Author: TFF News

Outdoor lambing saves housing and labour, but catching the one ewe in trouble in an open field is where the system bites back. A Farming Forum conversation of 138 contributions audits the catching trade: the crooks, restrainers and improvised ring-feeder pens that earn their place, the £100 catch dog called the cheapest thing its owner ever bought, the quad’s claim over the buggy, and the breeding argument over wool-shedding sheep as rising wool prices meet the end of the overseas shearer concession.

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A report that future Scottish farm payments could depend on formal training met a wall of resistance in a Farming Forum conversation of 103 contributions viewed 4,271 times. Farmers with decades in the field weighed classroom hours against experience, audited the courses they have already been made to buy, and compared notes with Wales, where six hours of CPD a year is now a scheme condition. A small camp defended professional development, and the trade question is whether training providers gain customers or conscripts.

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UK farms closing the books on a second dry year cannot agree whether they are better or worse off. A Farming Forum conversation split down sector and rainfall lines: livestock sellers banked a strong trade while a Welsh dairy called it the most worrying time since 1992. The uncomfortable common ground was that several of the most secure farms got there by producing less, with SFI and solar beating cropping on marginal ground and input inflation at 8.4 per cent eating record stock prices.

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