This Week in Farming: Food Summit, forage and trees

Hello and welcome to another edition of This Week in Farming, your regular round-up of farming’s hottest topics.

Here’s five of our biggest discussion points from the past seven days and a look ahead to what’s coming up in this week’s podcast.

Sunak’s Farm to Fork Food Summit

This week marked the culmination of a prolonged bout of lobbying by the NFU to have the prime minister hold a high-profile meeting dedicated to food security.

Rishi Sunak agreed to the meeting during the first of last year’s Conservative Party leadership elections in August at a hustings event hosted by the NFU.

On the eve of the event, a package of measures were unveiled by Number 10 which were intended to boost UK food and drink exports and provide some protection from sub-standard imports, and the prime minister also wrote an open letter to British farmers about trade.

The meeting garnered a positive reception from lobbyists, who are keen to see it made an annual event.

But in my editorial this week, I warn that the measures unveiled do little more that soothe the pain of the status quo, while more dramatic interventions will be needed in future.

Meat: Our Expectations campaign latest

More than six weeks have now passed since allegations about food fraud and food safety violations at a major meat processor first appeared in Farmers Weekly.

We launched a campaign in the wake of it to bring the food chain together to discover and champion the change needed to make it much more difficult for crime of this type to happen again.

This week, leading organisations convened to discuss the recommendations we had identified that could help achieve these goals.

We would welcome further contributions from readers on the topic. Have your say by emailing deputy editor abi.kay@markallengroup.com or myself via the address in my profile.

Making the most of forage

There is a bumper selection of content online and in this week’s magazine for dairy farmers with the publication of the latest edition of Dairy Update.

With grass growth now at full pace in most parts of the UK, there’s a timely look at making the best use of forage in summer and winter, including this examination of how a diverse forage ley compares to brassicas for overwintering.

We also visit Somerset farmers David Paull and Rosie Sage to find out how they’ve increased per-head milk yield by 1,000 litres since combining robotic milking with an organic grazing herd.

And there’s top tips from last year’s FW Beef Farmer of the Year on how he has cut costs through improved grazing, putting him on a competitive footing with low-cost red meat producers from around the world.

Trees the route to extra income?

There’s much discussion about being paid to grow trees in various capacities in recent years, but where are all these new saplings coming from?

The answer is that they are in short supply, which is why the government is incentivising more producers to join the sector with grants of up to £175,000 available to fund 50% of the cost of a range of required items.

Meanwhile, in the Arable section, we meet a Lincolnshire farmer occupying another niche – herbage production.

Find out how Andrew Stovin and his family go to extra lengths to meet the exacting standards required by seed firms.

Welsh Agriculture Bill amendments

Farmers in Wales who want to set up small-scale renewable energy production on their land are now much more likely to get financial backing from the government after the Lib Dems secured cross-party support for the measure.

The change is one of a number of amendments to the Agriculture Bill which is currently making its way through the Senedd.

The Tenant Farmers Association also delighted with a separate development to give farm business tenants the right to formally object to landlords’ unreasonable refusal to allow consent to take part in a government support scheme.

Listen to the FW Podcast

Don’t forget the latest edition of the Farmers Weekly podcast with Johann Tasker and Hugh Broom. This week they’ll bring you all the latest reaction to the Food Summit, as well as plenty more farming news.

Listen here or bring us with you in the cab by downloading it from your usual podcast platform.