This Week in Farming: EU deal, Defender Hard Top and dairy costs
© MAG/Oliver Mark Welcome back to another edition of This Week in Farming, your one stop-shop for the best Farmers Weekly content of the past week.
First, here are your markets (opens as PDF). With the Strait of Hormuz still mostly closed to shipping, it’s perhaps no surprise that the red diesel price has kept on rising, despite the decline in hostilities between Iran and the US.
Now, on with the show.
About the author
Brussels battle
UK and EU negotiators are locked in discussions to hammer out closer alignment on rules and regulations, including for agriculture, with potentially major ramifications for farmers as our deep-dive on the topic shows this week.
Gene editing, a technology that is approved only on this side of the channel, is just one example of what may be sacrificed in pursuit of a deal even as field trials of barley bred using the technology were drilled for the first time this week.
Defra, which has more than 500 staffers working on the nitty-gritty of the deal, has refused to say whether it has assessed the impact on British farmers losing herbicides, including flufenacet – which EU farmers no longer have access to.
Potential winners from the deal include red meat producers, as I muse in my editorial this week, who are already in a better financial position relative to their arable counterparts.
Stout Defender
Given the above, it would be a reasonable bet to see more of Land Rover’s commercial-spec Defender pulling a livestock trailer than a bowser to the combine.
Machinery editor Oliver Mark takes the VAT-deductible version of the popular 4×4 for a spin this week and you can read his verdict.
It will have another rival to contend with later this year when Chinese brand Denza, a BYD subdivision, launches a chunky Land Cruiser lookalike.
Land matters
Alongside our usual land page, which this week takes in launches from Northumberland to Devon, we have a flurry of content arising from our quarterly special print section.
See if any of these can help you with a decision or two:
- BNG market set to gather pace as big projects come into play
- Stamp duty land tax: Why it’s important in a tricky market
- Why a structural assessment is needed before building conversions
- New land control contracts register raises privacy concerns
- Where next for forestry market as investor caution deepens
Growth agenda
Warm weather across much of the UK this week saw grass and crops visibly perk up and another flurry of field work, with our Crop Watch agronomists already looking ahead to T1 septoria control and flowering OSR sprays.
Keeping a tighter-than-average eye on forage quality and costs is at the heart of this piece focusing on 10 ways dairy farmers can shield their business from further unwelcome price shocks.
And sheep farmers may want to think about tweaking their grazing strategy to get the best out of lamb performance this season.
Who’s up and who’s down?
On the up this week are organic farmers, after the UK and Japan mutually recognised organic livestock standards from 1 April 2026, reducing trade barriers.
And hopefully cartological boffins are feeling glum this week after farmers found significant inaccuracies in a Natural England mapping tool that has wrongly classified land as peat, with potential implications for land use, environmental policy and farm incomes.
Listen to the FW Podcast
Don’t forget to come back on Monday for the Farmers Weekly Podcast, with Johann Tasker, Louise Impey and Hugh Broom.
In this week’s episode, what to do when travellers set up an illegal encampment next door, wheat prices and agflation, and how to reduce the risk of sepsis.
You’ll find it anywhere you get your podcasts, or listen free on the FW website.