Farmer Focus: Farmers at top of their game at NFU conference

February was a varied month, with everything from fine weather for field work to storm Eunice wrecking barns.

The month was rounded off by a visit to Birmingham for the NFU conference. The conference was a great event and had a good feel of the industry coming together.

I went to the conference hoping to get a clearer understanding of what was to be expected from the future for farming. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, I have no clearer idea.

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About the author

Charlie Cheyney

Arable Farmer Focus writer Charlie Cheyney farms more than 480ha land in Hampshire in partnership with his father. They run a mixed arable and 450-cow dairy enterprise, growing cereal and forage crops on varying soils, from chalk to heavy clay.

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Government policy seems to have little direction and all I did determine was that farming was a long way down the list. It’s not surprising when rewilding and trade deals are far better vote winners.

What I did see were some farmers at the top of their game, all of them business focused and forward thinking.

I think the lesson learned was that too much worrying about the things you can’t control and not enough focus on the things we can.

So, my aim is to simply try to get the basics right and go from there and let the people with far more knowledge and experience worry about the rest.

The biggest threats going into the conference were trade deals and future farm environmental policy, but this was all dwarfed by the news coming from Ukraine, which really puts these problems into perspective.

Looking forward to the coming season, crops are looking well with wheats in good condition.

We are just waiting on a window to drill the spring barley after holding off earlier in February, which I’m hoping won’t prove a poor decision.

I’m aiming to apply slurry as a seed-bed fertiliser to be topped up with nitrogen. However, getting ground conditions right for this is tricky and means holding my nerve when the right weather window opens.

On the dairy side, we were able to get some cows out to grass in mid-February, which is our earliest ever start.

Not to mention that this will hopefully make a small dent in the feed bill that seems to be constantly on the rise.