Comment – Fires and farming

Has anyone spotted the fires on the North Yorks Moors which have been burning for a couple of weeks now? If you haven’t, here’s a quick update, several fires have spread over about 25 square kilometres during the last fortnight or so, due to a combination of low rainfall, excessive fire burden (and thats a conversation for another day) and high seasonal temperatures.

Its worth noting that the farming community has been 100% behind the fire service throughout with farmers and contractors travelling miles across county borders with tractors and tankers (for days on end) and pumping water, tanking it and spreading it, or feeding the fire service hoses to damp down the fires and prevent re-ignition.

Anecdotally a local MP was spotted taking photographs of tractors and tankers taking water from a harbour and complaining about a lack of abstraction licences. Coincidentally as regional fire crews arrived on the scene requests for risk assessments and queries about red diesel use started to emerge.

All of these points ‘may’ be valid, but  the fires scale and intensity was beyond the available fire crews capacity (and I hasten to add, this is not a criticism, in the slightest, of the emergency services) , all the available help was needed. No amount of local politicians (unless they have a big tanker and a 300hp tractor) can provide water on demand. My point is, that in the time of need, farmers stepped up, and as of tonight are still stepping up. Although it’s now raining hard.

We haven’t yet got to the hand wringing about the loss of ‘habitat’ after the fire, but perhaps we should all thank God no-one was killed by the flames and property was saved.

I hope clear examples of  farming stepping up,  like this, don’t go unnoticed, and that agriculture, in the widest possible sense is seen as a public ‘vital’ not just a public good?

Right, off to cook my tea, which includes Cumbrian spuds, carrots and cabbage.

Have a good week.

Andy

PS, if you feel the need to get hot under the collar about the state of upland grazing and fire burden, have a read of this from the Ulster Farmers Union.