Gwyn Jones Farm Diary: Should we be more upbeat about agriculture?

The wildlife seem to have plenty to eat as there is little activity around the garden as yet, apart from a roe deer and her teenage offspring helping themselves to anything they fancy on a fairly regular basis, despite my efforts to keep them out.

A record number of one of the smallest songbirds paid us a visit last year. Flying as far as from the Arctic city of Murmansk in Russia, the Siskin are tiny, agile finches, standing out amongst our winter visitors due to their slender sharply pointed bills which allows them to extract seed from spruce, pine and other conifers. 63, 815 of these little birds were caught and ringed, which is the highest annual total since records began more than a century ago. Some remain all year round, but numbers swell in December as they arrive from Scandinavia and northern Europe.

Having read and listened to all the doom and gloom around agriculture, it was fortuitous that I came across a Farmers Weekly podcast titled ‘Should we be more upbeat about agriculture’? I normally avoid podcasts like the plague, but thought this one merited a listen as it is so rare to hear positive things said about our industry. It was in fact Sir Peter Kendall, a good friend of mine, who I served with as Vice-President (when he was president) of the NFU and at AHDB, and ‘cheerful’ Charlie Ireland, of Jeremy Clarkson’s Farm.

They were both at the Ceres Rural Agri-Strategy Conference and were a complete breath of fresh air. They talked of the increased number of students on agriculture courses, and the opportunities available in the future as we enter a subsidy free environment. They both quite rightly acknowledged that cereal farmers are struggling right now with some having a rough time of it. On farm payments and Inheritance tax, they discussed the government’s debts and the pressing need for far greater spending on defence.

However, they said with new technology there will be better times ahead and discussed opportunities, even in arable, and that crops look better now than they have done for a decade, so not all is lost. Cash-flow will be tight they acknowledged, and prices are low and it has been a tough year. As farmers we must all make changes where we can, however difficult that may be, was the message.

Cereal markets are still falling, largely due to global production of 837.81 million tonnes of wheat, up 9 million tonnes on November’s report and a new record high. Canada at 40m tonnes, a record high, Argentia at 24m tonnes a record high, with higher production estimates for Russia, the EU and India. This has resulted in an 18-month low for wheat prices.

It’s the same in global dairy markets as the EU, USA, New Zealand, and Argentina are all up, with only Australia in decline. UK dairy farmers continue to deliver incredible volumes, but savage cuts are likely to take effect in the New Year as farmers take action. Processors are struggling with the sheer volume of milk and are desperate to limit supply before the spring flush.

This last spring a great deal of milk ended up in anaerobic digestion, spread on the land or in slurry pits according to experts, and there is no money in that! With cream prices now very low and should that continue into the spring, there is some talk of it being cheaper not to pick up the milk from some farms. No doubt as price cuts bite, and the feed to milk price ratio changes, milk supply will slow down, but there is a long way to go.

For both dairy and cereal farmers, perspective, and resilience will be the key words for 2026. Markets are becoming more volatile, whilst food security is about trade at global and local level. We are asked these days to produce healthier food in a more sustainable way, quite a challenge in this brave new world of no subsidies and volatility. We will need to be aware of the drivers for change in markets, which of course includes protectionism, nationalism, geo-political tensions as well as the usual supply and demand which is still the main driver.

We can add weather to this of course and we have seen what wet, dry and hot weather can do to production, although farmers cope remarkably well with weather having done it for generations. As usual, those who do things well to a high standard will thrive, and those who have borrowing under control, but have made wise investments are also well placed.

Our roads around our area have improved this year with proper repairs carried out whilst roads were temporarily closed, the only way to do things properly. There is always more to do, and I expect that the limiting factor is money. However, it is good to see proper repairs carried out, rather than the usual pot-hole filling which lasts no time at all. I expect that if there is a very hard frost, some further damage will be done, but for now it’s good to see the improvement.

There has been a great deal in the press lately about London drivers in the countryside. This is more about city drivers venturing down country lanes without much knowledge or experience. Country folk can reverse and find it odd that any driver cannot easily do so, indeed having just driven by a passing place, the inability to reverse often results in a local driver reversing a great distance to the next passing place.

My father had a very good friend who delighted in abusing city drivers he met on the narrow single-track roads of Snowdonia. He was an exceptional man, fought in the war and escaped five times from prison camps, could speak several languages, a keen poacher of fish, a teacher, and an absolute nightmare on the roads. He would roar right up to any car he met in his Renault 4, hooting the horn and gesticulating wildly for the hapless city driver to reverse. With blind panic adding to the challenge of reversing the car, the unlucky hapless driver would usually end up in a ditch.

I see that the earliest evidence of humans making a fire, which was in Suffolk 400,000 years ago, shifts our understanding of when humans made fire on demand. This was previously thought to be around 50,000 years ago, where evidence was previously found in France. According to excited archaeologists, this is hailed as among the most remarkable archaeological discoveries on British soil. Do they not realise that this was the start of climate change? These were surely the culprits of all our troublesome lives today?

A group of stone age neanderthal humans struck a flint axe head, against a nugget of iron pyrite near Barnham, which apparently sparked a revolution, transforming human evolution, helping to re-populate the British Isles after a vast ice age. This resulted in cooked meat, heat and light, and defence against predators. Suffolk in those days connected to Europe by a land bridge. Were they locals, or were they those dastardly Europeans who walked over and struck the first spark?