I often start by talking about the weather, so here goes: it’s very dry. That’s enough said on that. I’ll now move on to commodity prices.

Well, prices are pretty poor and currently below the cost of production and sustainability, so I’ll move on again.

Now, let’s talk about Defra. Where do you begin? Agricultural support seems to be slipping away rapidly.

See also: Cereals 2025: More farmers wanted to help in major pulse project

About the author

Keith Challen

Arable Farmer Focus writer

Keith Challen manages 1,200ha of heavy clay soils in the Vale of Belvoir, Leicestershire, for Belvoir Farming Company. Cropping includes wheat, oilseed rape and elderflowers. The farm is also home to the Belvoir Fruit Farms drinks business.

Read more articles by Keith Challen

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of biodiversity and habitat creation and I firmly believe they go hand-in-hand with modern farming and food production techniques, if adopted correctly.

However, I don’t believe that one should be at the cost of the other.

Food security and production should come first, but if we carry on as we are, there won’t be any food production, just fields of solar panels and government schemes.

To be brutally honest, if someone had offered me my current state of crops back in December, I would have taken it without hesitation.

Back then, everything was so waterlogged, it was hard to imagine we would even have a harvest. Yes, we’ve got some blackgrass in places and a few thinner bits, but 90% is looking reasonably good.

The Champion feed wheat has some monster ears on it and the Skyfall milling wheat is getting more than average amounts of ambient light, so there’s potential for quality.

Although I’m not predicting a bumper harvest, it may not be a disaster either.

The elder harvest is about all done, with good results. Flowers on the whole are smaller than average, but there have been plenty of them.

The good weather has encouraged picker numbers and the quality of flowers has been generally good. I find this is often a marker for the cereal harvest to come.

As I write this, my team are busy preparing for a couple of my favourite days of the year.

As a Warburton’s wheat grower, we host two primary school visits where we show children how wheat becomes flour and then bread, and help educate them just how important agriculture really is.