OILSEED rape, once dubbed the yellow peril
of the countryside and judged responsible for a range of
respiratory problems in the human population, is set to
be the crop of tomorrow - provided farmers are given suitable
incentives - as the price of a barrel of crude oil remains
stubbornly close to $80.
For the past ten years farmers
throughout the European Union have been obliged to have
a minimum of 10 per cent of their arable land in set aside.
That meant in blunt terms that they were paid for growing
nothing. The rationale behind this regime was that Europe
and the rest of the world was awash with surplus grain
and oilseeds for which there was no market.
That has now
all changed with world stocks of grain, soya and oilseeds
at their lowest for more than 30 years. Arable farmers
have enjoyed their most profitable harvest for at least
a decade. Set-aside has now been consigned to history,
with oilseed rape prices having virtually doubled to almost £246 per tonne in Scotland. The same holds
true for wheat, with prices now close to £200 per
tonne.
The real driver is the fear in the US of being left
short of oil from the Middle East: huge quantities of grain
and soya are being diverted to the production of ethanol
for fuel, with new plants being brought on stream almost
on a monthly basis.
A similar trend has been evident in
Germany and, to a lesser extent, in France. In Germany
there are now 3,500 plants of varying sizes, many of them
on farms, producing biofuels - and that number is forecast
to grow by at least 500 during the next year.
In the UK
as a whole only 3 per cent of electricity is produced by
renewable sources, but the figure is somewhat higher in
Scotland, with its growing number of wind farms.
The UK
government is falling far behind the rest of the EU in
encouraging the cultivation of arable crops for energy.
John Picken, the chair of NFU Scotland's combinable crops
committee, said: "The current rebates on biofuels at around
20p per litre is not enough to make the business economic,
especially with a huge international demand for all crops
for human consumption. The UK government will have to realise
that the rebate will have to be closer to 40p per litre
to make it worthwhile for both farmers and processors."
The
EU policy on renewable energy crops is still confused in
that if the total area exceeds two million hectares, Brussels
will cap the level of support payable to farmers.
David
Richardson, a highly respected industry commentator of
long-standing who farms in Norfolk, in his regular column
for Farmers Weekly caught the current mood when he wrote: "If
the government is serious about renewable energy it must
give it full encouragement and make it attractive. Current
measures are half-hearted and ineffective." |
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