Birds and farms give in to beet surrender

Gone is the characteristic smell which wafted over the city during the processing season and gone are more than 100 jobs. Also gone are many of the fields of sugar beet which were used as important break crops by farmers in Yorkshire.

The sugar beet industry took a hit when the UK was forced to curb subsidies. Countries making sugar from cane complained the European Union was dumping its subsidised surplus sugar on the world market and reducing the price.

The York factory got the chop with disastrous consequences. According to James Copeland, the food and farming advisor for the National Farmers' Union in Yorkshire, just under 1,000 farmers stopped growing sugar beet in the York area.

Some farmers in the south of the region hoped to switch to the Newark sugar factory when York closed. Others were told they would have to transport it to Wissington in Cambridgeshire, much further away. Sugar Beet is expensive to move and only the first 50 miles of transport costs are supported by the customer, British Sugar.

David Wilmot-Smith was one of those faced with paying to move his crop from his farm at Bubwith to the plant near Kings Lynn, or grow something else. He chose the latter option.

He said: "I was only being paid the allowance for transport for 50 miles and if you start transporting stuff 150 miles it becomes uneconomic."

He grew about 400 tonnes on 20 acres and says it was an excellent break-crop because it was so totally and utterly different it broke the cycle of disease without chemicals.

In the shake-out, none of the remaining growers actually needed to travel to Wissington. Newark was able to cope with those who kept going after York closed.

Like many farmers, Mr Wilmot-Smith turned to oil seed rape as an alternative. He says it is OK, but sugar beet's cropping and planting times suited his farm's calendar better. He reckons the birds on the farm thrived better too, a feeling echoed by conservationists who say oilseed rape is not such good news for the birds.

Farmers left cereal fields unploughed after the harvest, before the beet was planted in the spring, and the stubble was a source of seeds and insects, says Chris Tomson the regional agricultural adviser for the RSPB.

"The other great thing about sugar beet is that it is spring sown, so therefore if farmers get it in early enough it can coincide with lapwings looking for somewhere to start nesting," he said.

Mr Tomson says that although no formal studies have been carried out yet, farmers believe the demise of sugar beet has cut lapwing numbers.

And it's not just lapwings who are losing the benefit . "Other birds use it as well. I've seen yellow wagtails in sugar beet, they're in the crop looking for insects. Skylarks like it too," he says. Further south, around The Humber and into Lincolnshire and East Anglia, the crop is also very important for pink-footed geese.

David Wilmot-Smith is one of those farmers who has noticed a change in the birds on his farm, but because his land is on the site of a former airfield he has a lot of scrub where birds can hide.

He says that the loss of sugar beet has mainly hit partridges which he puts down for small-scale shooting. "You walk into one field and all the partridge leave at the other end. You used to be able to walk through (sugar beet) and they'd get up," he said

Farmers in North Yorkshire who have stuck with sugar beet included Chris Wilson and his his son Bruce who farm at Slingsby. They still grow 40 acres but Bruce Wilson says it's only their own haulage business that makes the crop viable.

"We still had the sugar beet cleaner, we still had the forklift, we've got the wagons and everything. It's still a cost growing it, but we aren't paying the hauliers' profits, just our own running costs. It's a lot better and easier to grow than oilseed rape. My brother calls oilseed rape 'the silly crop' because all you seem to do is feed pigeons

or slugs."

Other farmers have turned to growing fodder beet for animal feed. "The cultivation is the same," says Chris Tomson from the RSPB. "If anything, they perhaps use fewer herbicides than you would in a commercial crop of sugar beet, so it's just as good for birds."

James Copeland, from the NFU, says that this transition to growing feed for livestock is a natural choice and hopes that farmers will continue to grow sugar beet. As far as bird lovers are concerned, the more the better.

A spokesman for British Sugar said the crop does have a future in the county. "At the moment there are 299 growers left in the area. They represent, for British Sugar, just over seven per cent of our grower-suppliers. It's still a significant number as far as we're concerned.

"There is certainly sugar beet production which is profitable in Yorkshire."