Editor’s View: What will your cab musings be this harvest?

“First come the dreamers. Then the bankers. Then the salesmen. Then the sharks. Then the desperate. Then the thieves.”

So said the fictional Tommy Norris, Billy Bob Thornton’s character in Paramount’s Landman, a drama set amid the dirt and danger of the Texas oil fields.

It was his interpretation of the phases of an unsustainable boom cycle in an oil field, but could be applicable to booms and busts in many sectors, with cryptocurrency just one modern example that seems to attract many of the above.

See also: Ag markets react sharply to conflict in Middle East

In our sector, it is perhaps purveyors of carbon, biostimulants and on-farm audits that are currently trying to shake the suspicion of farmers that they are not reliable bedfellows.

I’m sure you could name others. 

was thinking of the opening phrase again this week as oil and commodity market traders held their breath as Israeli and US bombers flew sorties over Iran and the world waited to see how further military action might escalate.

The arable show season is now in full swing and grain harvest is just around the corner.

The Cereals event is a recent memory, Groundswell is to come, and this week James Peck of PX Farms welcomed more than 3,000 visitors to see the hub of his 5,000ha farming operation.

Yet even as growers stand in crop plots, watch machinery demos and digest agronomic advice, it remains faintly absurd that one of the main factors affecting their margin is global politics.

This week, the nuclear ambitions of Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei. Next week, who knows?

Among the many factors that dictate whether a farmer is successful, one is an individual’s mental ability to cope with the uncertainty this creates.

Many of you will relish the opportunity of farming’s various silly seasons – whether its calving, lambing or harvest – to simply crack on, letting whatever is happening beyond the farm boundary look after itself.

Farming, as this group will argue, is a long-term endeavour where those that succeed are focused on getting more of the on-farm decisions right than they get wrong – whether that’s improving soil fertility, bloodlines or just keeping fences intact.

Many others will argue that in an interconnected and rapidly changing world, it’s just as important to stay up to date with politics, the markets and consumer trends, so that we may adapt and thrive.

There is often a failure on the part of those that cluster around our industry to understand the former group – whether they are policymakers or those with something to sell.

What they lack is the imagination to see that sometimes the best way to ride out the bumps is simply to tighten the belt and do next to nothing. But not always.

And not now for those farmers in England who are rapidly approaching the endgame of legacy area payments.

So don’t feel bad about sticking the radio on and enjoying the moments to come when harvest is going smoothly. This is what we do it for.

But if you want to keep doing it, at some point changes will have to be dealt with, lest you find yourself fending off bankers, salesmen and thieves.