Comment – A sea change?
Speculation alert.
The phrase ‘what happens over there, ends up over here‘ usually applies to weather and politics, be it from the East or the West.
Yours truly is quite interested therefore in the make up of the new European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development (AGRI), which was confirmed yesterday. No fewer than 12 of the 49 members are farmers, three of whom are organic (& Austrian Green MEP’s), one sheep farmer (of course) and selection of others from around the community. Squinting westward shows that thirty one of the top US lawmakers are farmers, with 23 in congress and the balance in the Senate*.
So I reckon given that no 10’s mood music is very firmly trying to align with the EU, this has got to be promising for the UK’s farmers. However if you peruse the FW’s analysis of key rural MP’s (https://www.fwi.co.uk/news/meet-the-new-crop-of-mps-representing-rural-areas ) its not so clear.
Closer to home harvest, and occasional monsoons, proceed and certainly here in the upland arable areas crops are looking better, sheep are weighing well (in fact I drew some for market a couple of days ago.. unheard of!) and second cuts, plus some well needed round bales are being gobbled up. Elsewhere the 5 year rolling milk average price is at it highest point.
My point is that despite business for the trade not being as good, the fundamentals remain, and we should take heart from the EU’s renewed interest in farming. We are still one harvest away from starvation.
Oh and on the subject of the devastating global IT outage last week, I can reassure readers that the Lucas keys remained in the key box by the office, and that the key infrastructure of the farming business remains robust and completely untouched by the antivirus software update!
Have a great week.
Andy
PS, the picture is evidence of a least one nearly fit lamb!
