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The cereal harvest is mostly over in France although I saw a combine cutting oilseed rape as I drove down though Normandy and standing crops of wheat and rape on my return a week later. From the coast it was largely pasture and maize for silage but as I ventured further south, the fields opened up with more arable stubbles. Once in the Loire Valley, my destination, vineyards were the predominant land use, interspersed with cereal stubbles, maize and sorghum for the cattle’s winter rations and sunflowers. One tends to forget that, judging by English standards, farming is large parts of France is still very mixed with numerous cattle.
The sunflowers were variable, some in full flower, others yet in bud. I was told that this is due to sowing date, the farmers vary the time of planting to spread the harvest. There were fields showing bright yellow, the huge flower heads all pointing in the same direction like columns of mediaeval monks with their cowls over their heads processing morosely to Prime, the office around dawn.
There have been some fundamental changes to all of our lives over the past six years, the Brexit referendum, the Covid pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It is hard to overestimate the impact of these events.
The most obvious result has been inflation bringing a cost of living crisis, particularly in food and energy. It is shocking that, according to the latest figures, almost ten million people in this country are struggling to feed themselves adequately and, for many, it is a choice between food and warmth. Fortunately, the weather has been exceptionally mild this autumn but there are months of winter still to come.
Food prices rose by 16.2% in the year to October but the cost of many basic foodstuffs has risen far higher than that. Milk is 65% more expensive than a year ago, eggs 22%, pasta 34%, flour and cereals 28%. Problems started in the fruit and vegetable sector when the Brexit vote resulted in far fewer European workers coming to the UK for harvest, resulting in crops rotting in the fields. This year, the situation has been exacerbated by summer drought bringing poor yields, especially for root vegetables. The shortage of labour also had an impact on other areas of the food and hospitality industry.
Covid brought its own problems, particularly for hospitality, with knock-on effects throughout the food chain. Then the war in Ukraine disrupted trade in goods from oil and gas to wheat, oilseed and fertiliser. The impact was profound with rampant inflation of costs in energy, food, transport and labour. The increase in the cost of nitrate fertiliser, from less than £300 to over £800 per tonne, pushed up the price of wheat and other crops. That raised the price of animal feed and thus the cost of dairy products, meat and eggs.
Autumn is a glorious time of year. Grass has recovered from the heat of summer and looks green rather than straw, whilst trees and shrubs exhibit vibrant colours of red, orange and brown. Of course, it can also be a time of storms with heavy rain and gales as the daylight dwindles and nights turn colder.
The colours of autumn vary with the weather. The green of plants is due to the chlorophyll, the wonderful substance that can absorb sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce sugars and emit oxygen. At this time of year, deciduous plants are beginning to close down for winter, brought on by falling temperatures and shorter daylength. Lower temperatures destroy chlorophyll but the leaves contain other pigments including yellow xanthophyll, orange carotene and red anthocyanin, which come to the fore as the chlorophyll declines. On warm days as the sugars become more concentrated more anthocyanin is produced enhancing the red colour. Hard frosts however, destroy the other pigments too and the leaves soon fall off. The best autumn colours can be seen in a period of warm sunny days and cold, but not frosty nights.
2022 may be an exceptional vintage for English wines. 2018 was the best year so far but this harvest may match or even surpass it. The reason, of course, was the long hot summer; indeed the extent of climate change is gradually turning the UK into a primary wine producing country with success in international competition.
We have come a long way in thirty years. It was thought that growing grapes in this country was a risky business because of the threat of late frosts and cool damp summers, ideal for the spread of mildew. The varieties grown thirty years ago were mostly German style varieties, the most popular grown in 1990 was Müller-Thurgau. But the warming climate has allowed more French style varieties to be grown, this year the most popular are Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, best known as the blend for champagne.
The recent record temperature and the prospect of a drought being declared set me thinking of the practical implication of climate change for farmers. The first six months of this year have been the driest since 1976 with February the only month when rainfall was above average.
I vividly remember 1976. The previous Michaelmas, I had taken on the tenancy of Cannon Heath Farm, an extra 1,000 acres on the south side of Watership Down. Full of enthusiasm and with a large bank loan, the harvest of 1976 was disappointing, to put it mildly. Harvest was over by the end of July and most crops achieved little more than half the budgeted yield. At least the cost of harvest was low and the drier was redundant! The planned investment into a breeding ewe flock had to be scaled back significantly.
It was not as hot as this year, but the warm sunny days continued for more than two months, unlike this year when, the brief heatwave apart, there have been cooler cloudy days too, just no rain! As I write this, combines are cutting winter wheat and oilseed rape, even winter beans. Reports of winter barley were reasonably good but it is too soon to get much idea of the rest of harvest. Those who have given an indication of winter wheat suggest that it has held up remarkably well with little damage to yield or quality caused by drought. That may be because there was some rain at the end of May, a critical time.
What impact will climate change have on arable crops over the coming years? In theory, a higher level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may boost yields but only if there are no other limiting factors. Milder damp winters should extend the growing season, vital if harvest is to come earlier. It may not matter if crops ripen in late June and early July if there was more growth in winter and spring, although day length plays its part too in crop development.
There have been new crops grown over the past fifty years or, at least, a larger area, and this will surely continue, whilst geographic range moves northwards. Oilseed rape was brought in by the Romans, it is thought, and there are certainly records of it being grown in the 14th century. But it was almost unknown on British farms until the mid-1970s when it suddenly became very popular. Very large areas were grown until neonicotinoid insecticides were banned after several years of restrictions, and decimation by flea beetle attack persuaded many farmers to give up growing the crop. The area is increasing again as agronomists learn how to combat flea beetle attack without using insecticides.
