This is the last remaining bit of our wheat from Hope Farm - about 150t apparently.
And saleable at c£185/t at the moment. Close to £30k worth.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
All this fuss about the price of wheat,what a load of twaddle,it puts less than 6p on the price of a loaf,of course everyone takes the chance to claim farmers making excess profits and the middle men and end producers take the chance to say the extra price of wheat means a increase of 30% or more,when wheat comes down will their products,of course not.
If you're the consumer it may hurt, but actually very little - look back to the proportion of our incomes we spend on food and the decline over the last 20 years makes a 16% increase in food prices look absolutely tiny. I believe we should be spending more on food - or at least more of that money getting back to the people who grow it, not hijacked between field & supermarket trolly.
But it does make you wonder about liberal economics applied to food supplies - people are going hungry this evening somehwere in the world because of speculation on food as a commodity & prices that fluctuate several times as much as actual supply - and then there is the damage our & the US's subsidies do to agriculture in poor countries. We really do need a rethink.
just discovered this very interesting blog and especially like the farmland birds articles. I'm helping Essex Wildlife Trust to run a 'clinic' on agri-environment schemes on 27th Jan at Hanningfield Reservoir and the RSPB are doing the important work: they mailed the landowners and are providing the advice to farmers. Lets hopethis leads to more adoption of HLS locally and more yellowhammers etc. Do you know if you have all the 16 farms signed-up for the turtle dove research yet, please Mark?
Great blog. I'm a bird-watcher in Essex who does likes garden, woodland and farmland birds and also a volunteer with the local Wildlife Trust on Living Landscapes. We (EWT supported by RSPB Farming Advisors) are holding a 'clinic' on agri-environment schemes next week: would be great some more farms in ELS and HLS around here and boost those yellowhammers etc.
Hopefully not contaminated rats!! Do you test them regularly?