Nuffield #1: Around the World in 80 Zooms
It is now April, six months from the letter which told me that I was a Nuffield Scholar, and physically I haven’t taken a step off the farm in Ceredigion. Digitally however I have been around the world, speaking to farmers, scientists, students, and industry professionals from New Zealand to Canada. In the COVID world, travelling is done online.
Our interactions as Scholars have all been via Zoom; both formal introductory sessions and guest speakers, and informal catch ups where I’ve moved on and off screen while cooking supper. The Pre- Contemporary Scholars Conference, which would have taken place in Norfolk, instead involved mornings spent in front of my laptop, dressed smartly from the waist up, with the screen not picking up the calf milk stained Jack Wills tracksuit bottoms and fluffy socks hidden under the table.
In lieu of meeting international scholars (Nuffield operates in several other countries globally) we had a session on communication styles, and different countries have organised farmer speakers to showcase innovation. The Dutch put on a great week of virtual farm tours and speakers, covering everything from integrated pig and arable farming to producing food with chefs in mind and adding value to milk.
The best thing that came of the international network though has been being set up with another Scholar to work alongside. Chosen by the committee for complementary topics, my Nuffield pairing is with an Australian who works in herd health (is a vet), lives and works on a dairy farm, is pursuing a postgraduate qualification, and loves books and vintage shopping. She also writes a regular column in a dairy magazine. Much as I enjoy this serendipity, it is quite stressful to see the Australian Scholars moving with ease around their country- and attending weddings and vineyard tours to boot.
A few years ago a different Australian Scholar completed a Nuffield Scholarship vary similar to mine, so I arranged to speak to her about her studies and learnings. Her report highlighted that she actually visited several businesses that I had lined up to speak to, but she had also been to a couple of countries on my list and then not found that much to write about.
What was most interesting is that she had followed a path which I am already finding myself travelling down; starting by looking at bull calf options, but becoming increasingly focussed on cow-calf contact. While I’m still hoping to get some answers on the bull calf front (more below), the cow-calf contact discussion is really interesting and I think pressing. Dairy farming can’t simply eradicate euthanasia and shrug its shoulders that all is well- we also need to look at the feasibility of cow-calf farms.
Following that meeting I spoke to scientists in Germany and Canada, which has led to me being invited to join a monthly meeting with European research students looking at cow-calf contact, and to interviewing some Canadian farmers.
Both of the farmers were in British Columbia and fairly normal farmers- neither had cow calf systems and both manage family farms. I did some research on Canadian farming beforehand (for those who don’t know, Canada has a quota system on milk and all farms sell to one organisation, which then distributes milk. This means that milk price is high by international standards, milk profiles are level, and farms are generally small- the average herd size is around 90 cows, varying by region). I loved speaking to both farmers, who answered all of my questions with great patience, honesty, and intelligence, and asked their own about spring block calving in the UK.
Independently I made contact with a beef marketing group, and spoke to one of their staff about beef farming in Canada, and links between dairy and beef.
I am now very keen to visit Canada and learn more about their dairy-beef integration, as well as what they perceive to be their biggest welfare issues and challenges.
Earlier in the year I thought it would be a good idea to sign up to complete an accredited Nuffield, where I structure my report in a way which earns me course credits at IBERS to put towards a postgraduate certificate. The research methodologies training started in February, and I have found it very difficult to motivate myself to do the work.
Following online lectures is not hugely easy- especially on a subject which is a little dry. There is also a lot of content to get through, plus coursework, which has been a struggle alongside my full time job, calving, tutoring, writing, plate metering, and mobility scoring. I’m hoping that it will be worth it in the end…
One of the advantages of the programme has been that I have had access to university resources, such as software to carry out proper surveys. How I wish this sort of thing had been around when I did my undergraduate dissertation, which consisted of paper interviews with 200 dairy farmers!
For my study I have carried out a survey of 400 UK dairy farmers on dairy bull calf welfare, covering questions such as whether they have euthanised any healthy calves, their approach to sexed semen, colostrum policy, and what they perceive to be needed to comply with new Red Tractor assurance scheme rules on euthanasia. I am now in the middle of analysing the data, and hope to be able to share the results with industry soon.
When I posted about the survey online an old colleague who now works in New Zealand got in touch to arrange a call to discuss it. Based on that I have some leads for when I go to New Zealand (if that is ever allowed…).
With travel restrictions easing in the UK I am making tentative arrangements to visit cow-calf farms around the UK, and Nuffield have arranged a study trip to Northern Europe in the autumn. I hope to stay on after the organised tour and visit farms and researchers in the Netherlands, Germany, and possibly Scandinavia (if not another time).
Coming up we have a virtual tour of farming in Brazil organised by Nuffield International, and a planned face to face meeting in London. I am hoping to catch up with the IFAR Conference that looked at global approaches to racing welfare, and maybe plan to attend in person in 2022, to underpin the part of my project which seeks to work out if the dairy industry can learn anything from racing.
On the farm we are now in the 10th week of calving, with fewer than 20 cows left to calve. The cows are tail painted up for pre-mating checks, and we start breeding in a fortnight. I was due to complete my DIY AI certification in 2020, but due to COVID the training was cancelled. It now looks unlikely that I will have done it for breeding 2021, but I am hoping that I can at least be trained up this year.
Calving this year has been hard work for a number of reasons, and has given us a few things to reflect on for next season. At the beginning of the year I had anticipated that March and April would be busy - farm work, Nuffield properly starting, getting back to measuring grass, and potentially returning to face to face delivery with my full time job- but it has actually been far more than I had planned.
Nuffield by Zoom wasn’t what I expected when I applied last year, but it hasn’t been all bad. The embrace of digital technology means that people who wouldn’t have considered it a year ago are now fluent in video communications, and the surge in remote working seems to have fostered a collaborative approach which maybe wasn’t previously there. It’s given me an opportunity to synthesise what I learn and hop across continents on the contacts made from each call.
However, my past experience of travelling means that I am very aware that nothing beats actually visiting a farm, speaking in person, and taking in the surroundings. Right now I can’t think of anything better than a long stint on an Emirates flight with a backpack full of books, a wait in the perfumed luxury of Dubai airport, and picking up a rental car to drive out into the sweet, sweet red tracks of rural Australia.
Not to mention the new places and people I’m going to meet through this experience.
