The market report for week commencing 1st July 2019 gives you Andrew's latest insights into what's happening in the market as harvest draws near. Whilst in Farmchat Andrew chats to farmer Ed Salmon - who is thinking about the future as he approaches the age of 30 and has taken on most of the running of the family farm in Fransham. His father Robert has dealt with succession planning and handed over the reins to the arable side already, whilst he concentrates on the fine details of his grass herbage seed.
This week Ben Bullen from David Bullen Ltd a multi-disciplined, building-surveying and architectural-design company joined Andrew and Ben to chat about opportunities on the farm. Ben shares his thoughts on how we may not know how envied the countryside is how opening up to ideas of glamping, wild swimming and tree-houses might be another diversification to add to your armoury as well as converting barns or small plots of land in the village. Dewing's Ben is ahead of the game with a shed and zip wire in his tree at home and comes under fire for not having shared his sausage products.
They all share a drop of the golden ale Hopping Hare from Badger Brewery in Dorset as the conversation turns to planning and Andrew's own property enterprise.
They all share a drop of the golden ale Hopping Hare from Badger Brewery in Dorset as the conversation turns to planning and Andrew's own property enterprise.
This week we hear from Tom Dye, MD of Albanwise Farming Ltd., who talks about 'good farming'. Tom and Andrew discuss the problems of black grass, how livestock are used in rotation and how the agronomy sector needs to evolve. They also discuss what it takes to recruit and retain the right sort of staff.
In our newly tweaked format, there's no separate Farmchat, but Tom joins Andrew and Webby for a drop of Moongazer's 'Jumper' Norfolk Amber as the conversation moves onto the topic of the Tory leadership contest, the need for strategic planning and one of Andrew's favourite subjects: Coastal erosion.
In our newly tweaked format, there's no separate Farmchat, but Tom joins Andrew and Webby for a drop of Moongazer's 'Jumper' Norfolk Amber as the conversation moves onto the topic of the Tory leadership contest, the need for strategic planning and one of Andrew's favourite subjects: Coastal erosion.
This week Andrew heads over to Mannington to meet up with Organic farmer Keith Pigott. He moved up from London 16 years ago and started up his organic farm where he has had varying success with a variety of different crops. He is sure a more diverse farming approach will be the future and better for the environment than monoculture fields.
This week Andrew is on the search for an ordinary farmer, but quickly realises that Mark Gill aka Sparky is far from ordinary; with a diverse farm including a bio-digester which uses the byproduct of his brother's large dairy herd, plenty of contract work, alongside a very positive approach to engaging with the public.
We are surrounded by barley and so it seemed like a good time to go and find out more about what happens to the grain, much of which is malted around these parts of Norfolk. So this week producer Claire went to meet Bruce Ash who is a beer sommelier at local brewer Moon Gazer. She found out what is involved in what sounds like a dream job and how you become one. She also hears about mash ups, Jumper and their new ginger larger in a can.
This week Andrew has a chat with Nick Hood who farms cattle and mixed arable. Nick talks about his contracting work, diversifications and being chairman of Yaregrain where he works closely with Andrew as board members together. They also chat about the carbon capture advantages of cows and whether he would want his children to take on his farming business.
This week Andrew Dewing gives us some more trading gems in the second of his education series. This time it is on cash settlements, covering the terms of default and the conditions for when to sell and buy back later. As usual, Andrew demystifies these processes with the aim of giving everyone the confidence to get the best price for their crops.
This week producer Claire heads down to the John Innes Centre to meet Dr Laura Dixon. She has uncovered new evidence about the agriculturally important process of vernalisation in a development that could help farmers deal with financially damaging weather fluctuations. Vernalisation is the process by which plants require a prolonged exposure to cold temperature before they transition from the vegetative state to flower. Laura explains that they have discovered vernalisation is influenced by warm conditions as well as cold, and a much wider temperature range than previously thought.
Andrew is back at Wright's Mill for part two of his interview with David Wright, complete with background noise from the odd heavy vehicles passing through. They chat about Brexit and David's legacy - especially his new mill in Harlow that will be opening soon. They also discuss the problems of supply chains and 'no shows' of wheat deliveries, with bakers chomping at the bit for more flour to meet their bread needs.
Today we hear the first of a two-part interview between Andrew and miller David Wright of Wright's Mills based down in Essex. Andrew chats with him about other milling companies, how they show the provenance of their flour and they look at the relationship between millers, traders and farmers. They also cover claims and why they are made, in an attempt to demystify another area of trade.
