Insight Focus
- In this series, we’re following farmers around the world.
- We’ll look at what they’re up to on the farm, hear their concerns, and celebrate their triumphs.
- Here’s the link to the farmers’ bios in case you missed them.
What’s Happening on the Farm?
Like the rest of Britain, we closed for 4 days to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. The crop continued growing and the Good Lord sent rain in between. We’re now back at work mending things so that they can be broken again in about four weeks’ time when the harvest is likely to start of the whole-crop rye.
Deliveries of wheat from harvest ’21 continue and, as the sheds empty, we are cleaning them down to start again
Much planning is going on for the coming year/s, as well as a very large drink consumed when the fertiliser industry published the new price for ammonium nitrate. I also sat down for a while to get over the shock. CF Fertilizers announced they were closing down 50% of UK domestic production for good which allowed the BBC to report a serious threat to bubbles in beer.
Sad news, we lost Farm Cat. But happy news, someone abandoned 4 kittens a few days later so we will have to fill in new forms for DEFRA so that our livestock numbers read correctly when we are inspected. Where would we be without bureaucracy?
At What Stage are the Crops?
The wheat is about to start flowering, the sugar beet is growing very fast with weed control done well and likely to meet across the rows shortly. Maize is following sugar beet and I’d rather not discuss spring barley, which seems to be ploughing its own furrow as far as contributing to our profit and loss
Big Concerns
These don’t change from what I’ve previously discussed and there comes a point where you have to go out and do the day job. But English farming is still seriously threatened by government policy.
Ambitions for the Year
To understand sugar and the pricing of it. If anyone can help, please send messages.
Other Insights That May Be of Interest
Ask the Analyst: Why is the Sugar White Premium So High?
Why Brazil’s ICMS Tax Matters to the Ethanol, Sugar Markets
Explainers That May Be of Interest
