This Week in Farming: Cereals verdict, TB strategy and SFI
Welcome back to another edition of This Week in Farming, your one-stop shop for the best Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.
First, here’s your markets (opens as PDF) and there are signs that lambs have perhaps found the top of the market, falling back 5p on the week to a still mind-boggling 936p/kg deadweight average and 462p/kg liveweight.
Now, on with the show.
Diddly Squat’s Cereals: Done
© Tim Scrivener
Cereals 2026 is done and it’s fair to say it exceeded all expectations.
It wasn’t a Clarksonian gimmick as exhibitors had feared but instead the more westerly location breathed new life into the event by persuading a horde of mixed farmers from as far away as Ireland and Cornwall to attend alongside the usual crowd of more eastern arable specialists.
In addition, the traffic was broadly fine thanks to what must have been an enormous spend on temporary roads, traffic lights and people in hi-vis.
Despite the rain, particularly on day two, it even held up well underfoot thanks to the sturdy stone-filled soil profile and was only let down by some intermittent power outages that caused the speakers in the Farmers Weekly tent to cut out and the beer to stop flowing in the Farmer’s Dog bar.
If you missed it you can check out all the stories from the arable and news team and listen to the special Farmers Weekly podcast, recorded live at the event.
Spray insights
Away from Cereals, the machinery team also took the time to do a more in-depth appraisal of three trailed sprayers by speaking to the drivers that use them.
These will come in handy if you’re in the market:
Farm policy latest
Back in Westminster, Defra slipped out an announcement on the size of the funding pot for this year’s Sustainable Farming Incentive that English farmers with 50ha or less can apply for from 30 June.
One-quarter of the £240m pot will be allocated to them, while the remaining £180m will be reserved for other applicants in September – with the NFU calling this ‘insufficient’.
Meanwhile, the Welsh government has revealed that half of farmers given the opportunity to apply for the Sustainable Farming Scheme have instead opted to stick with a heavily reduced BPS payment instead.
TB strategy update
Here’s the good news in the latest TB strategy for England: More power for farmers to do additional testing and a cattle vaccine in 2030.
But will that be enough to beat the disease into submission by 2038? I give my verdict in this week’s editorial.
Three other bits of livestock innovation news this week: Bulk milk sampling tech reducing mastitis, artificial intelligence improving pig health, and an app cutting 75% off the time it takes to measure grass.
Who’s up and who’s down?
One visitor in particular will have left Cereals with his tail up – Scott Harrod from Norfolk, who picked up the prestigious Farm Sprayer Operator of the Year award at the first time of trying.
And I very much hope being fined £500,000 and having to pay £259,298 in costs will have wiped any smiles from the face of the wretched folk at shoddy kebab manufacturer Kismet Meats.
Listen to the FW Podcast
Don’t forget to listen to the latest Farmers Weekly Podcast, with Johann Tasker, Louise Impey and Hugh Broom.
This week the team recorded a special podcast live from Cereals and will be following that up with a second bulletin giving their verdict on the whole event.
You’ll find it anywhere you get your podcasts, or listen free on the FW website.