Farmer Focus: Homework that only realists should attempt
Jon Pawsey © Phil Weedon The weather eventually played ball at Shimpling Park Farm at the end of May, when we received an inch of rain, and then in the first week of June, with a further inch.
I am sure the dry spring will have an effect on our yields. However, fields are looking as weed-free as we usually get due to all the hoeing we have been able to do, and our crops are currently free of disease.
I am hoping that two rights will be able to right a wrong and we will not see too much of a yield loss.
See also: Trial leads to shift in blackgrass strategy on Oxfordshire farm
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Winter crops came in ear a couple of weeks early, which suggests a late July harvest.
Generally, they are shorter than usual which is a plus side for our taller heritage wheats as they will hopefully now stand for the combine.
Spring crops are more forward for the time of year. They have also put on some height, which makes them more satisfying to look at.
As well as the business of growing crops, we all have some homework to do that has to be handed in by Friday 11 July.
Farmer and former NFU champion Baroness Minette Batters has been tasked by Defra minister Steve Reed to look into the profitability of farming – something I have been grappling with for 40 harvests.
Minette needs us to help her with the “barriers and opportunities relating to the profitability of the sector” and, crucially, for us to offer solutions to those barriers.
In her letter to all farmers and growers in England, she has asked us to do some “blue-sky thinking” and to “think out of the box”, reminding us that our solutions must be “delivered in a world that we live in, not the world we would like to live in”.
We need to focus on what we are likely to get rather what we want. It’s homework that only realists should attempt. Good luck.
