The killer question doing the rounds seems to be are we bracing ourselves for Brexit by changing our farm management?
Leaving the EU does now feel rather imminent. The crops we are starting to plant this autumn could well be sold after March 2019 when the two years of triggering article 50 will be up. But I can’t say I’ve made any big changes to prepare for this Brave New World we are driving towards like a ploughman working a furrow up a longish field.
Admittedly I didn’t buy the neighbouring block of 80ha that came up for sale last spring. But at £20,000/ha the referendum result didn’t make me any more or less likely to make the purchase. I haven’t stopped investing in the farm, though, because the crystal ball is showing even less clear pictures than usual.
We’ve just replaced our main tractor and that machine will be auto-steering its way well into the post-Brexit world. Meanwhile our politicians in charge of Brexit negotiations seem to be worryingly lacking in direction. They assure us they’ve got maps to take us forward but you suspect like the world’s worst sat-nav there’s a few blind alleys to reverse out of in front of them.
Meanwhile, back on farm I’m getting to grips with the automated tricks our new tractor is capable of. Us farmers are fast becoming tractor programmers who drive the machine to the field and let it take over. I heard a recent tale of a driver in Lincs who felled an in-field pylon while reading a magazine with his machine on auto steer. 45,000 homes were duly cut off from their electricity supply but mercifully no one was injured. Hearing of these sorts of incidents you do wonder if there will soon be a requirement to fit sensors to detect hazards which would automatically shut things down so as to prevent damaging collisions. If only our politicians could be fitted with similar software.
Cool crop
My daughters are going through what could be described as a ‘metropolitan’ phase living in Manchester and Bristol respectively. Therein they not only pick up trendy eating habits but also fashionable pronunciation. According to them there’s something called ‘keenwah’ that city types eat as it’s delicious, nutritious and good for you. It took me a few minutes to work out they were referring to Quinoa which I explained to them was actually pronounced ‘kwinoah’. Their response was to laugh uproariously at my country bumpkin ways while amusing each other how they would both now tell their trendy friends how their silly old dad tried to refer to their new-found superfood.
Undeterred I did ask them how urban types pronounced ‘Quick’ or ‘Quill’ and would these ever get confused with acts of violence. I also had to point out if they ever tried to get to Genoa, Goa or Samoa then goodness knows where they would end up. But they were still less than impressed. So I took them down to one of my wild bird mix strips which this year has turned into a jungle of six foot Quinoa dwarfing out the millet and sorghum. I didn’t even mention my super-crop was grown without pesticides in case it made me just too uber-cool. And then there’s my conservation credentials. There could well be some over-fed little brown jobs hanging round the farm this winter too fat the fly.
