BY GEORGIE COSSINS

Never before have I spent the Easter break relaxing at home with my family. Normally the holidays are spent busily sowing the remainder our spring barley crop. Mid-March is the optimum time of year to establish our spring barley, but with the wet weather, our fields remain unsown: some have at least been ploughed, but all look painfully waterlogged. Unfortunately this does not give a good prognosis for this year’s harvest. As a result of the late-sowing, there will be a smaller growing window, and yields in the summer are likely to be lower than normal.

Even the cows, who would have normally been turned out to grass by now, remain in their winter routine. They look longingly over the gates as they, like us, are all getting frustrated with the weather. They are keen to take their first bite of spring grass, but if we did turn them out now, our fields would quickly turn into giant mud baths and we would lose a lot of grass. Luckily we still have enough silage and straw stocked away in the sheds, but only enough to last for a couple more weeks. It has been one of the toughest winter and spring seasons of my farming career thus far.

These rainy days do however give us a chance to catch up on the paperwork in the office. The deadline for our Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) application (aka farm subsidy) is fast approaching, so we have been working on finalising that. Over the winter I have been to a couple of meetings outlining a future agricultural policy for us here in the UK. It has been suggested to farmers that these “subsidies” are going to be phased out in their current form and more environmental schemes will be put in place.

These kinds of subsidies were first introduced in something like their present form after the Second World War in order to boost food production and make food affordable as well as available for all across Europe. In the UK, they have had an enormous effect on how agriculture has grown and evolved over the last half-century. In changing subsidy policies, the government will have to be very careful not to suddenly debilitate the farming sector which is so central to the nation’s health and culture.