Farmer Focus: Trying my best to stay positive for 2022

While pondering the subject for this column, I considered chuntering about input prices, the (un)sustainable farm incentive, bonkers rules for water, increased risks and volatility. But I felt those topics were all a bit negative.

Farming at the moment is as exciting as it is challenging, and where there is threat, you can usually find opportunity.

We’ve seen commodity prices rise to levels not seen in my lifetime, and demand remain high in most sectors.

We’ve have had a very co-operative autumn, and things don’t look too disastrous for 2022.

About the author

Andrew Wilson

Arable Farmer Focus writer Andrew Wilson is a fourth-generation tenant of Castle Howard Estate in North Yorkshire. The farm supports crops of wheat, barley, oats, beans, sugar beet, potatoes, and grass for hay across 250ha. Other enterprises include bed and breakfast pigs, environmental stewardship, rooftop solar and contracting work.  

Contact:

Email: wilsonbrickyard@gmail.com

X: https://twitter.com/SpudSlingsby

Read more articles by Andrew Wilson

See also: How growers can plan with support worth only one-third of BPS

Defra has dragged its heels a bit in bringing out details of the various farm schemes, but they are worth considering.

Grants are not a reason to spend, but if an investment was on the horizon anyway, it makes sense to at least consider grant aid, if it is available.

We have various trials planned for 2022, including strip-till cereals and beet, companions in beet, (almost) no-till potatoes, non-chemical nematode control, and azotic nitrogen fixing.

Our beet companion crop this year was crimson clover, which was supposed to attract  virus-carrying aphid predators such as ladybirds.

Unfortunately, the clover didn’t like the cold, dry April, the drowning in May or herbicide stress, and consequently died.

After some research, aphids simply like bare ground to land on, so it’s looking like oats will cover the ground, be more compatible with chemistry and resilient to stress.

My no-till potato trial showed that a lot more needs to be done before we can carry it out at a commercial scale, and it most certainly needs sector buy-in. However, there are many possibilities.

I said last time that there is always a better way of doing everything.

A common misquote of Darwin reads: “It is not the strongest, nor the most intelligent of the species that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

Misquote or not, it’s true. Anything is possible.

I wish you a happy and prosperous 2022.

wilsonbrickyard@gmail.com @SpudSlingsby