Looking forward to the silly season

August is often called the silly season because news slows to a trickle – most people are on holiday and presumably too busy drinking rosé and eating burnt sausages to bother making news. This year, I can’t wait for the silly season, with all the events happening. It seems that 24/7 news is making us all almost hyper aware of the bad things that occur daily globally.

So I was quite relieved to hear an interview with the Queen’s swan marker on the radio this morning. Every year, there is something known as the Royal Swan Upping, where swans on the Thames are picked up, weighed, tagged and examined for injuries. (www.royal.uk/swan-upping). This is a process that has gone on for hundreds of years, and it is nice to know some things don’t change, even though the British monarch no longer eats the swans. So, good news for the birds – they get a health check and not eaten.

This week, we also saw good news from Germany’s Institute of Food Economics in Kiel, which has seen an upward tick in milk, cheese and butter. Optimism is returning to the market and spot prices are increasing.

Europe-wide, Ireland has seen an almost 10% increase in cow numbers, while overall the number of cows remains stable. In the UK, we saw farmer numbers drop last year (more than 1,000 since 2013), but cow numbers increase, according to AHDB. Milk production was also up in the UK in 2015/16, with 3% improvement in total milk production, to 15,078 million litres, from an average UK dairy herd size of 1.9 million cows, which is up 2.1% on the previous year.

So, there is some upward movements in milk prices, and recovery seen in dairy. What farmers are left in the UK are using their acumen and making the most of what they have, to ensure viability. It is something to focus on in our not-so-silly times.