This Week in Farming: Awards, monster tractors and flooding

Welcome back to This Week in Farming, the fastest place to find the best Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.

Lets kick off with those all-important market prices.

Now, on with the show.

The best of British farming

It was farming’s biggest black tie bash this week, our Farmers Weekly Awards, where a sell-out crowd of 1,200 partied into the small hours in London’s Grosvenor House Hotel.

And no one had a bigger smile on their face than Mark Means, who first scooped Arable Farmer of the Year (giving host Stephen Mangan a bearhug in the process), before walking away with the top gong, Farmer of the Year.

Just before that, the audience rose as one to salute our Farming Champion of the Year, Nigel Owens, who has been a tireless and highly visible campaigner for Welsh farmers on a number of issues in the past 12 months.

Congratulations to all our category award winners, with biggest cheers of the night coming from large Welsh and Herefordshire contingents. You can read more about all of them right here.

Weather woes….

The Awards is always an opportunity for guests to have a well-deserved break from the harder side of farming, with severe rainfall now causing significant problems in some areas.

Our lead story this week focused on renewed calls from some farmers and growers for the Environment Agency to help farmers remove water from their land faster.

In my editorial this week, I return to the topic of food security as warnings mount that the 21st century may become increasingly dominated by a geopolitical power struggle for control of food supplies.

…but optimism elsewhere as prices rise

Indeed, scarcity of some food products is helping keep farmgate prices close to record highs, particularly beef and lamb.

There’s also been a fresh wave of milk price rises as September gave way to October, with analysts saying that this will finally see profitability start to recover on some farms.

This has helped cushion the blow of continued inflation to the cost of agricultural inputs, as well as eligible English farmers seeing further cuts to their delinked Basic Payment Scheme payments.

Business briefings

Two important features this week if you’re looking to open up non-farming revenue streams within your business.

First, a look at how diversification enterprises can make space for entrepreneurial family members to come and work in a business that may otherwise have not been able to accommodate them.

Second, even if the mere mention of carbon markets sets your hackles rising, you should stay abreast of what’s happening in the sector.

Here’s our latest beginners guide on the topic.

Who’s up and who’s down?

On the up this week and indeed growing in every dimension is the absolutely humongous new range-topping 9RX 830 from John Deere.

Machinery editor Oli Mark’s wry run-through of the stats will make your eyes pop – including a six digit list price that starts with a nine.

Feeling glum this week are…tractor manufacturers!

We have two new pieces on the wider slump hitting the sector, including how spiralling prices have led to a change in buying policy for one of our canny contractor commentators, and a look at how dealerships are faring generally.

Listen to the podcast

Don’t forget to tune into this week’s FW podcast, with Johann Tasker and guests.

You’ll find it anywhere you listen to podcasts, or free to listen to on our website.