Farm Of The Week: It pays to wear more than one hat

Have you heard the one about the NFU county chairman who is also an animal health officer?
David HamerDavid Hamer
David Hamer

A few years ago this kind of thing would probably been frowned on by his fellow farmers, but that’s how David Hamer, the new West Riding county chairman, manages to make things pay on his family’s hill farm at Rishworth, west of Halifax and close to the Yorkshire border.

David is just 32 years of age, one of the youngest NFU county chairmen around and is determined to continue farming whatever it takes.

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“I’m sure there are one or two even now who possibly believe that there are conflicts of interest between the two roles, but I don’t see it that way. It’s a part-time position that offers me an opportunity to add to my income. Our farm only runs to 115 acres, of which we rent 40, it’s in a less favoured area and we had to pull out of dairy farming six years ago.

“It’s very hard to make a living here for one family let alone potentially two as there’s my mum and dad, and my fiancée Adele.

“I took on the role because I also thought it would be a good way to learn about legislation and be involved with it.

“I had completed my degree at Harper Adams College and had been back around a year and a half when the job came up. What it has done for me in farming terms is that it has enabled me to be more knowledgeable about issues and more able to comment objectively rather than purely feeling as some farmers do that everything is railed against them. It also means that I know what I’m talking about with others.

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“The job isn’t animal welfare, it is animal health, which means I check movement and medicine records and see that paperwork is up to date. I fully understand the burden it is to keep all these records. But by far the biggest part of the job is walking around with the farmer on his farm.

“You can see what a farmer is like by the stock he keeps and how he keeps it. How people interact with their animals is the key and that’s what I look for. If people are doing their jobs correctly and 99 per cent of them are from what I can see then there is no problem and there is no need to be wary of me. In fact, I think it sometimes helps that I am a farmer too, because they then know that I go through the same things as they do back at home and I understand about farming.”

David’s role as an animal health officer brings him into contact with all manner of people. He goes to slaughterhouses, dog kennels, catteries, pet shops, zoos and anyone who wants to keep wild animals.

“We find that there are times when dangerous wild animals are being kept where they shouldn’t be at all. I had this one instance where I had to go to a house with the West Riding Police. The occupant had about a dozen venomous snakes in his attic in a back-to-back terrace. There were puff adders; a viper; and other snakes he was breeding that are known as 100 pacers because that’s as far as they reckon you will get once you’ve been bitten by one. That was scary, but it shows the variety of work and how interesting the job can be.”

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Given his role with Kirklees Council as animal health officer, David is used to filling in paperwork, so he handles most of that at Rishworth Hall Farm too, for the stores cattle and calves reared for dairy heifer replacements.

“I get lumbered with it but I also get very involved with the day-to-day operation. It’s extremely labour intensive here. There’s plenty of mucking out and feeding up.”

David sees his role with the NFU as being something of a grenade thrower, prompting discussion in meetings and making sure that his county is represented strongly.

“Frank Chislett, who was West Riding county chairman a few years ago and is still a council delegate, always used to do that. You’ve got to get the voice of the West Riding across and there are questions that need to be asked.

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“At the moment there is Horsegate but there are many others and the West Riding covers such a big area.

“Arable areas around Doncaster and Selby have suffered from terrible flooding. The farmers there were struggling to get crops in the ground at the back end of last year and are watching out for emergence rates and quality now.

“Our farm is between 690 feet and 1115 ft above sea level. We run from quality grassland to marginal. Another of the potential problems for farmers in this area at the moment is the risk of reclassification of what is LFA land.

“Because of the urban mix some of the land nearer to towns such as Huddersfield and Halifax might fall out of LFA status and that could have a considerable impact. We need to keep a watchful eye on this and act before decisions are made.

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“There is also the threat of the Schmallenberg virus. That’s a big concern nationally but the seriousness is as yet unknown in our area as we have later lambing flocks. We will only know the true state of the problem for around here in April.”

David’s first grenade was to farming minister Owen Patterson.

“I asked him whether as a young person wanting to make my way in agriculture I should get used to the UK government selling us down the river, and whether I should move to France. Of course, he didn’t answer directly apart from to tell the conference about some of the work he was doing on CAP reforms and that didn’t sound too clever to me. England looks as though it could be in a worse state than the rest of Great Britain, let alone Europe.”

Although David is busy wearing three hats – farmer, NFU county chairman and animal health officer – he is in no doubt as to what he would love to do in the long term.

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“I miss milking so much. It was a very hard decision to leave dairy farming in 2007. It felt like the world had ended. You get used to it and it gets ingrained into you. We had 45 milkers, but it just wasn’t big enough. I’d still like to find a way back to doing it though.”

Today Rishworth Hall Farm has around 100 head of cattle. There are 20 store cattle with the remainder being dairy heifer replacements reared under the Ryburn River prefix using sexed semen.

The family also has a milk round in Rishworth and Ripponden that Christine, David’s mum, runs, buying in milk from local producer-processor John Haigh.

The Hamers have been in the village of Rishworth since the 1700s. His grandfather Raymond bought the farm in the 1950s and David fully intends to carry on after his father, also David.

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