My May piece for the Henley Standard which came out the day after the local elections were held. It seems food and farming are always in the news at the moment. Consumer inflation for the last period of analysis was 7% whilst inflation in agricultural inputs is just over 24%, pushed up by increases in fuel, fertiliser and animal feed. On the flip side, commodity … Continue reading Farmers cannot be green if they are in the red.
Time to put another view on Glyphosate and neonicotinoid pesticides. Glyphosate, sold as Roundup, is often making the headlines as being the demon pesticide and the cause of all sorts of ills. It is a non-selective, contact herbicide, meaning it will kill most plants. Pure glyphosate is low in toxicity, however products usually contain other substances that help the glyphosate get into the plants and … Continue reading Another Opinion on Pesticides
The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) has recently announced that it is relaxing the rules on gene editing (GE) for crop production in the UK. This is not the same as genetic modification (GM) which a few years ago got labelled as ‘Frankenstein Food’. GM uses DNA material from other species to make changes to the plants. Gene editing manipulates the coding … Continue reading Gene editing plants.
Simon Beddows Farmers Blog 