It has been a season of contrasts. Having moved across from East Suffolk, where I am more than familiar with dry conditions, I had not expected to meet them again quite so squarely during my first harvest season with Bradford Estates.
The future of food production in the UK is inextricably linked to available water resource. When we talk about this, our first thought is naturally around sustainable water storage and application. Whilst it is not reinventing the wheel as it is no different to traditional mixed farming, there is a need to keep soils covered be that in a cover crop or indeed grass, to add organic matter to aid water retention.
As resistant ryegrass becomes a more prominent feature of arable rotations, thought needs to be given to more circular farming that sees control throughout the rotation and management of potential challenges.
For our own part, what the season has highlighted yet again is the need to consider the wider irrigation infrastructure on the Estates. Should current weather trends continue, a greater degree of resilience will be required. Our growing partners will have pumped around 330,000m³ of water when the season ends. Given the level of heat, much of the water applied went to maintaining crop condition rather than driving growth. The irrigation teams put in a great many hours, and it was an excellent team effort throughout.
The regulatory and storage picture also merits attention. Hands-off-flow restrictions on abstraction licences have increased steadily through the summer and on-farm reservoir storage has been drawn down, so winter refill will be monitored closely. We are reviewing whether additional storage on the Estates can be justified.
On that theme, the Government’s August announcement of up to £15 million towards on-farm reservoirs, to be delivered through a reopened Water Management Grant, is a welcome signal that water storage is at last being treated as infrastructure rather than an optional extra. Updated planning guidance for on-farm reservoirs is expected this autumn, which should bring some useful clarity. Set against the scale of storage the country actually needs, however, £15 million will not go far: it will fund a fraction of the schemes required, the bulk of the capital cost will still sit with those promoting them, and planning and abstraction reform will need to move at the same pace. The test is whether this becomes a sustained programme rather than a one-off response to a dry summer.
Turning to establishment of the 2027 crops, we took the decision to hold off sowing oilseed rape into dry seedbeds in recent weeks. At the time of writing, we have had 33mm of rain in the last 24 hours, which should give us the conditions we need for germination.
— Duncan Fleming, Farm Director