Farmer Focus: I’ve never had less confidence in farm’s future

Wow, the daily episodes of Celebrity President USA sure are packing several plot twists into each day.

We seem to live in a time in which international diplomacy is conducted with caps lock on Truth Social.

I may jest, but in reality I’m sure I’m not alone in being very concerned as to how the world has changed in the past weeks.

See also: Farmer Focus: Sunshine, fert spreading and photosynthesis

About the author

David Clark

Farmer Focus writer

David Clark runs a 463ha fully irrigated mixed farm with his wife Jayne at Valetta, on the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand’s south island. He grows 400ha of cereals, pulses, forage and vegetable seed crops, runs 1,000 Romney breeding ewes and finishes 8,000 lambs annually.

Read more articles by David Clark

On farm, the weather for harvest could only be described as mongrel.

Very little sunshine, high humidity and no wind has reduced yields of flowering crops and made harvest difficult, particularly trying to get straw dry to bale, which is going to result in an acute shortage of straw for winter.

Many of us are questioning the long-term viability of arable in Canterbury, especially small seeds production as costs exceed crop returns.

There is significant land use change coming to Canterbury in the next two years.

I would have to admit that I have never had less confidence in the sustainability of our farming business in any time of my career, and I don’t think I am the only one having such thoughts.

Diesel has more than doubled in four weeks, the first rounds of fertiliser price rises have been notified, with many more to follow.

Every day I get an email from a supplier increasing prices or their fuel adjustment factor (FAF).

So, I’m curious, why do those cost increases stop with me as the grower of food?

Why is it that I cannot unilaterally impose a FAF on the wheat going to the mill, or the seed going to the multinational trader?    

When we look to the spring, what is fertiliser going to cost and will it be available? At what point will it be uneconomic to apply nitrogen to a crop?

What will that do to yield and what will the response be from the merchant or miller relying on the produce? Does the consumer have any understanding of what is coming at them?

All of this madness is going to stop our economies in their tracks. We can only hope that sanity prevails soon.