Rapeseed is one of the most widely used cooking oils, another being sunflower oil. The area where sunflowers are grown has moved north through France, could we be growing them here? Planted at the end of April, they should be ripe to harvest by the end of September. One report suggested that late frost could take a toll but another said that they are relatively frost tolerant. Certainly, soil temperature needs to be above 6°C when the seed is planted so a cold spring might be a problem. They need relatively little fertiliser but are somewhat susceptible to disease, particularly sclerotina. Yields of 5 tonnes per hectare have been achieved in France and Germany.
Whilst speaking at the AGM of the Berkshire CPRE recently, I was asked why we import soya from Brazil, encouraging farmers to destroy the rain forest. In 2019, some 3.5 million tonnes of soya beans, either whole beans or oil and meal, were imported, 65% from South America. 75% is used in livestock rations but there is also a growing market for human consumption. When soya is crushed, the result is 20% oil and 80% cake or meal which is fed to animals. With its combination of amino acids, it is high quality protein, unmatched by the peas or beans that are currently produced here. So could we grow soya in the UK?
A report published in 2017 claimed that 5,000 ha were grown that year with the prospect of 10,000 ha the following year. So it would appear to be becoming more widespread, although I have not heard of any farmer growing the crop. As a legume, it could be a valuable restorative option, providing high quality oil and protein whilst reducing imports. Like sunflowers, it is sown in late April and harvested in late September or October. As most soya grown in South America is GM, the beans grown here might command a premium.
Maize is another crop that was rarely seen on British farms until the 1970s but is now grown widely, ensiled for animal fodder, as feedstock for anaerobic digestion plants or even a little for grain. Perhaps the biggest success has been vines with a huge increase in the area and range in recent years. Our sparkling wines have even competed successfully with champagne! These trends will surely continue.
The problem for grazing livestock is the lack of grass growth in a summer drought. It is ironic that ruminants may be able to graze through the winter but may need supplementary fodder in mid-summer! Lucerne and sainfoin, both legumes and drought resistant, may be more widely grown.
The combination of climate change and the skill of plant breeders may well result in a broader range of crops grown in the UK, especially when gene editing becomes more widely used to speed up the development of new varieties. One risk is that climate change may also bring new pests and diseases to threaten crop production. But farming is remarkably resilient and there will be opportunities to exploit.
Flaming June, so often a damp squib, seems to be living up to its name this year. This is the time of long evenings, Wimbledon, Ascot, Henley, strawberries and cream and haymaking. Not that the last is so important these days with silage and haylage having largely superseded traditional haymaking.
The weather is critical at this stage of crop growth. Yes, there needs to be moisture but cereals need warm sunshine now more than rainfall. But a very dry spring brought fears of drought before a wet May came at the right time to moisten parched soils. Looking back over the years, May is often a dry month with occasional warm sunny spells followed by a disappointingly cool damp June. But cereal crops prefer the opposite and the best yields come after a damp May.
If we are to feed the world’s population, we must produce as much food over the next fifty years as we have done throughout the history of humanity, all without wrecking the planet. With priorities of climate change mitigation and reversing the decline of wildlife as well as providing food, can that be achieved by farming without the use of chemicals, synthetic fertilisers and pesticides? That was the question for debate at the recent meeting of the Countryside Forum.
The answer is no or, at least, not yet. Scientists are making huge strides in research but it may be twenty years before we can produce enough food without extensive use of nitrate fertiliser and pesticides. Global yields would fall by 40% if we were to cut out pesticide use now, 45% from weeds, 30% from insects, 20% from disease and 5% from other causes. But, by exploiting emerging technologies and integrated pest management, we can reduce their use and impact on the environment.
The world has changed dramatically over the past few years. Only time will tell how far the tectonic plates have shifted and whether life will ever be the same again. In the UK, the pressure has been felt particularly in the countryside and the food chain.
The first seismic shock came in 2016 when we voted to leave the European Union, although the impact came later on our subsequent secession. That meant that we left the Common Agricultural Policy and had to design a new farming and countryside policy from scratch. This has been a very slow process and we still have few details other than that direct payments are being phased out and, instead, farmers will be paid public money for public goods. This is the most fundamental shift in policy since the Second World War and will inevitably cause difficulties along the way. Brexit brought major disruption to our trade with the EU, by far our largest trading partner. Some of that disruption has been smoothed over but much of it remains. Another impact of secession was the end of the free movement of labour, which caused huge shortages that persist today due to a totally misguided immigration policy.
The turn of the farming year comes at Michaelmas in late September rather than now. That is the time when harvest yields are reckoned, cropping plans for the coming year implemented. Ewes are flushed to increase ovulation before the tups join them and winter housing is prepared for cattle. And yet it is customary, as Big Ben rings in the new calendar year, to reflect on the twelve months gone and look forward to the seasons to come.
By the time you read this, I expect the combines will be rolling, cutting winter barley somewhere, although it will not be an early harvest. The growing season has been very variable with periods of heavy rain interspersed with drier days. April brought frost and drought and, by the end of the month, plant growth was around three weeks behind a normal season. May was very wet and crops grew very rapidly, resulting in some very lush grass for first cut silage. Then three weeks of warm sunny weather dried the soil up a little before heavy rain returned again in late June and early July. Now the Jet Steam has buckled again to allow the Azores High to establish across the country and summer has returned.
