This Week in Farming: Parliament, potatoes and lorry haulage

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), with basically everything taking a breather this week, including red diesel – which has edged up by just over a penny to 113.9p/litre.

Now, on with the show.

SFI latest

A small number of English farmers who missed out on submitting a Sustainable Farming Incentive application on time due to technical reasons will get another chance, Defra said this week.

It came as farmers, such as Oxfordshire arable farmer and YouTuber Harry Metcalfe, vented their spleen in Parliament at the dismal situation the broken policy has left many farmers facing, with Defra’s senior civil servant facing a tongue-lashing from MPs later in the week.

And there are more tricky situations for the politicians coming up very soon.

FW deputy editor Abi Kay outlines the political trap prime minister Andy Burnham is facing over the EU-UK dynamic alignment deal while the NFU and the supermarkets have issued a collective set of asks ahead of the Budget on 28 October.

Smarter Spuds

We’ve got three reports this week from the latest edition of Arable Insights Live, hosted at Dyson Farming and featuring an in-depth look at their potato research.

Growers, see if any of these take your fancy:

• How precision nutrition system can enhance potato yield
• How to stabilise soils to boost potato crop resilience
• Potato trials probe biostimulants, nutrition and IPM

Light work

The machinery team have an in-depth conversation with a contractor mulling a question that many others will have posed – should I be doing road haulage from the field with lorries or tractors?

Two UK companies specialising in adapting HGV’s for all-terrain haulage are waiting to serve those at work in this growing sector.

And to mark 50 years in the self-propelled sprayer game, Bateman has treated its venerable RB machines to a raft of updates, including additional features and neater plumbing.

Growth agenda

As well as reports from our day at Dyson Farming, there’s plenty more Arable Insights content in this week’s Arable section, including an introduction to six new farmers who we’ll be following over the next 12 months.

And in the Livestock section this week, we meet the Cornish dairy farming team behind the UK’s highest yield on a twice-daily system.

Interested in growing or adapting your business? We’ll have a host of practical, farmer-led discussions at Farmers Weekly Live at Stoneleigh next July.

Click the link for more details and to register your interest in attending.

Who’s up and who’s down?

On the up this week is columnist Joy Bowes, who after some tough days on the farm is feeling fit enough to bid for a veterans category at next year’s Britain’s Fittest Farmer.

And feeling down this week is the Hereford cattle farmer who lost a High Court challenge to carve out a separate and officially recognised Traditional Hereford breed. No red faces at the official society then (pun intended).

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 consider what impact the Budget may have on farming, including investment allowances and consider the NFU’s joint campaign with retailers on food security.

You’ll find it anywhere you get your podcasts, or listen free on the FW website.