Farmer Focus: Jeremy Clarkson – an asset to UK agriculture

I’ve recently been watching the new season of Clarkson’s Farm, as I’m sure many other readers have. Like him or loathe him, it’s impossible to deny that Jeremy Clarkson is doing a great service for UK agriculture.

Unless I’m mistaken, which I quite often am, I can’t think of anyone else with such a high profile and such a huge following who has championed farming in the way he is doing so.

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About the author

Billy Lewis

Billy Lewis farms 140ha in North Herefordshire in partnership with his parents. They keep Hereford cattle, sheep and grow combinable crops. He also contract farms an additional 110ha. Cropping includes wheat, oats and spring beans.

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Around 4.5m households tune in to watch his farming endeavours.

The best part is that the show isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The very real financial and mental pressures involved in the industry are clearly conveyed to the viewers.

In my opinion, he has become a great asset to UK agriculture, and one that we should all be grateful for.

If our cereals yield anything like our first cut silage did, we could be set to have a very enjoyable harvest ahead of us.

We’ve been extremely fortunate to have caught exactly the right weather at every stage through the spring and into early summer.

Things just haven’t stopped growing, in conditions that have been the complete polar opposite of last year.

Hopefully, this run of year-on-year contrasting weather conditions will come to an end now. Otherwise, we will be in for a washout in August.

Expensive drying costs are the last thing any cereal grower needs this harvest.

With the exception of some biostimulants and nutrition still to go on the spring beans, the gate is now closed on all the other crops until the combine is in the field.

This comes as a relief, as our fungicide programme has needed to be far more robust than in previous years due to unrelenting yellow rust pressure.

It irks me slightly because we have been making such good progress in reducing our fungicide use.

What has made decision-making a bit easier is the potential the crops hold this year.

With margins so tight, it would be reckless to take unnecessary risks and jeopardise what might be a very good harvest.