My farming week

The period between Christmas and New Year has always been a time of reflection for me. I am sure that I won’t be alone in feeling that much I had hoped to achieve during 2020 was somewhat derailed.

There is great joy in our household as the twins are in the depths of mock exam revision and the pressure is on as the gaps in our home-schooling caused by lambing, calving and silage become apparent.

By the time you read this, we should all be emerging out of lockdown 2.0. Like all sequels, it was delayed in its release, had budget concerns and was not well received by the populace. Still, let’s be honest, it wasn’t as bad as Rocky V, was it?

I have decided to allocate time in this opinion piece to bovine TB – specifically residual disease.

November, and we roll the dice again. The tups are back in with the ewes despite the serious question, will there be a viable market for lamb post-Brexit? I think I asked the same question last year, or maybe it was the year before? It is hard to keep track.

This week, I want to talk about something which has been in the back of my mind for quite some time, even more so since I started farming in my own right and probably since I grew up on a farm where my desire to be like my father and uncle first started.

I am a naturally optimistic person. I can usually find some sort of silver lining to most clouds and, currently, the livestock sector is feeling pretty good.

With this week’s critical Parliamentary vote against the Agriculture Bill amendment, a challenging growing season and harvest, plus a global pandemic influencing shoppers and their buying habits alongside the continued debate around climate instability and biodiversity loss, farm businesses are in a potentially precarious position economically and ecologically.

A useful discipline to maximise the probability of your farm business surviving the next 10 years is to make some safe, though unpalatable, assumptions, then plan accordingly.

At this time of great change, we can look to the future of farming and our countryside with hope.