This Week in Farming: Dry crops, mega pruner and land sales
© James Andrews Welcome back to This Week in Farming, your one-stop shop for the best Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.
First, here are your markets (opens as PDF). Beef continues to slip, lamb stands on and red diesel has inched up again – expect another jump next week given more recent increases in the price of crude.
We also have the latest batch of arable input prices with an increasing number posting prices higher than year-earlier levels.
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Crispy crops
There may be howls of disbelief in some parts of the country at this, but growers in the East could now do with a good dose of rain to keep hold of the high-yield potential currently seen in many crops.
Still, as our Crop Watch agronomists report, the dry weather is helping to keep some disease at bay, with Jamie Armstrong noting that yellow rust has cleared up in a lot of crops in the West.
Reports from the White House yesterday signalled president Trump will ease whisky tariffs currently stifling exports of Scotch, which will be welcome news to embattled maltsters.
Markets editor Charlie Reeve reported earlier this week that demand for malting barley remains limited.
Big rigs
Ford will bring a Super Duty Ranger to the UK in 2028 – by which time, the diesel price will hopefully be a bit lower.
The beefed-up truck, which is already on sale in Australia and New Zealand, can carry a hefty 1,825kg payload, tow trailers weighing up to 4.5t, and has a gross total mass (loaded vehicle and trailer) of up to 8,000kg.
Fans of big kit will enjoy contractor and apple grower James Holloway’s conversion of a Caterpillar Challenger into specialist tree pruning rig, which resembles something that could also be useful in the event of a zombie apocalypse.
Voting day looms
In Scotland, a tight Holyrood race is raising the stakes for the industry, just as new figures reveal Scottish farm profits reached a record £1.5bn in 2025.
Read each Scottish party’s pitch on farming issues, and the equivalent analysis of the Welsh parties, with dividing lines being drawn over the Sustainable Farming Scheme and nitrate vulnerable zones.
Clever farmers
It’s always great to see farmers taking a central role in developing and testing new kit and ways of doing things, and we have some good examples of that this week.
Two farmers are currently helping to test an on-farm nitrogen-making project, which aims to reduce reliance on commercial fertilisers by producing “green” nitrogen locally.
This is exactly the difficult but vital work I was championing in my editorial this week, which discusses how pressure on farmers to deliver lower emission food may help food security.
And in the pig sector, check out how farmer Rob McGregor designed and built his own solar energiser to power electric fences.
Who’s up and who’s down?
Farming estate agents will have been feeling down until recently with sales of land well below year-earlier levels, but the spring land market is heating up, with a significant surge in farm and land launches this week.
On the up are the backers of the Rivenhall Greenhouse project, a whopping 40ha glasshouse facility in Essex that has received planning permission this week.
It will use waste heat and CO2 from a neighbouring incineration facility to produce up to 30,000t of tomatoes annually, marking a significant step forward for home-grown produce.
Listen to the FW Podcast
Don’t forget to listen to the latest Farmers Weekly Podcast, with Johann Tasker, Louise Impey and Hugh Broom.
You’ll find it anywhere you get your podcasts, or listen free on the FW website.