View from the east: Spring's impact on crops

Potato planting here was stop-start and June has hardly been flaming so far. After the rapid growth in May, cooler conditions may help fast-growing spring crops consolidate and lay down higher yields as day length lengthens towards the solstice.

This Scottish wet weather has been in stark contrast with my involvement in Paraguay, Brazil and Ukraine, where dry conditions have been more the norm.

In the first two, El Nino has created drought and high temperatures, which has hit yields and establishment of soyabean and second crop corn.

In Paraguay, soyabean yields have been down by two-thirds. Sadly, prices remain too low, threatening many farmers with bankruptcy.

Now El Nino has weakened and rains returned. There is a 70% chance of a La Nina by September which will be good for Brazilian yields next year. Not climate change but the normal El Nino/La Nina switching.

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In Ukraine, the wet early spring was swiftly followed by drought. This has led to weed problems in root crops sugar beet and potatoes, due to poor performance of soil applied pre-emergence herbicides. Early in June, modest rains arrived just in time.

The limited number of post-emergence herbicides for potatoes has been starkly felt with bentazone to the fore. As I’ve said many times, the best herbicide is a strong crop and our potatoes are now growing rapidly after the rains.

In Scotland and Ukraine, growers will need to be vigilant for late diseases. Ramularia in barley, fusarium in wheat and blight in potatoes can all be late yield and quality robbers which break crops and hearts.

In Europe, there is a sea of change for farming as farmer power has delivered welcome changes in both ‘green’ farm policies and net-zero strategies.

It’s important in Scotland that we lobby hard to make sure the new Agriculture Bill delivers not only environmental security but food and farmer security too.

Our latest June convoy has now been delivered for Pick-ups for Peace with our summer target of 400 4WD aid-filled vehicles in total within reach. More to come in July and August. Come and visit us at the Game Fair and Highland Show.

After some ‘success’, Russian advances have stalled and attacks by Ukrainian drones on Russian oil refineries, coupled with sanctions on repair components, have damaged Russian capabilities. Damaged so much that legislation has been passed to allow sales of inferior octane fuels at the pump. No appeasement is not a WW2 analogy, but a universal truth from playground to battleground.

Appeasement would embolden tyrants from Beijing to Caracas, from Tehran to Pyongyang.

Great to see the G7 providing $50bn aid from seized Russian assets for the cost of $3bn interest per annum. The US has put sanctions on Russian stock exchange and London to follow. The Russian Central Bank says the Chinese yuan will become Russia’s main currency. Sanctions work, but slowly.

There has been much discussion of late and misplaced excitement on the dawn of freeports and enterprise zones in Scotland and elsewhere.

Freeports are a threat to free markets and to the wellbeing of the populations of all countries in which they exist, research has shown. Freeports only exist so that those using them might extract additional profits from the abuse of the societies that host them.

Why are governments so stupid that they cannot see this? Likely they do – but often stand to gain themselves. For example, the PM’s family has gained from business in Russia, PPE contracts, and childcare legislation through beneficiary shareholdings.

The modern proponents of freeports and tax havens in Scotland, and all other forms of regulatory abuse, have no interest in following Milton Friedman’s economic creed. That is because they are not in the slightest way entrepreneurial, and have little or no understanding of what it really means to be free market operators.

They are instead only interested in ways in which they can manipulate regulations to extract profits from markets at a cost to society at large.

Note the corruption and public asset-stripping around the Teesside freeport. That is the single reason for the existence of freeports and precisely why all governments should reject their existence since they represent a threat to their populations as a whole.

We can see what collusion and mess they have made of English rivers and beaches on the altar of profit and dividends for CEOs. The only boat they have nearly stopped is the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race and it’s no longer safe to dip one’s cox in the Thames. It is currently cheaper to send deportees on a trip in Elon’s Space X than fly them to Rwanda. No wonder the country is in a mess

There is no doubt that in addition to the current ‘hot’ war with Russia this century is being shaped by a cold war between the US/West and China. China is a hungry nation and this may be the saviour or downfall of the West depending on China’s response to their ‘need to feed’. As noted almost a decade ago in this column, this is Asia’s century. For a readable authoritative take on this cold war, I can commend ex-Chatham House CEO Robin Niblett’s book on the subject. His talk at the Borders Book Festival was illuminating.

This cold ‘war’ is again between two competing ideologies. One a believer in liberal democracy, despite its faults, to deliver growth and prosperity, the other an authoritarian single party system willing to go to extreme lengths to protect itself. The rivalry is also geopolitical in nature with the US wishing to slow down China’s technological growth and dominance in the Asia-Pacific theatre.

In my time in Singapore, I saw this Asian ascendancy and China’s growing power clearly. China’s current strategy is not yet a ‘hot’ war like Russia but one of reducing its dependency on the US and building its network of friends, while supporting Russia.

Recent figures showed clearly a drop in US-China trade, yet total trade has not shown the same trend for either nation. I recall on a visit to Grenada over a decade ago a spanking new cricket ground funded by the Chinese in order to buy influence.

Funding for our own Havana Energy Cuban biomass electricity plant was another good up-close personal example of this. At each step, the US attempted to block investment in this project. A project finally funded by one of the largest Chinese private companies, in partnership with us, to get steel and concrete in place to generate renewable electricity for Cuban light bulbs.

I permit myself a wry smile that after attempting (and failing) to block in Cuba, we are now in a different business, in receipt of US Aid in an entirely separate project in Ukraine a decade later. This strategy has been replicated by China hundreds of thousands of times to develop influence and build an axis of authoritarian states such as Russia and Iran and enlarging BRICS.

Engagement with the Global South for trade and technology will also be important to win hearts and minds going forward. Two areas where China has strategically targeted Western industries are solar and EVs, but they need Western grain. This has led to many European solar and battery companies going out of business due to undercutting.

While EV sales are dropping, the reliance of EVs on critical and rare metals is strategic. China controls a high proportion of these mined elements. It is astonishing that the quantity of these elements needed to produce a full EV will produce six plug-in hybrids and 90 fully hybrid cars. The 90 fully non-plug-in hybrids will produce 37 times less CO² than one fully electric vehicle (Bloomberg).

EU imposed tariffs of 38% on Chinese EVs this week. Some time before electric tractors make a mark, I feel. Interesting that there is an unusual alliance of oil, biofuel corn and car retailers against Biden’s emissions legislation. It’s also telling that fake meat companies are taking further hits, due to a backlash against ultra-processed foods.

On the subject of new technology, don’t forget Arable Scotland on July 2, and Potatoes in Practice on August 8 at Dundee to see new approaches on technology and regenerative farming. Only new technology has kept farmers in profit and consumers fed over the decades.

Hopefully, by August, we will see more clarity around the Bill which will shape all our futures. One thing for sure is we need domestic food security, as well as carbon capture and rewilding. Freedom for new technology and rural support will be key.