Farmer Focus: The world just got a whole lot more unstable

The government doesn’t appear to care for primary industry in this country. Their preference seems to be outsourcing the problem overseas.

The trouble is, when there’s peril on the seas, as there currently is in the Strait of Hormuz – not having an ample amount of domestic production gets dicey.

I can only imagine that once we begin to see the trickle-down effect of the turmoil in the Middle East, food inflation in the supermarkets will go wild.

See also: Why arable farmers should target 5% soil organic matter

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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Of course, as farmers we are unlikely to see any financial benefit from this. Commodity prices seem largely unfazed by recent events. What we will see, however, are skyrocketing input costs.

On hearing the news about crude oil prices, we swiftly got our diesel tank topped up. We paid 12p/litre more than we did just a few weeks ago. Yet another added cost to our production that we’ll have to absorb.

Thankfully, all of our fertiliser for the year is already on farm. I dread to think where the price of that could go over the coming months.

In this country we have limited facilities to produce nitrogen fertiliser; domestic natural gas caters for only about half of our needs and the UK bioethanol industry faces potential collapse.

This leaves us completely at the mercy of global markets.

There is a lot of discussion within the farming world about food security, but perhaps it is just as important that we start focusing on “input security”.

As margins in farming continue to tighten, certain sectors won’t be able to stomach even higher costs of production.

At that point, some farmers will simply stop bothering. And when that happens, we really won’t have any food security.

I hope this government is beginning to connect the dots. With a bit of luck, we might see some grown-up thinking before long.

The unrest in the Middle East may fizzle out as quickly as it began, but if it doesn’t, we’ll need to buckle up for a volatile first half of the year.