Happy New Year, everyone! And hasn’t it been a wet and cold one so far! Not a lot of farmin’ happening over the last few weeks, quite a lot of lookin’ and sucking teeth about how wet it is. Rest assured, if you thought it was wet, farmers across the land have “never seen it so wet”, “never seen water on that field before”, and “never known it this bad”. It is a serious business, though and represents the current biggest impact of climate change to those working on the land, that of extreme weather events and how to adapt to them. Most of the crops on the farm here are okay, but about 50% of the seeds planted in Leicestershire, where I work, have rotted in the ground. This means lots of wasted seeds, costs and energy in planting them. We can replant in spring, but the yields will be lower. Resilience in farming systems is increasingly becoming the most important thing.
In this theme, in the last month, we have applied for and been accepted onto the Sustainable Farming Incentive. Defra are redesigning the environmental payment schemes after leaving the EU, and this is one of them. The schemes have been quite slow coming out, but are starting to look quite good. This agreement will last three years and will give payment for things like intercropping, cover crops, soil testing, hedge management, integrated pest management and winter bird food, which is brilliant. All these measures cost money to do, but will help improve the resilience of the farm and reduce environmental impact. In January, there was also an announcement that even more measures would be available from Autumn, so we are looking forward to taking some of those up next year.
January is also the time for weekends away… but all in the name of personal and professional development! Tom and I have both done a Rural Leadership Course in the and you are encouraged to host reunions to help continue the learning. For these, we often visit someone’s patch of the UK, visit where they farm or work and then visit a few other businesses. It is a brilliant opportunity to meet up, discuss farming issues and have a few beers. Last weekend, we went down to Devon and visited another research farm called North Wyke, a big farm and contracting business and Shallowford Farm, which is a farm and trust that hosts visits for children and groups from urban areas ( https://www.shallowfordfarm.co.uk/). A great time was had.
The course is run by the “Worshipful Company of Farmers”. WCF are the livery company for farmers in the City of London, and there are Worshipful Companies of all sorts of other industries too. As well as wearing robes and hosting fancy dinners, their core aim is to provide “inspiring leadership and management training for anyone engaged in the Agricultural industry”. They do this very well by running a number of courses dedicated to these areas. Like many industries, agriculture is under a bit of pressure and operating in a complex environment. We need to deliver safe and healthy food and regenerate the ecosystems in which we farm, in a system that isn’t always well designed to do this. We feel very lucky to have taken advantage of one of these courses and be in an industry that offers these opportunities.
Probably discussed the weather enough!