FARMER FOCUS: Lessons learned from 2013

With just one more Farmers Weekly to go before Christmas I am sure the time is right to wish you all a very happy Christmas and a fantastic year in 2014.

Well that’s the end of 2013, how do you review such a year? Should you even bother to look back? Well I suppose that to look forward we must always have an eye on the past to benefit from our experiences.

My highlights must include the so-called spring, when everything struggled to get going, what with the cold then the wind blowing, it was far from ideal, then moving through into a harvest which, for the first time ever resulted in all the wheat being harvested and in the store before we even started the OSR!

We won’t even mention the massive drop in cereal and OSR prices, because other than seizing every opportunity when it arises, as suggested in my February piece, I don’t know what we can learn from the market. Then I must mention the root crops, which as a result of their very steady start, as well as some intense heat in the summer, have been a challenge.

Lessons to be learned – be patient and wait for spring, no matter how late it comes. Then there has been the CAP reform and all of the issues that go with that. To be honest, I am starting to get a little fed up of trying to manage the long-term resource that is land with such short-term political interference. How can we look after an environment that has taken hundreds of years to form, with reform every very few years. How can we break free from negotiating with 20 odd trade partners to give our businesses and our landscape a viable future?

Well all that’s done for another year! Thanks to Santa for the early Christmas delivery of the present from the RPA.

Andrew Blenkiron manages the 4,400ha Euston Estate, south of Thetford. Principal farm enterprises are combinable and root crops, including sugar beet. In addition, the estate supports let land, sheep, outdoor pigs, poultry, suckler cows, horses and stewardship

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