Opinion: Combine harvesters roll in a landscape of uncertainty

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As usual, combines were rolling in the south of England at the beginning of the month.

Further north we have to be a bit more patient, although the heatwave during the first week of July will have brought harvest forward a few days earlier than usual.

Sadly, those hot days scorched crops rather than ripened them, especially on light land, and will have done nothing to enhance yields.

David Richardson farms about 400ha (1,000 acres) of arable land near Norwich in Norfolk in partnership with his wife Lorna and his son Rob

Indeed, the likely harvest outcome is difficult to read this year.

Having looked good for most of the growing period, some crops of rape, barley and wheat now look less promising.

As always we will only know the truth when we get them into the barn.

Price prospects are even more unclear. They have yo-yo’d between sizeable losses to almost break-even for months and despite recent extensive flood damage in the US Midwest have, as I write, still not risen to most farmers cost of UK production in the short positions.

Will we see further significant rises during the coming marketing year? Only, I suspect, if there are further climatic disasters around the world.

We could, of course, see prices fall again.

In a report published earlier in the month by the OECD, the authors suggested grain prices were likely to trend downwards.

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Lower oil prices, the report said, would reduce the cost of energy and fertilisers and remove the incentive for the production of biofuels.

This in turn would cut demand for grain, stocks would build and prices would fall.

Those of us who produce grain can only hope they’ve got it wrong.

More positively, evidence is growing that the El Niño phenomenon that affects world weather every few years is strengthening.

“Those hot days scorched crops rather than ripened them, especially on light land, and will have done nothing to enhance yields” – David Richardson

Its exact effects are unpredictable, except that it seems likely to disrupt normal weather patterns across wide areas of the world.

There could be droughts in some places and floods in others.

Either way, crop yields might be adversely affected with a knock-on effect on prices – but you wouldn’t want to bet the farm on it.

Meanwhile, the USDA has reported that the US national grain stock is smaller than previously anticipated.

Only by a few million tonnes, it is true, but at least it reverses the trend of the past few years.

Combined with crop losses caused by flooding and concerns about El Niño, this might give the market a further lift from which we could benefit.

But it would probably be safer to assume continued volatility in the short-term.

Further ahead, I am still convinced (despite the OECD) that demand will increase and prices will rise, although not necessarily consistently so.

My view was reinforced the other day when I read a quote by Hugh Grant, the Scottish-born chief executive of US corporation Monsanto.

He was promoting his firm’s bid to take over European chemical giant Syngenta.

Pointing out the need for increased crop yields and greater production efficiency on farms, he was quoted as warning: “We [the people of the world] are one bad spring or one dry summer away from having a food shortage again”.

Some might say he was talking his own book; that he just wants to sell more Roundup and glyphosate-resistant seeds. But I happen to believe he is right,

Furthermore if I were in a position of ultimate power, I would be seeking to build strategic stocks of staple foods, like grains, to be released when that happens.

It could help stop another war that could start because of food shortages.