The 45th President of the United States of America, one Donald Trump, has in the past claimed that climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to undermine American business.

Just to underline this, he has put one of America’s most prominent climate sceptics in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency.

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Now it struck me that with the colder weather we have had recently, maybe he had a point. So rather than doing a Trump and making it up as I go along, I decided to do some research.

Checking the facts

There is some great information on the Met Office website looking at historical data. I looked up UK rainfall, temperature and sunshine in graphical form back as far as 1910.

For all three, up until the mid-Seventies, the curves are fairly flat. However, from 1975 onwards they all show a much steeper rise and average annual temperature, for example, has risen by over half a degree since the Seventies.

To be fair, there are some huge annual variations in rainfall, temperature and sunshine, but there is no denying the steady increase.

What does this all mean, apart from proving Mr Trump maybe needs to pause and check his facts before he presses the send button on his Twitter account?

For us as UK farmers, it means the world is becoming a more volatile place to grow crops and output will be much less predictable, so maybe an opportune moment for us to push the necessity for a vibrant agricultural industry in the UK.

You don’t need to look far to see what can occur, just think salad crops and Spain. Need I say more?

Drills at the ready

By the time you read this, hopefully Ian, Ken and I will have our green stallions lined up on the yard and will be ready to head out into the fields to begin the hectic spring work load.

With spring cereals, beans and maize to sow, as well as spraying and fertiliser applications to be made it is always a busy period.

For some strange reason I always look forward to it, despite never having enough hours in the day.

Simon Beddows manages 1,000ha of arable land at Dunsden Green, south Oxfordshire. Cropping is cereals, oilseed rape, beans and forage maize.