12th December 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: Known unknowns
The news that this year’s harvest area for UK oilseed rape was the lowest figure since 1983 has made rather grim reading. Given the crop was still in its introductory phase on most arable farms in…
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Opinion
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12th December 2025
Talking Taties: All the fun
So where did we finish up with our taty harvest this time? 14 days, 6.5 people, 7435 litres of fuel, 3018t, 67ha lifted and very little road brushing required – it could have been worse, that’s for sure. We’re a few percent short of our contract yields, but it’s fair to say our worst…
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21st October 2025
Talking Taties: A new-to-us addition
Well, we started this month ahead of usual but things have a habit of upskittling themselves at times, and as things stand we’ve not yet started harvesting potatoes, despite half of them being ready.
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21st October 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: Blue or red?
There was an old adage that did the rounds, that UK agriculture was better off under a Labour government than a Tory one. Like many pearls of wisdom, it didn’t stand up to much analysis,…
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21st October 2025
Nature Natters: The future is diversity
I’m writing this during the party conference season, during which I’ll get the opportunity to attend a range of events for many different political parties. And in all of them, I’ll be putting forward discussion…
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21st October 2025
Last Word: Talk techie to me
Before I commence this month’s instalment, I’d better provide an avian update. Our seven mini dinosaurs are still with us, having progressed rapidly through the raptor stage into almost fully feathered fowl. They advanced from…
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26th September 2025
Talking Taties: Gleaning the positives
The only thing worse than a poor performing year is one that follows another poor performing year. It’s safe to say arable farming and taty growing isn’t much fun at the moment.
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26th September 2025
Nature Natters: What next for nature?
We seem to find ourselves in a two-tiered farming system. We have those that are in Countryside Stewardship alongside those in an overgenerous Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI ) scheme, receiving public money to deliver public…
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26th September 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: Watch this space
My father was one of those post-war farmers where the success of the crop was determined by what you did before you sowed the seed, as opposed to what you did to the crop afterwards.…
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27th August 2025
Talking Taties: We’ve come a long way
Taties get a bad press when it comes to soil. If we were to assume nothing had changed since the ‘bed-till to death and blather everything with Temik’ days of the 1990s, perhaps it’d be…
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27th August 2025
Smith’s Soapbox: No profiting from perversity
I know I’m not the only one who won’t remember 2025 for its benign weather. The scale of this meteorological adversity is neatly illustrated by the accompanying image of my neighbour’s maize…
