By Hugh Besent, NFU Cymru Montgomeryshire Chairman

COP26, the 26th meeting of the ‘Conference of Parties’ has passed, and all has gone quiet with other issues now dominating the headlines, such as Peppa Pig and refugees.

However, matters from COP26 need to be analysed in detail so as to make the conference meaningful. With an ever-increasing world population, people need to be fed with food needs produced with a low carbon footprint close to centres of population so as to keep food miles to a minimum.

Moving meat products from far distant places like Australia incurs many extra resources and lower production standards.

Within the UK our Red Tractor farm assurance scheme ensures animal welfare is uppermost in producers’ minds. Indeed, hormone-fed beef, hot branding of cattle and tail-skinning of sheep are all outlawed here, and for good reasons.

Consumers purchasing Red Tractor food products are guaranteed that all food stuffs are produced to standards well above legal requirements.

Another issue, following the lack of natural gas is the shortage of agricultural fertiliser, which many of us ‘conventional’ farmers rely on.

Last year, we paid £180 per tonne but the last figure quoted for this year has been in excess of £600 per tonne.

Such a wild increase in price is going to be very difficult to absorb with all other costs rising. Our milk price (which every year fluctuates with the season) has risen modestly but only by about 2.5 pence which is less than 10%.

On television business news this week, concern was expressed over a world shortage of fertiliser and its impact on potential food supplies.

Without fertilisers, modern bred cultivated grasses will not perform well, and will easily be outgrown by weeds such as thistles and docks.

This will then lead to the need to use agrochemicals to control them, as our cows will not milk well on weeds! I hope that our UK Government will take actions to encourage fertiliser manufacturers in the UK to increase their output as they did when carbon dioxide was scarce.

On farm, we have started artificially inseminating our cows and replacement heifers to get them in calf. This is really the start of our year, so we spend any spare time observing the cows so as to catch them bulling (in season). A bovine comes in season every 21 days or thereabouts and lasts about 24 hours, so the timing of the insemination is quite important.