The wrong weather at the wrong time
It is unsurprising to learn that February 2024 was the wettest ever recorded. The ground is sodden, crops are struggling, and grass field are completely waterlogged. We face a second year where it is unlikely we shall get a decent harvest, half our seed corn is still sitting in the barn, as drilling stopped due to the wrong weather at the wrong time.
It is hardly surprising that farmers are considering or have already reduced their arable acreage in favour of grass.
This will reduce the UK production of cereals including wheat, barley oats and beans, on what is sure to be a continuing decline. This combined with the government’s push towards reducing productive farming and reversion to environmental schemes, the future of British home-grown food is looking decidedly bleak.
At a time when the world is facing a food shortage, and an increasing demand for clean water, and global health is being impacted by rising temperatures, ozone depletion, over-consumption of ocean resources, species extinction, CO2 concentration, deforestation, and global sea levels, surely it is the time to increase British food production, not go all out to reduce it.
It may be too wet for us to venture onto the fields with tractors and farm machinery, but the wildlife appears to be very active despite the conditions. We have not ploughed the land at Ote Hall for over 26 years, preferring to adopt minimum tillage which has increased our soil’s organic matter and nutrients and made the ground much easier to work with.
Our resident badgers have not got the message as they are once again doing their best to plough up most of our grass fields and verges. Each morning, I find dozens of fresh deep scrapings; they have clearly been busy all night.
The morning chorus starts earlier each day, there is frantic activity as the birds busily go about building nests. The resident pigeons which each year return to nest amongst the creepers on the house are clearly annoyed that we have removed the ancient wisteria which has been causing damage to the guttering and Horsham stone slates. Deeper into the summer, when we leave bedroom windows open, its tentacles creep inside in a similar fashion to that seen in ‘The Day of the Triffids’.
It is sad but the house actually looks better without the adornment of creeping vegetation which invariably gets caught by the late frosts and rarely produced flowers.
The Prime Minister went to the NFU’S Annual General Meeting where he told the farmers that he ‘had their back’. He clearly was not fully briefed, despite representing a rural constituency. It was clear from what he didn’t say that neither he nor his Chancellor Jeremy Hunt who will present his Budget on Wednesday, don’t understand just how badly farmers are being affected by the clumsy, ill thought-out agricultural policy and mad dash to Net Zero.
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