David's Digest

I once read a book about tulip bulbs in Holland. A few hundred years ago, when tulips first became the symbol of the Dutch nation and new varieties and colours were at a premuim, there was a run on the price of bulbs. Small quantities of special types became more and more valuable, finally changing hands at exorbitant prices equivalent to the value of a big house. Tulips became currency and the hysteria spread - until, of course, the speculators came to their senses and the market collapsed.

I was reminded of this when I read the weekly market report received today from the farmer owned merchant, Grainfarmers. "Another amazing week in the wheat markets around the world -or should we say the USA," the report began. And it went on to describe how last week, in Minneapolis, after daily exchange limits were removed, the price of wheat went up more than £100/metric tonne in one day. It came down by a bigger sum by the end of the week but not before one US merchant, who employed a rougue trader, had lost $140m.

At the same time, here in the UK, prices moved up by a more modest £12/mt. Even so it seems to me we are witnessing a certain amount of madness in grain markets that is sentiment (ie panic) led rather than by any real evidence of a huge potential shortfall to justify such volatility.

If you got in with a secure sale on the day, fully back to back with reliable traders, good luck to you. But for most people daily price movements on a scale previously only seen through an entire year and who did not catch the moment, such changes are unsettling and dangerous. Because we can so easily come to believe this activity on financial markets is the real world whereas for the majority it is fantasy - like those tulip bulbs.

When I was a boy "March dust was worth a guinea an ounce". In other words dry land allowed early drilling of spring crops and maximum growing time. But when I was walking behind a sugar beet drill this morning, the earliest we have ever started drilling them, I was more concerned about whether there was enough moisture in the topsoil to germinate the seeds.

OK, there will probably be rain at the weekend and my worries for that particular field will be over. But will there be enough to germinate later drillings? Or are we in for a repeat of last year when only the first ones grew at the right time with the rest waiting for rain that didn't come until June?

I know I am trying to farm this year on the basis of last years weather and that is always a risky thing to do. After all, the ability to get onto land this early should be a good thing according to ancient lore as stated above. But the climate is different these days and maybe a different pattern is establishing itself. We've had a very dry February - a month that usually "fills dykes" and who knows what the rest of March and April will bring?

In any event I think we will push on with beet drilling as fast as possible just in case its like last year. And having said that, if past experience of predicting the weather is any guide, it will probably now rain for the next six weeks. That is what is called "Sod's Law".

Once again I must apologise for my absence from this medium for the last couple of weeks. I've been away in Spain leading a party of Farmers Weekly readers on a study tour of agriculture and horticulture. It's well over twenty years since I travelled through some of the same areas. Last time was as the country was joining the European Union in 1984 and both the national economy and the farming are noticeably more prosperous. EU membership has done Spain no harm at all.

But if my recent experience is any guide internet technology has not kept pace. We stayed in four different 4star hotels across the south of Spain from Murcia to Seville and I was unsuccessful at plugging into FWi in all of them. I know I'm not the sharpest tack in the box when it comes to computers but at one stage had three hotel technicians around me trying to get me hooked up and they failed. They eventually shrugged their shoulders in the characteristic way that Spaniards do and said "Sorry, we 'ave a problem with the system. Maybe it will work tomorrow or the next day". So, I lugged my laptop all round Spain and still couldn't contribute a blog or two. But I did try.

I'll write more detail on what we saw in FW but the lasting impression I gained was that Spain has used its free sunlight to develop and expand the production of fruit and vegetable crops that either can't be produced in northern Europe or cost much more in energy terms to do so. As in the UK they are employing huge numbers of immigrants, from Morocco as well as Poland, Romania and so on, to act as labourers.

Having spent the last ten days basking in bright sunshine and temperatures well into the 20'sC as I travelled around Spain looking at farming, the snow and frost that have covered Norfolk for the last few days was something of a shock to the system.

In Spain the autumn sown bearded wheat was already coming into ear and sugar beet leaves were meeting across the rows as we hope they do in late June in this country. Back home, I had hoped all our sugar beet would have been drilled by the time I returned but not a wheel has turned.

To be honest sugar beet seeds, which like warmth to encourage them to germinate, would not have enjoyed current conditions and the 40% of the UK's national crop that was drilled before the weather turned nasty won't have developed much even though they were drilled earlier than normal. The same is almost as true of spring barley, although both crops should grow away once we get a bit of sun.

Is this global warming or just climate confusion? After a balmy winter we should have been able to walk around in shirtsleeves by now. Someone up there has got his seasons mixed up.