Farmer Focus: Why do such few people exercise so much power?
Keith Challen © Tim Scrivener The world has gone mad – there’s no other way of putting it. How on earth so few people in power can exercise so much power over the rest of us is terrifying.
At home, our prime minister and his sidekicks will do more damage to our wonderful industry in one year than any other government in modern times.
Overseas, the implementation of tariffs will kill trade and stifle growth, while world leaders are acting like petulant children played out on TV, without any consequences.
It’s hard to believe how we’ve ended up here.
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The farm looks average at best. Snow followed by rain in February put crops under great stress from waterlogging.
Crops are going to need some TLC to get them up to full potential.
Early trace element nutrition followed by early nitrogen will, hopefully, encourage tillering, but with the current wheat price well below £200/t, spending will have to be very carefully managed.
An unusually warm and dry weekend allowed us to start spring drilling.
Both wheat and oats direct drilled well into sprayed off cover crops and, other than the odd wet spot, conditions were near perfect.
I’m fast becoming a fan of direct-drilling where conditions allow.
We’ve had to re-drill 30ha of winter wheat with spring wheat where plant populations were simply too low.
Half has been direct drilled with the Horsch Avatar and half was spring tined and has yet to be drilled in an effort to see which provides the best gross margin.
On the machinery front, my poorly built French muckspreader has been sold and a British-built Richard Western one will replace it – and will be put to work immediately composting manures.
Our trusty 1970-built Hyster forklift has finally bitten the dust. It’s hard to imagine any machine built today will still be around in 55 years’ time.
Now the question is what to replace it with, probably a 1980s version of the same thing.
