April 2021

 

Sowing Maize into some very dry ground.

There are new announcements on Net Zero, certainly each week if not every day. As we experience the driest April for some time, it has not rained for ages! We desperately need rain to bulk up silage crops and keep the grazing moving on.
There is no doubt that the climate issue needs to be addressed, however we cant as a country do this on our own. It is good fortune that Mr Trump is now playing golf, but I am not sure that the Chinese are playing golf, and this is a problem. We all have to play our part, and the farming community are ready to do this, however there are a few too many commentators out there telling Mrs Jones that she needs to eat less meat and dairy, and forgetting to mention that Mrs Jones needs to be walking to the school and shops, spend less time flying to exotic destinations, buying less water in bottles when there is something called a tap that delivers a perfectly good product, and Mrs Jones probably needs to buy more local produce to reduce food miles. It also needs to be remembered that those producing meat and dairy products, also sequester carbon being produced by those that drive 50 miles to work and back, and come home to a supper of Californian strawberries. Whichever ever way we look at this it is going to cost. None of this is going to come for free, and there is more commentary that thinks this can be all paid for by extra productivity, but the catch, is that there will be very significant investment needed to attain this productivity. Someone said we need a roadmap, NO we dont! We need some clear thinking.