Farm Diary

ANOTHER year gone! It doesn't seem five minutes since writing '07 on cheques was new and challenging, and now, very soon, we must all get used to '08.

Will the events of 2007 influence what happens in 2008? I suspect that it will initially, but 'events' will then take us on a different route, and there is no 'satellite navigation' to guide us to the destination of our choice.

Agriculture was taken on a roller coaster in 2007.

We started the year with rising grain prices and a huge campaign by NFU/WI across the country 'The Great Milk Debate' highlighting the losses dairy farmers were making yet again in 2007. This was followed by higher grain prices, avian flu in Norfolk, talk of movement in milk prices due to world demand and shrinking supply. Hilary Benn (vegetarian) is appointed as Secretary of State for the Environment, the Environment and the Environment (and something about agriculture and food?)

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Huge floods then followed in the summer, sky high grain prices, milk prices shooting up, and then the landlords of Pirbright Laboratories through lack of basic maintainance (to the drains), allowed foot and mouth virus to escape into the countryside of Surrey. This was cleared up in reasonable time, as blue tongue arrived in East Anglia on a 'plume' of wind packed with midges from Holland.

For full feature see West Sussex Gazette December 27