In this week's feature producer Claire went down to the John Innes Centre to meet up with Brande Wulff to hear about his latest discovery - speed cloning. This new technique is about recruiting resistance genes from wild relatives of crops to make modern crops more resistant to disease and less reliant on pesticides. Claire and Brande manage to find an analogy that involves a donkey's whiskers and a race horse that enables Claire to get her head round this tricky technology that will mean researchers can use laboratory techniques to clone the genes and introduce them into elite varieties of domestic crops to protect them against pathogens and pests such as rusts, powdery mildew and Hessian fly. Brande even gives his take on how Brexit might impact the British wheat supply and how his science might be able to help us.
Paul Temple - chair of AHDB cereal and oilseeds has made the long journey from Yorkshire down to Norfolk to see Andrew. They talk about Paul's work at AHDB and how to instil the appreciation of where food has come from in the next generation. Brexit is a recurring theme, along with the delights of Norfolk over Yorkshire and the downsides of tweeting after two glasses of wine.
Today the tables are turned as Andrew swaps seats to be interviewed by Ben Eagle, presenter of Meet the Farmers podcast. Andrew tells Ben how he set up Dewing Grain and his thoughts on recruiting a top workforce and they discuss the need for diversity within the grain trade by bringing in skills from other sectors, as well as the need to promote the story of British food as we face the prospect of American imports.
This week Andrew meets up with Julian Scott of Clarkson Port Services in Ipswich who oversees the site importing and exporting grain and animal feeds. He explains what it’s like trying to manage the organisation of what goes where, the implications of Brexit for him so far and helps Andrew demystify what happens to grain at the port.
This week producer Claire went to see professor of value chain management Andrew Fearne at the University of East Anglia (UEA). Having heard him do a great talk at the Norfolk Farming Conference (NFC), she went to learn more about what a value chain is compared to a supply chain. Claire tried to find out what Professor Fearne would do if he was a Norfolk farmer growing the typical crops of this area - wheat, barley, sugar beet etc. and was interested by his answer of being more proactive and growing a highly tailored crop. At the NFC many people were talking about his speech afterwards and the apparent revelation that price was far more important that provenance. As Prof. Fearne explains, it's important not to see the consumer as an homogeneous mass and start targeting your crop to your market.
This week we introduce our Education Series, in which Andrew opens up the mysteries of the grain trade on subjects that will be of direct benefit to farmers. In this first masterclass, Andrew explains the world of options: What are they? What can they do for you? How can you use them? Why don't all merchants offer them?
This week Andrew and producer Claire review their recent visit to the Norfolk Farming Conference organised by AF. They realise their age and cynicism and so have interviewed a few young guns from the conference to give a more balanced view. Overall, however, they are very complimentary of a fascinating conference and a good opportunity to catch up with others. They test out their plan for redirecting money to a PR company to promote the good practices of British farmers effectively, revel in Minette Batters' direct approach and reel from Sir John Beddington's climate change slides. They also discuss Andrew Fearne's lively contribution to the conference and realise that food provenance certainly isn't everyone's priority when it comes to choices in the supermarket.
This week Andrew travels to Dublin to meet Phelim Dolan, trading director of Comex McKinnon, to discuss the grain market and to hear a personal opinion of the impact of Brexit on the people of Ireland, the dangers of not sorting out the backstop and the implications if the need for a secure border increases. He gives the Irish perspective and describes how there has been so much blathering about Brexit! They move onto the pluses and minuses of being independent grain traders - swimming about in a pond with lots of bigger fish. Lastly, they discuss the football match that they had been involved in the previous day.
This week Claire is at Norfolk Bluebell Wood Burial Park to meet founder and owner Andrew Morton. The Morton family are Norfolk farmers and when they bought some land with an old wood which had millions of bluebells in, Andrew saw an opportunity. Having done his research in to natural burial parks, he set up his own. It has been a huge challenge and is a long term investment that matches his personal skills as a people-person who loves nature and wildlife and is interested in a sustainable business. To Find out more visit: www.norfolkbluebellwood.co.uk
This week Andrew meets with Scott Wellcome who is Risk Manager and grain sourcing for Goodmills - Europe's largest wheat miller with approximately 2.8 million tonnes of wheat capacity. Scott gives an insight in to what is involved in risk management including price, cash flow, cybercrime, liability and reputation risk management. They talk about the risks that are about this year, there is some footie chat with some varying recall on events and we hear how farmers are all risk managers.
