped into some funny goings-on sometimes. The most recent sounded more like something from the Krypton Factor rather than anything to do with farming. Last month I found myself part of the intriguingly titled “Exercise Silver Birch”.

I was a bit nervous. It was explained that it would all happen in “real time” and that while we may need to “role play”, we should pretend it was actually happening. Remembering with a squirm of embarrassment my adolescent forays into local amateur dramatics, and hoping that it wouldn’t involve too much pretending to be someone else, away I went.

Of course, it was nothing like that. This was serious stuff – Exercise Silver Birch was a pretend outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. It was simulated over a couple of days, all designed to test how good the response would be to another outbreak of that terrible disease. Working out a plan for coping with a problem is one thing, testing whether it actually works before you really have to is quite another.

It was just as the Local Disease Control Centre would really be. Vets, animal health staff, trading standards, the police, farming representatives and others all assembled to play our parts. Maps were prepared, records were checked, farms were “tested”, problems were raised and hopefully dealt with and questions were answered. Even a representative from the army (impressive moustache included) was there, should their help have been required.

These types of exercises have to happen periodically to satisfy European legislation on contingency planning for disease, and they are very important. They also throw up all sorts of things you hadn’t thought about. The main point that struck me as I left was that more of this type of approach – putting a plan in place for all eventualities – has real benefits for individual farmers on the ground, and not just when thinking about disease.

But calling it contingency planning doesn’t exactly flick my switch. Describing this way of thinking as risk management sounds better to me, or you could sum this up as an effort to “make-sure-that-unexpected-stuff-doesn’t-screw-up-your-business”. Expecting the unexpected is what farmers are unfortunately having to become used to.

The past few years are a case in point – from diseases and cost increases to price spikes and food riots. The push to increase food production in the future will not be determined by land availability and productivity alone. It will be largely dictated by the ability of farmers to manage the risk and volatility in their businesses, most of which is out of their hands.

Thankfully, there is an increasing recognition of this politically. The recent CAP Reform communication mentions the need for the development of “risk management strategies” for agriculture. The OECD is advising governments on policies that can help farmers manage the risks in their business. The recommendations from the EU High Level Group on dairy focus on increasing the power of producers in the supply chain and even using futures markets.

All of this is welcome as making food production less of a risky business is in everyone’s interests. Managing volatility will be the biggest headache for farmers in the future, and will be a big consideration. Or as one farmer put it simply to me the other day: “The decisions you make on a wet afternoon in a farm office are probably going to end up more bloody important than the farming you do all year.” I couldn’t agree more. Farmers just need more tools to be able to make those decisions a reality.

opinion:adam bedford