Comment – The lengths some people go to..

As much as the next vainglorious man, I like to sit up and watch the election results roll in overnight. As if my feelings on the matter have any impact! But this year, it was different.

With one of my other hats, I am the Secretary General of the European Society of Agricultural Engineers, and this last week was their AgEng2024 Conference at the Agricultural University of Athens, Greece. So finally we got to meet the rest of the board in person and spent a very enjoyable few days finding out about the latest innovation and technology coming down the track towards farmers worldwide. Professional matters apart, many questions were directed to the Brits regarding the election and the UK’s imminent tilt to the left.

Everyone I spoke to, be they Greek, German, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Danish, Polish or French were sad to have lost the UK from the EU due to Brexit and very concerned about the shift hard right/hard left (delete as appropriate) in their own countries.

On reflection and return to a mere 9.5 degrees C late on Friday night, the same themes emerged from both the technical aspects of the conference, and the personal contacts made and maintained, of labour challenges, solutions to cope with climate change, resource efficiency and carbon neutral farming, plus the willingness to work together and improve humanities lot. Let’s raise a glass of ouzo to that!

Back here, the wheelbarrow has been subject to its monthly emptying and the numbers are in for June ’24 – with 113mm of rainfall, its well up on the 73mm of ’23, neck and neck with the 122mm in ’22, ’21 saw a mere 40mm and ’20 topped the league with 201mm.

Who knows what the next month will bring, but crops are looking better now, and one slightly over optimistic east Anglian arable farmer tucked into his barley at 34% moisture earlier this week, for a (very) brief run!

Have a good week, oh and I didn’t stay up for the results on Thursday night. Lesson learnt.

Andy