This week Andrew is over at AF (formerly Anglian Famers) to meet with CEO Jon Duffy. They talk about AF, how his first two years there have been and the excitement of being able to share £1million with its 3,500 shareholders this year. With Jon Duffy having formerly been business director for Frontier, Andrew sees it as very opportune to ask him about Frontier taking over the selling of the grain for the Fengrain store and subsequent tonnage that trades within it and ask whether Frontier are getting too powerful? They talk about the AF conference that is coming up and Jon slides in that there are still some tickets available.
In part two of Andrew's interview with Sam Watson Jones of the Small Robot Company, Sam paints a picture of the future where farmers use the small precision robots on their farm as a service, allowing them to get on with other elements of farming and diversification better suited to their skills. He explains in more detail the potential he sees in these robots even potentially harvesting crops eventually and encourages Andrew not to see the farm in fields any more but down to square cms where you might see several different crops and environmental schemes in one field. Andrew is left musing as to whether, when Sam gets round to making an AI grain trading robot, he could name it after him?
This week Andrew is in London interviewing Sam Watson Jones from the Small Robot Company - an agri-tech start-up focused on revolutionising the way that technology is used to farm. Sam is a fourth generation farmer, inspired by the work of Simon Blackmore in the National Centre for Precision Farming at Harper Adams and his vision for replacing much of the work done by tractors in fields with a series of high accurate, smart, lightweight robots.
In our Christmas Bumper Special and last show before Christmas, Andrew is down in the big smoke meeting with Lisa Kalal, who looks after clients at CME group mainly looking after hedgers, and Erin Burns, who heads up the commodity risk team at Tesco. They can't help but talk about agriculture post-Brexit and, with Erin and Lisa being Australian and American respectively, we get a slightly different perspective on deals, no-deals and referendums. We also get their take on women in agriculture and how important it could be to talk to your daughters about the markets to encourage more fantastic women in to the trading industry. Finally we hear about how their Christmases will be shaping up and Andrew tells us about his secret Santa.
This week Andrew meets up with his mentor, Ivan Bishop, with whom he has worked at a number of different grain trading businesses over the years. They discuss the changes in grain trading since the '60s - from small two-man-band traders to the bigger companies - and reminisce about some of their funnier moments dealing with clients.
This week Andrew meets up with Kit Papworth to hear about how he juggles his farming business and other businesses he is involved with. Kit talks about informing the public through social media about what he is doing on the farm, Andrew wonders if young people are being taught about marketing at agriculture college and they both agree Brexit is an opportunity although there may be fewer farmers about in five years.
This week we return to our science series. Our producer Claire Mutimer meets Dr Chris Ridout from the John Innes Centre to find out about heritage barley, how it’s helping to breed resistance into modern crops and finding an unexpected new lease of life through craft breweries.
Andrew’s back in the hot seat to give the market report for week commencing 12/11/2018 and in Farmchat Andrew and Webby talk about Ian’s mastery of the French language during his recent trip to Rouen, as well as the recent USDA report. To ease proceedings along they enjoy a drop of Barsham Oaks 3.6% from Barsham Brewery.
This week Andrew is joined by Ben Turner of Ben Burgess to talk about the amazing advances in technology that allow for problems to be identified and fixed before they even happen, helping to ensure that vital equipment is always working and always productive. They also talk Brexit and big tractors, and discuss retaining staff - how to do it and why it matters.
This week Andrew is joined by Emily Norton, Head of Rural Research at Savills, to talk about her experience of building a family brand with Nortons Dairy, diversification in farming and how the next generation of farmers need to engage with city-dwelling Instagrammers who love to photograph their food so that they understand and appreciate the food chain.
This week Andrew is joined by Rob Mutimer fresh from him and his wife Helen winning Pig Farmer of the Year at the Farmer's Weekly Awards. Rob talks about his parents campaigning for people to eat British pork, how he has grown his butchery business Farm to Fork supplying restaurants and pubs across East Anglia alongside supplying Waitrose and his thoughts on Brexit, supermarkets and what he will do next.
This week Claire heads down to the John Innes Centre, our local world-renowned agricultural science centre, to meet Professor Cristobal Uauy to find out all about the wheat genome which after 13 years of work by scientists across the globe was finally published this summer. Professor Uauy tells Claire all about how this incredible detailed mapping of all the genes in wheat will impact farmers and what a beautiful genetically adaptable plant wheat is - which is one of the reasons why it accounts for almost 20% of the total calories and protein consumed by humans worldwide, more than any other single food source.
In this week’s podcast Andrew talks to Charles Bracey, a Norfolk farmer turned developer who
realised there were more hours in the day than farming required and turned his
strategic approach to house renovation and subsequently development. He has a
fascinating take on diversification and spending your time wisely as well as
seeing things with a different set of eyes from the blinkered approach that he
believes he previously had.