Keeping in touch is key - even if you use the old-fashioned ways
I’M sitting at the kitchen table and, if yours is anything like ours, it is covered with farming publications (some still in their wrappers!), post, spare bits of clothing, pens, spectacle cases, the odd torch needing a battery, scribbled notes on the back of envelopes, and other strange places.
I remember many an important number being written on a cigarette packet by father-in-law, pencil replaced in its usual place – behind his right ear!
Keeping in touch while a second wave of Covid rears its ugly head and means more restrictions, is a difficult situation for families, let alone businesses that are trying to carry on as normally as is possible.
Farming can still stay abreast of the situation by old and new means – there are more and more online opportunities to listen to and watch and a variety of subjects that can benefit a business.
I recently listened to one on negotiating, for example.
The NFU is no exception, providing webinars on a wide range of pertinent subjects, to help your business cope with oncoming changes and to understand the political scene in its ever changing glory.
It is a critical time for Brexit deals as December 31 gets closer and the implications to our industry become more evident.
Also the formulation of the Elms scheme should be taking shape in
a more coherent way. It did seem to be travelling in a generally positive direction for farming. Of course Covid security must be kept up with – particularly if you employ people, and this forms another layer of regulation to consider.
But then there is also the mobile
and broadband coverage rural areas need, to enable knowledge transfer alongside social contact.
The Government is providing extra funding to enable digital connectivity in hard-to-reach areas.
Maybe these might encourage the younger, more web-adept farmers who are so busy with work and family commitments to physically attend a meeting, but can have their interest piqued and then find half an hour to take part or listen later.
If the weather has been kind then field work should be up to date, tups will be busy and we will be pondering the results of the past season’s harvest (or lack of) and watching grain price/milk price/meat price/ hay and straw prices/feed price, pig and poultry prices, to try to read what the coming year might bring.
Nothing could be as bad as the last year, surely?