News

June 2020 – Diverse businesses better placed to prosper in post-covid countryside

“Up horn, down corn”  is an old agricultural saying that, like many old agricultural sayings, is as relevant today as it has ever been.

It is, or course, a clarion call for the benefits of mixed farming, highlighting how the fortunes of the various sectors are rarely in step and how tough times in one often coincide with periods of relative prosperity in another.

June 2020 – Coronavirus crisis brings succession planning into focus

The Covid-19 crisis is likely to prompt more conversations about succession than ever before.  Mark Weaver of CLM considers why – and shares some tips on securing your farm or estate’s long term future by making this potentially painful process happen smoothly and effectively.

May 2020 – Agricultural policy could be rewritten

The Sun isn’t my usual paper of choice, but I couldn’t help but notice a huge advert on the front of it recently.

“Thank you to British Farmers”  the full page message from the supermarket Morrisons proclaimed, recognising the sterling work done by farmers keeping food on the nation’s tables during the coronavirus crisis.

April 2020 – BNG could be an acronym that farmers learn to love

We’ve already got a lot of acronyms in farming.

There’s BPS, NVZ, GMs, SSSI, AONBs and the RPA just for starters.  We’ll need to get used to a new one, though – BNG.

It stands for Biodiversity Net Gain and it might just prove to be one of the most important concepts some farmers can be involved with over the coming years.

March 2020 – Farmers, the Caretakers of £1 trillion asset

Farming has received some bad press recently, which I felt the wider effects of while chatting with a grazier who was rounding up escaped sheep.

We suspected the poor animals had probably had enough of being pushed around the field by various dog walkers and had attempted the ovine equivalent of The Great Escape. 

February 2020 – Is your let property fit for human habitation?

In all the ‘excitement’ of Brexit over recent months, you would be forgiven for missing a recent and important new piece of legislation relating to let property, which came into force last March.

‘The Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018’ received Royal Assent on 20 December 2018 and has amended the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985.

January 2020 – Can we ignore climate change?

Cast your mind back twenty years to the dawn of the new millennium. The world was gripped with excitement and a sense of optimism marred only by predictions of planes falling from the skies, trains grinding to a halt and banks in meltdown as a result of a Y2K software bug.

December 2019 – From Uncertainty to Opportunity

Charlotte Smith and her panel of experts were on fine form at the South of England Farming Conference at Ardingly on November 13.  One of the strong early memories of my working  career was attending this conference with Tim Calcutt. It has been a regular diary fixture ever since and it is matter of great pride that CLM is now one of the sponsors.

November 2019 – Act now as clocks tick down on new support system

The report into a pilot of results-based payments for agri-environment schemes, hot off the press, makes for fascinating reading.

Published last month by Natural England and the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority, it outlines the findings into a two-year trial featuring 34 farmers across 230ha.

October 2019 – If a job’s worth doing……..

When faced with a deadline, there are a number of common responses.

1. Get the job done as quickly as possible without much thought to what you are setting out to achieve.

2. Procrastinate, which often leads to missing the deadline or simply turns into a slower way of arriving at response 1.