We should never underestimate how important we are and on the flip side how marginalised we have become. Recently at the Oxford Farming Conference Professor Dieter Helm gave a stark reminder of what a small proportion to the economy agriculture and land use provide; how that, in the grand scheme…

But it’s not the birds that will be silenced, it’s the people. For the last fifty years chemicals and farming have been uneasy bedfellows. Talk to my grandfather’s generation and their introduction revolutionised food production, increasing yields, reducing the risk of disease and helping solve food shortages. But since the…

Perhaps the most obvious example of the farming community and the public failing to see eye-to-eye is over the issue of Glyphosate and the recent discussion about banning it. There are many faults in this story. The farming community rightly insist that there is negligible evidence of harm and that…

We have the most amazing opportunity to take a leading role in the world but somehow we find ourselves as both price takers and slaves to legislation and let’s be honest we end up complaining about both facts. Perhaps we should attempt to turn this around. I recently read an…

In the last few months and years our industry has faced some serious and challenging issues driven by public perception rather than hard science. In this and the next few blogs I will argue that we are collectively failing to address the publics concerns in a way that is relevant…

Recently I noted that at Agritechnica the UK farmers were not really investing, that they were in a state of uncertainty about the future. This week in Oxford (at the Oxford Farming Conference) you could feel that change. There were many announcements indicating business as usual and funding as usual…

Agritechnica is where the world of agriculture meets and is a great place to take the temperature of European farming. Brexit may not yet have happened but its effects have begun, the atmosphere around European and British farming could not be further apart. While UK farmers are benefiting from a…

When Aiden Turner as ‘Poldark’ first burst onto our screens topless and wielding a scythe, it was so popular in the tabloids, my wife wondered if it might strike a resurgence in a long lost farming skill. Of course, the scything was the last thing they were interested in and…

Did you know that in 2015 alone, the UK had £13million worth of food waste that could have been eaten? £13 million. It’s horrific, isn’t it and sadly, according to WRAP, the waste and recycling advisory body, any attempts to improve this appear to have stalled. I know myself when I…