Dairy Crisis Update - 6th of July 2012

An article from the FWi website records that the Farm Minister Jim Paice MP said that he was a proposed to get processors and the industry to find a future for the dairy industry. During Defra Parliamentary question time,  Mr. Paice MP said "I am concerned, but ministers can't set prices" and continued to say that Defra would hold "a consultation on a compulsory dairy package put forward by the European Union".

Mr. Paice MP said that the "Processors also needed to target growing dairy markets in countries like China so they could do more to support British producers and avoid having to make price cuts".

It is stated by FWi that the latest cuts to the dairy industry would slash as much as £50,000 off the average dairy farm income.

Comments from Dairy Farmers can be seen here.

A video of the meeting at Staffordshire Show Ground and comments from Dairy Farmers can be seen here:

I received a text from the NFU, it reads "Important message to NFU members: I want to give you the heads up that next Wednesday the NFU is holding a large meeting in London to highlight the devastation dairy farmers face due to the recent and proposed price cuts. I hope many farmers in more fortunate sectors than dairy will show support. Please contact your regional office for details on how you could help with support on the day. Many thanks, Peter Kendall"

A link to the regional office for the NFU can be found here. The Farmers Guardian reports that the event is, indeed, taking place on Wednesday with  "exact timing and venue are yet to be finalised. 
Farmers will be invited to turn up in large numbers to demonstrate to politicians, the food chain and the wider public the strength of feeling over the price cuts imposed in the past week by the major UK milk buyers". The article continues to report that the "NFU president  Peter Kendall said the union was planning to stage a ‘very large gathering’ in London next week to raise the profile of the crisis.
“I have never known in all my time in the NFU such strength of feeling and anger among our members,”".


More information to come when it is published and keep an eye on the Farmers Guardian, the Farmers Weekly, the NFU and Ian Potter Associates. There is also a new Facebook page that has arisen in the last day.

Farming in the media - part three

In the third part of our "Farming in the media" series, we examine the concept of viral videos to further highlight the rigours of farming.

The concept of a viral video became named in 2009, although these forms of videos that were shared between friends and work colleagues started in around 1995, do you remember the Dancing Baby videos? The idea of the video is to gain an immediate hit with the viewer and less focus on the advertiser, so that the video gets passed like a 'virus'.

In 2009, Samsung, launched their range of smart LED technology with a YouTube clip of sheep on a Welsh hillside creating assorted works of art. The low tech filming worked with the audience and the video gained an audience of 4 million just after one week. It had risen to over 200,000 views. With three or four videos of varying lengths, one version of Samsung's glowing sheep can be viewed below:

 In 2011, the producers of Yeo Valley produced an advert that spanned both the viral video community and entered into the charts on iTunes, a music site from Apple computers. The ad agency BBH (Bartle Bogel and Hegarty) released the advert within an advert break of the X-Factor. The advert included young people of the X-Factor demographic, singing (also a part of the X-Factor show) as well as being shot on location in Somerset whilst including agricultural, conservation and environmental keywords were inserted within the rap.

The Yeo Valley viral video, under the guidance of BBH, goes further as it links further sites of social networking as the blog from Tamsin Fox Davies explains. The initial video had the ingredients of the viral video, as listed by Tamsin Fox Davies, being catchy, cool, funny, good production values, informative, relevant and targeted to the audience. It wants you to find out more and it even shows you where to get it. So how did the Yeo Valley extend its social network experience, I urge you to the look at the aforementioned blog, but in summary - BBH created a YouTube spoof (entitled Yeo Tube) site with more Yeo Valley videos, a Facebook page with a singing competition (extending the X-Factor targeting), a Twitter account, an iTunes download of the original song and finally an official website.

The blog by Real Business gets down to the brass tacks of the campaign by asking what was the return on the investment of the advert. The details, below were written on the 31st of March 2011, showed that "brand awareness had increased by 71%" and approximately "half a million more households in the UK brought our products in the 12 weeks to December 2010" and Yeo Valley's  retail value increased by "14.9% year on year outperforming the rest of the yoghurt market by more than 2.5 times". 

So should advertisers create more country-friendly to create a better informed idea of what the countryside is and does? Do these two examples of viral videos that advertise both food and non food products show a good view of the country? Do you know of any similar campaigns that farming and rural enterprises have used social networks in their advertising campaigns? I await your thoughts...

A Horn of Plenty

Ceres, the Roman Goddess of Mother Earth and the protectoress of agriculture, is often portrayed with a horn taken from a ram that is filled with flowers and fruits. It has been described as a horn from the head of a goat from which Jupiter was suckled when nursed by Amalthaea, the wife of King Ammon. This description was reworded from The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which was put together by the Reverend E. Cobham Brewer.

Therefore this post, to those that read this, will be a collection of agricultural nuggets taken from a variety of sources. I hope that they help to remind you of agricultural traditions from your country and I would love to hear from you of these.

There is a nursery rhyme that talks of the Jolly Miller who lived on the River Dee. This was about a real life mill at Chester from the 11th century, who was the envy of Henry the Eighth due to his vast independence and wealth. The mill was burnt down in the late 1800s after the death of the Jolly Miller's last relation. (Mulherin, 1981)

The nursery rhyme of Baa, Baa, Black Sheep has been known for 200 years and even Rudyard Kipling, the Sussex author, used it in his book of the same title (Mulherin, 1981). Maybe it has something to do with a bag of wool going to the master and the master could be the church or the landlord. Anyone know? The phrase "Black Sheep" are often used to describe workmen who will not join in with a strike, they are looked on with disgust by shepherds and are not as valuable as white ones (Brewer 1978).

The nursery rhyme of Oranges and Lemons may have something to do with the citrus fruits, but it also helps to describe the ringing peal of church bells. The first church is thought either to be the church of St. Clement's in Eastcheap, which was near to the wharves in East London where the citrus fruit was unloaded from the ships. It could also be a church that was designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the church of St. Clement Danes (Mulherin, 1981).

There are many nursery rhymes and allegorical tales that include farmyard animals. For example, the aforementioned "Baa, Baa, Black Sheep", as well as these ones including "Mary had a little lamb", "This little pig went to market" and hopefully they help to explain animal differentiation for young children. The last rhyme describes one pig who eats roasts beef. There are also a lot of rhymes that describe people with food, Little Tommy Tucker sings for his supper, Jack Sprat with his inability to eat fat and old Simple Simon who never got to eat a pie. Naturally, there are rhymes that combine both food and animals, one example being a of a fox who took a grey goose back to his family in the den. (Mulherin 1981)

We are all in the process of making food or drink for the masses and it is not that amazing that our livelihood permeates both through culture and history. So, are there any of you reading this who know of similar nursery rhymes or allegorical tales that detail our agricultural inheritance? I would love to hear from you. Meanwhile next week, I shall endeavour to translate one of the previous blog posts into a few European languages.

The two books used in this blog post are Brewer, E. C. (1978) The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" Avenel Publishing and originally written in 1870.

Mulherin, J. (1981) Popular Nursery Rhymes - Mother Goose Rhymes with Explanations and Illustrations Granada Publishing

It was interesting to note that in The Telegraph (22nd of August 2011) that "Farmers are using social media to promote business and boost profits." An online survey by JCB Workwear found that 53% of an interviewed 1,000 people used sites like Twitter and Facebook to find up to date information and sharing information. Have you recently converted to social media on the Internet to help your business?