Comment – A direction of travel

This week has been hectic, alongside securing rapidly dwindling national supplies of heating oil, I had the pleasure of driving an all electric tractor. Now this wasn’t some diminutive eastern yard machine, much beloved by the market gardeners and horse fraternity, no, this was a red blooded electric version of a readily available proper farm tractor, I can tell you, the shock of the quiet, when mowing with the PTO @ 540rpm, and the only noise is the mower, is quite something. In fact, it’s akin to the first time a Prius snuck up behind me in a car park.

As befits being a member of the agricultural machinery press, I did ‘rough up’ the manufacturers representatives just a little bit, with my best ‘Paxman’esque questions. Something like this ‘Come on chaps, do you really expect folk in their right mind to pay £XXXX for this, when I can have a lovely Indian equivalent output machine for a fraction of the price?’

But then, it dawned on me. Customers need zero tailpipe emissions tractors for a whole host of sensible reasons. It’s fairly unlikely (especially after this piece of biased nonsense) that we will be seeing one with the Wuffler on the back anytime soon in these parts, not least because it’s still raining. But we were reliably informed that there are significant numbers of customers (for instance within city low emissions zones) needing electric tractors for all kinds of routine grounds care and maintenance tasks. Plus they are willing to pay proper money for proper machines. We also drifted onto the fertile ground of diesel alternatives further up the hp brackets, with the methane/hydrogen VHS/Betamax debate still playing out, time will tell. Altogether a fascinating day.

Elsewhere the market for Urea has spiked, with nearly half of the world’s urea exports sourced from facilities on the Persian Gulf, its no surprise. Have a look here.

Closer to home, sheep have been clipped (translation – sheared), and given a few dry days (I know you don’t believe me) and a working baler, who knows what might happen?

Right, off walk the dogs, have a good week!

Andy