Hopefully those in power will realise what a massive lying, misinformation, mistake Brexit was – Sutton St James farmer

In our latest Word On The Ground column, Sutton St James farmer Tony Gent explains what is at the forefront of food producers’ minds...

Uppermost in most farmers and food producer’s minds now are economics and future confidence, particularly with government policy in such a mess of mixed messages of lots of rhetoric and no clear policy.

All issues and institutions from the NHS/social care to potholes are suffering from under funding and there is no doubt the Brexit debacle has had a major impact on costs, with its cause of increased inflation, lack of confidence and investment.

With record borrowing Government has its back against the wall having to control all spending as we fall deeper and deeper into the Brexit economic hole, hopefully the penny will drop with those in power, and they will realise along with lots of Brexiteers what a massive lying, misinformation, mistake it was.

At the farm level the challenge is to evolve your farming system in the light of reduced support, increased costs, more uncertain prices and seemingly more weather extremes as climate change effects creep in.

Also, to farm in a more sustainable way with attention to the environment, public health, pollution, water usage, soil improvement and carbon sequestration.

There are only two options to address the emerging gap between cost and returns is to increase output, mostly with maximising inputs to try to achieve higher and higher yields or to look for ways to cut costs.

On our farm which is on heavier soil growing all basic combinable crops we feel a maximising yields policy is far too risky where the weather usually has a big effect on crop output.

The problem is that you have to maximise input 100% of the time against a probability of it only resulting in increased output for at best two years in three.

Also, impossible weed infestations of black grass can only be controlled with proper rotation and necessary largely unprofitable break crops with conventional tillage methods.

Our now 15 years of reduced tillage has certainly helped to cope with the pressures we are now seeing with massively improved soil biology requiring much less inputs in so many ways.

Savings from moving lots of soil around with tillage is obvious, but with the increase in natural retained nutrition our fertiliser needs are 25-to-30% less and our reliance on pesticides are much reduce.

Also reduced economic pressure allows us to farm a much more sustainable way, with at least average yields for our soil type, proper break crops, improving our soil and the sequestration of carbon which helps our environment and attracts a further income stream also.