This Week in Farming: Contractor charges and beef upheaval

Welcome to another edition of This Week in Farming, your regular round-up of the best FW content from the past seven days.

But first, how about coming to a brand new Farmers Weekly event next month?

Transition Live will bring farmers, researchers, policymakers and industry specialists together for lively discussions on adapting businesses to cope with changes to support payments.

Hope to see you there.

Now, on with the show.

Transition Special

In our quarterly Transition supplement this week we bring you the latest big-picture thinking on adapting your business to be fit for the future.

Articles include a detailed look at how to set up a machinery sharing syndicate and a discussion on the pitfalls and positives of generating non-farm income.

Perhaps most importantly, if you feel like you need to do something but don’t know where to begin, there’s a guide on doing just that.

Beef sector upheaval

How do beef farmers feel about the future of their sector? That was among the questions we set out to answer in a recent survey to which more than 1,000 of you responded.

In my editorial I draw the conclusion that perhaps too many farmers are building business that are too reliant on their own sacrifices – setting them up to fail.

We also convened an expert roundtable from across the beef industry to discuss the findings, with sustainability a key part of their discussion too.

Red Tractor latest

Was the first domino pushed this week in an attempted palace coup at Red Tractor?

Deputy editor Abi Kay’s story on the beef and lamb sector board’s support for a vote of no confidence in the executive makes interesting reading, but it is not yet clear how much impact it will have.

In other regulatory news, dairy farmers will start to see their milk contracts updated from this July after parliament passed new rules on what terms and conditions are permitted within them.

Focus on grass

With the new financial year just started for many and grass season getting under way, many contractors will have updated their prices.

Compare what your locals are charging with the national average in the always-useful NAAC survey results, which break it down by job type.

In our grass kit special this week we take a look at two nifty overseas innovations, a swath steamer from the United States and a powered clamp sheeter on a Dutch farm which promises to save a lot of dirty work – at a price.

Who’s up and who’s down?

Some upward movement in the wheat markets this week may be putting a small spring in the step of some growers, with markets editor Charlie Reeve’s report noting the grim reasons why.

Feeling down this week will be farm safety campaigners.

Strenuous efforts by many of farming’s finest spokespeople down the years, and myriad different initiatives and campaigns, have failed to reduce farming’s fatality rate, with May 2023 seeing 11 fatalities – the worst single month in 15 years.

All I can say is – keep trying. Who knows how many more it would have been without your efforts?

Listen to the FW Podcast

Don’t forget to listen to the latest edition of the Farmers Weekly podcast with Johann Tasker and Sandy Kirkpatrick online.

Alternatively, bring us with you in the cab by downloading it from your usual podcast platform.