This Week in Farming: Iran, tail docking and JCB review
© Parspix/ABACA/Shutterstock Welcome back to another edition of This Week in Farming, your one-stop shop for the most important Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.
First, here are your market prices (opens as PDF). If you’ve been so busy in the lambing shed, you haven’t heard much news lately, I’d invite you to brace yourself before looking at the red diesel price.
Which regrettably leads us on to our first topic.
About the author
Iranian conflict’s economic impact
Energy prices have spiked dramatically following the burgeoning hostilities in the Middle East, which have already had a significant impact on many agricultural inputs including fuel and fertiliser, as we report this week.
Analysts warned that unless tankers could soon pass unmolested through the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices could exceed US$100 (£750) a barrel – prices last seen following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In my editorial, I lament that there have been few lessons learned on food security since that earlier conflict, but this additional shock to the system gives those contented with the status quo even less room to hide.
Closer to home
In domestic political news, parties are beginning to campaign in earnest ahead of the local elections in Wales and Scotland in May.
Labour have a steep hill to climb in Wales if the rural vote is anything to go by, with fresh polling conducted by CLA Cymru showing Eluned Morgan’s Labour party fourth place, behind Plaid Cymru, Reform UK and the Green Party.
Nigel Farage joined Reform UK Welsh leader Dan Thomas this week to unveil their manifesto on Thursday (5 March), including these rural policies.
Tail docking consultation
Sheep farmers in England only have until Monday (9 March) to have their say on Defra’s animal welfare consultation, which includes controversial proposals on tail docking and castration.
In other livestock-linked news this week, this story on marts under pressure from cull ewe buyers allegedly racking up significant debts has certainly got a lot of people talking.
If you’d like to share any information in confidence about this, our markets editor Charlie Reeve is waiting to hear from you. Charlie.reeve@markallengroup.com
The silage song
Buck rake aficionados look this way. Farmers Weekly‘s magazine cover story is an in-depth look at the strengths and weaknesses of JCB’s self-proclaimed “king of the clamp”, the new-type 435S, with someone who has driven it for a season.
In other machinery stories this week, we meet an unusual Dutch contractor who has built an entire business around feeding dairy cows and their followers. Could it come to the UK?
And Goodyear has launched its widest-ever tyre for the UK market for the UK market, coming in at a whopping 1.4m.
Who’s up and who’s down?
Judging by the number of people reading Crop Watch this week, a good number of arable farmers are down about chocolate spot assaulting their beans.
But on the up are farmers on the Hebridean islands of Uist and Barra, who have just had some extra funding from the Scottish government to blast away the gratuitous numbers of grazing greylag geese on their fields.
Listen to the FW Podcast
Don’t forget to tune in to the Farmers Weekly Podcast, with Johann Tasker, Louise Impey and Hugh Broom.
This week, the team speak to experts across the trade about the impact of the Iran conflict on farming.
You’ll find it anywhere you get your podcasts, or listen free on the FW website.