My farming week

The Welsh Government has formed a new cabinet after the recent election and I found some of the appointments interesting and slightly concerning, especially around the portfolios that affect this industry.

Farmers capture carbon for a living. We must be part of the solution to climate change. What’s more, as well as saving the planet, we might be able to earn a few quid in the process. But a frenzy of opportunistic corporate ’greenwashing’ is putting all that at risk.

In line with the Boris road map, Cornwall was due to reopen on April 12 and promptly did so.

We are at that stage in the election cycle when seemingly a blind eye is turned to a massacre of trees and the postie’s bag is heavier than usual.

The poster covered the whole rear window of the hatchback. ‘I back the farmers’, it declared. Sat at a traffic light in north London, my heart skipped a beat. Alas, looking closer, they didn’t mean us.

For some farmers, they are dipping their toes into a new, exciting era for UK agriculture.

As I sit and write this, the children have returned to school.

It is great to see our oystercatchers, lapwings and curlews have all returned in the past few weeks as the season gradually changes from winter to spring, and hopefully the next to return will be the cuckoo and the swallows.

I have always been in admiration of progressive farmers and their rotational grazing, use of technology and, of course, the latest improvements of weatherproof clothing from New Zealand.