This Week in Farming: Grass, gadgets and beavers

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Farming, your briefing on the best Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.

First, here’s your market snapshot (opens as PDF), with the deadweight steer average closing in on £6.50/kg while arable markets are once again utterly becalmed.

It must be very boring being a grain trader at the moment. Drop me an email if I’m wrong.

Now, on with the show.

Inheritance tax latest

The new-look NFU conference was held in Westminster this week on a single day, rather than the two-day jamboree in Birmingham (that returns next year).

Defra secretary Steve Reed brought a slew of announcements in a bid to move the narrative on from inheritance tax (IHT).

However, NFU president Tom Bradshaw and delegates made him squirm with some very pointed questions on the severity of the impact on lives and livelihoods.

Farmers Hazel and Tom Church also made a poignant protest at the Treasury by delivering a basket of farm toys for the Chancellor to symbolise the threat to future farming generations.

Protesters honked their tractor horns outside the conference centre at various points in the day, and marchers will be returning to Whitehall on Tuesday (4 March) for a pancake-themed protest that is calling for an amnesty for hardest-hit older farmers.

At Farmers Weekly’s most recent Question Time event, panelists were gloomy about the prospects for Labour backtracking on their policy, wondering if there should instead be a pivot to campaigning for better farm profitability.

In my editorial this week, I note that even away from IHT, Mr Reed’s announcements were welcome but relatively underwhelming, but warn that this is likely to be the new normal.

The green, green grass of home

With fields starting to show a different hue of green as temperatures waft into warmer territory, the Livestock team have devoted several articles to maximising grass performance.

Upland farmers may want to cast an eye over this advice on getting the most out of the increasingly popular herbal leys, while others contemplating the evidence of last year’s compaction will enjoy this piece on preventing further damage.

Meanwhile, deputy livestock editor Shirley Macmillan spoke to County Kilkenny dairy farmers Bryan and Gail Daniels about their mission to replace as much as possible of their bagged nitrogen with clover.

Disease focus

Spring doesn’t just mean grass growth of course, but also crops and their rival weeds.

But hold your horsepower. Experts are reminding growers eager to get out and batter ryegrass and others that applications to stressed weeds, such as those sat in waterlogged soils, will be less effective.

Extra care will also be needed for fungicide applications on wheat, with plants coming out of winter at a wide variety of growth stages, complicating decision-making.

Here’s a novel seed treatment (that also comes as a foliar application) for spring pulse crops: a bacterial mix that can help fix additional nitrogen out of the soil.

Trials have shown it can supply the equivalent of about 30kg/ha of artificial N.

Inventions galore

After revealing the winner and runner-up of this year’s complex category in our Farm Inventions Competition last week, we can now share the best of the rest.

Growers will enjoy this round-up of low-cost sprayers, spreaders and cultivators, while there’s something for all workshop tinkerers in this collection of cash-saving tools and attachments.

Two others that caught my eye from the brilliant selection of labour-saving devices were the Chicken Poo Pusher and the Spring Bak Gate.

Who’s up and who’s down?

On the up this week is a certain Hampshire farmer named Charlie Flindt, who has been mightily cheered that a ploughing renaissance might be just around the corner after reading an article in… Farmers Weekly!

Feeling down this week will be the beaver-cautious contingent within the farming community, after Defra revealed it will allow the reintroduction of the thick-toothed rodents through a new licensing system.

Listen to the podcast

Don’t forget to tune in to the FW Podcast, with Johann Tasker, Louise Impey and Hugh Broom.

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