This Week in Farming: Straw price, Royal Welsh and mudguards

Welcome back to a sunny summer edition of This Week in Farming, your one-stop shop for the best Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.

Before we get started, here’s the latest market prices.

Now, on with the show.

Shrinking sector

Data published by Defra this week show an accelerating decline in the number of full-time farm workers in agriculture, prompting fresh questions about the health of our sector.

The news came as the National Audit Office, the government’s spending watchdog, released its third report assessing the progress of environmental schemes in England.

It raised concerns about the elderly IT system that is responsible for making payments to farmers shortly coming to the end of its life, with a replacement still three years away.

Harvest update

Livestock farmers are set to pay significantly more for their straw requirements this winter following a sharp drop in the area of planted crops.

Auctions for crop in the swath kicked off in earnest this week, with winter wheat averaging £119 an acre and barley £123 an acre for one auctioneer in Shropshire, and oilseed rape straw reaching £57.62 an acre.

Separately, traders have said that for the first time this year the UK is set to import more rapeseed than it produces, amid reports of lower-than-average harvest yields on both sides of the Channel.

Politicking at the Show

The weather smiled again on the Royal Welsh Show as hordes of visitors gathered to see the traditional line-up of machinery, livestock and exhibitors, but the conversation over the future of farm policy did not diminish amid the fun.

Chief reporter Phil Case and freelancer Debbie James bring you the latest on what the change of government in Westminster may mean for the Welsh, with NFU Cymru hoping for a £79m funding uplift.

Rural affairs minister Huw Irranca-Davies spoke at the HCC breakfast event on the roadmap to the implementation of the new Sustainable Farming Scheme, currently scheduled for 2026.

Meanwhile, campaigners have continued to urge him to postpone the all-Wales NVZ plans set to come in this autumn.

New kit latest

The price of autosteer continues to tumble thanks to an enterprising Somerset farmer, Charles Quick, who is marketing a box-ready system he first perfected on his own kit for just £3,000.

No clunky steering wheel motor is required, even for older tractors. This is because his setup either plugs directly into the canbus system on steer-ready models or taps into the hydraulic steering lines on those without.

Elsewhere, aftermarket mudguard sales have boomed after the biblically wet weather of the past 12 months. We run through the latest linkage-mounted options to help keep machines clean.

Who’s up and who’s down?

Despite losing his seat thanks to the Reform insurgency, I’m going to nominate former farming minister Mark Spencer as on the up following his remarkably cheerful interview with deputy editor Abi Kay.

He runs through what he is most proud of from his time at Defra, and tells her what he’s looking forward to accomplishing at home on the farm.

Here’s one problem he won’t have to deal with: the ongoing furore over the management of the special area of conservation on Dartmoor.

Feeling down this week are the farmers of the Dartmoor Commoners Council after campaign group Wild Justice said it was applying for a judicial review of the law if they didn’t reduce stocking rates to help rare habitats recover.