Editor’s View: Battle lines being drawn for autumn drilling
© Tim Scrivener Bad generals, it is said, are always at risk of attempting to win a conflict by using the same tactics that won the last war.
At Cereals this week, it was cheering to hear some cautious optimism about the state of crops in the ground after the horrendous winter, but battle plans are already being drawn up by growers for next season.
Last year saw many hectares left bare that should have been planted as rain stopped play, with the problem exacerbated by the now common later drilling windows in pursuit of blackgrass suppression.
See also: Tory farming budget pledge falls short of industry demands
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Talk abounded this week of an early drilling renaissance so as to take fewer chances with the weather – but at what cost?
As one grower remarked to me on Tuesday, it takes only one bad blackgrass year to throw away the patient progress of many previous seasons’ attempts to banish the persistent grassweed.
These are problems with no easy solutions and each farmer will have to come up with a battle plan based on their own farm’s situation, but one thing can be said with near certainty – next season will not be the same as the last one.
If you need an extra pair of hands for harvest, it does appear increasingly likely there will be a significant number of Tory MPs who will have been handed their P45s by voters.
Surely they would be brilliant. After all, they’re already trained at backing themselves neatly into a corner, digging themselves into a (soil inspection) hole and dealing with a lot of bumps in the road.
More awkward comparisons welcome.
New MPs
Yet there is a very important job coming up this year: liaison with the next crop of parliamentarians.
I have already heard of plans being drawn up by the NFU and Country Land and Business Association to get first-time MPs out on farm as soon as possible after they are elected – on top of the candidate visits that are already going on.
With both a large number of retirees from the now-dissolved parliament, and the expected large swing to Labour from the Conservatives, the number of newbies to be sworn in in just a few weeks’ time is expected to be enormous.
So whether you are a supporter of the aforementioned lobby groups or others sympathetic to farming, I know they need your help to give these folk a rapid education in the realities of food production as soon as possible.
And what could be a better time of year to show them than harvest – whether it’s silage coming in on livestock farms or crops on arable farms?
Ridiculing our ruling class comes easily to most of us, and they frequently don’t fail to give us fresh reasons to continue in that vein.
But justified cynicism arising from the failings of our imperfect political system should not eclipse the desire to educate those who mean well and do hold some power in their hands – even as backbenchers.
Those who are already well-versed in this should be applauded – but I suggest this year they could do with some help.