As a Westcountry beef producer and Aberdeen-Angus breeder as well as the NFU national livestock chairman for England and Wales, I see a bright future for beef producers under the CAP reforms. However we must produce what the market wants.

We are looking at a new dawn of British agriculture but I'm seriously worried that we as farmers - especially livestock breeders - and this government, have taken our eye of the ball in the last few years. We seem to have moved away from our core industry - FARMING! Luckily, within my own business, we have endeavoured to stay in touch with our roots. Far too many people have been forced into diversification simply to keep the farm afloat. Second jobs have been taken, wives work off the farm, and bed and breakfast accommodation signs are going up everywhere. This is all well and good if you are coming into agriculture but once you have a substantial farming business there should be no need to take on all these off-farm commitments. When the bulk of your time is spent off the farm, then I would suggest you are not farming anymore. That is when we come down to the good-lifers (no insult intended), who are just dabbling in farming.

This is where I give a clear warning. Within our suckler cow herd, we run up to 315 cows at any one time and we have a small nucleus of pedigree Canadian-type Aberdeen-Angus cows. We use mainly Aberdeen-Angus bulls throughout our herd now and have six Aberdeen-Angus stock bulls and two Simmental. Two of the Aberdeen-Angus are from the Nightingale herd and the others are from our own breeding. Our main income is from the commercial herd of Simmental x Aberdeen-Angus cows. The Aberdeen-Angus is again becoming a very popular breed. However too many people are keeping their bulls entire and expecting them all to go for breeding stock and likewise with the heifers. We have got to be brave and positive and retain only the very best for breeding pedigree stock. Out of 20 cows, we may pick only one or two bull calves for breeding. The rest go for bull beef or are steered for West Country Beef. I am worried that far too many people are failing to keep their eye on quality and this is going to become more and more evident as the export trade becomes more important to us - especially with new CAP reforms looming. With hopefully all the problems of BSE behind us, quality breeding stock will always have a market. We will damage the value of quality stock if we assume everything is fit for breeding.