Arable Farmer. Off the farm- motorsport, music and rugby. All views are my own etc. No Fendts, or cross-slot.
Hertfordshire
Joined March 2012
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Andrew Watts retweeted
NFU East Regional Board Vice Chair Sam Pimblett @SamJPimblett is on the front page of @dunmowbroadcast today making his feelings clear on last week's Budget.
@NFUPress @NFUtweets @NFUPolitical
Andrew Watts retweeted
How does the UK increasing interest rates help to kerb inflation when the inflation is driven by unprecedented fuel prices? We’re not using more, it’s just too expensive! 🤷♂️ #InterestRates #BankOfEngland #farming
Andrew Watts retweeted
NFU President Tom Bradshaw @ProagriLtd and NFU Cambridgeshire Chair Alison Morris are featured in 6 Cambridgeshire newspapers hitting out at last week's Budget as a huge missed opportunity for the government to support the county's farmers. @NFUPress elystandard.co.uk/news/26698…
Andrew Watts retweeted
Superb work from @will48582601 who has been fighting a personal crusade against fly-tipping for far, far too long already
Imagine finding 2,000 tonnes of rubbish dumped on your farmland, then facing an estimated £350,000 bill to clear it. 🚨
That is the situation facing Essex farmer Alex Sell.
Now Hertfordshire farmer Will Dickinson has taken the fight against fly-tipping to the House of Lords, backing proposals to hold large businesses more accountable for waste ending up in criminal hands.
READ MORE: ow.ly/s6Y85102FGA
With a helping hand from their @DefraGovUK friends - meanwhile the shambles of SFI applications continues
Wildlife Trusts hit £30m target to buy and rewild huge Northumberland estate, theguardian.com/environment/…
Andrew Watts retweeted
Nothing against @WildlifeTrusts but there are loads of private landowners throughout the country who have already delivered nature recovery and sustainable farming on a massive scale. The idea that Rothbury is some unique project and a “new bar” is just nonsense.
Tens of thousand of people have enabled the @WildlifeTrusts to buy the Rothbury Estate. Largest land purchase in a generation brings an area of Northumberland the size of Athens into Nature recovery. Brilliant & bold work that sets a new bar for ambition for Nature in England.
wildlifetrusts.org/news/futu…
Andrew Watts retweeted
Through his own budget, Andy Burnham’s rhetoric of ‘food security is national security’ has just been proven as meaningless.
Labour’s failure to axe the family farm and family business tax is catastrophic for the sector.
And there was no focus whatsoever on improving food security, or addressing the cashflow crisis which is hitting many of our farmers and growers right now.
Their failure to act, despite huge calls from many hardworking farming families and wider industry figures, demonstrates they simply couldn’t give a damn about where our food comes from or who produces it. It’s all bluff and warm words.
Be under no doubt, we Conservatives will not stop campaigning for our farmers and rural communities. We will axe the Family Farm and Family Business Tax, and put food security at the heart of all we do.
Looks like they are facing g similar issues…..a generation of politicians that have on.y ever known full shelves
📄 Copa-Cogeca has sent a letter to the ambassadors of COREPER I ahead of today's Energy Council, calling for European agriculture and agri-food cooperatives to be recognised as a strategic sector in the EU's response to energy supply constraints and rising fuel prices.
Our letter calls for decisive European action on six priorities:
1️⃣ Protect essential agricultural production and agri-food processing. Energy-saving measures and emergency allocations must take account of seasonal production cycles and food safety requirements.
2️⃣ Address rising energy and diesel costs through coordinated EU action. Measures must be targeted, temporary and proportionate, avoiding fragmented national responses that could distort the Single Market.
3️⃣ Unlock the potential of European biofuels. Provide regulatory flexibility for sustainable EU-produced biofuels, strengthen the Union Database to prevent fraud, and establish workable criteria for intercrops and degraded land.
4️⃣ Modernise rural electricity grids. Rural areas cannot drive the energy transition while facing inadequate grid capacity and unnecessary permitting barriers.
5️⃣ Develop a European strategy for renewable energy on farms. Support biogas, biomethane, small-scale anaerobic digestion and energy storage, while recognising digestate as a valuable resource rather than a regulatory burden.
6️⃣ Support combined heat and power systems on farms, in cooperatives and across agri-food processing facilities.
⚡️Farmers and agricultural cooperatives are not just energy consumers. They are also producers of renewable electricity, biogas, biomethane and biofuels. Recognising agriculture as both a pillar of food security and a driver of Europe's energy transition is essential to safeguarding the sector's competitiveness and resilience.
Andrew Watts retweeted
Today's Budget is a missed opportunity.
While farming businesses welcome the extension of the red diesel fuel cut there was no plan to put the phrase "food security is national security" into action.
Watch now to hear NFU President Tom Bradshaw's reaction.
Andrew Watts retweeted
As in the civil service, so too in the church it seems. Endless bloat in overmighty back office bureaucrats at the expense of frontline delivery
‘The Church has increased its administrative staff by nearly 80 per cent in 20 years while the number of parish priests has almost halved..’
The administrators truly are plenteous, but the clergy are few; Pray ye therefore the Bishops will open their eyes.
telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/10…
But ‘we’ weren’t told it would be brought in either
🗣️ “What I do not want to do is overinflate expectations that it is definitely going to happen because we have not been told that.”
@NFUtweets president Tom Bradshaw has urged caution over hopes of further changes to the family farm tax in next week's Budget.
Speaking to Farmers Guardian, he questioned whether another concession was politically possible, despite believing the Prime Minister understood the industry's concerns.
He also said the Government could quite easily admit it had got the policy wrong, given the relatively small amount of revenue involved.
Read the full interview: ow.ly/gt7C50ZZJyp
interesting article in today’s @thetimes about the 71%
decline in hedgehog numbers between 1981 and 2023. Only a small mention of badgers, their main predators, which became a protected species in late 1973 - surely some sort of correlation?
Andrew Watts retweeted
Among the many, many stories of disappointment from yesterday's SFI debacle, a notable casualty was the @Gameandwildlife @AllertonProject 's unbroken run of agri-environmental schemes since the '90s. Especially ironic given the research behind so many SFI options took place there
‘352 minutes that will live in infamy’.
My blog on the scramble for SFI26.
gwct.org.uk/blogs/news/2026/…
Andrew Watts retweeted
“The market now suspects that this is a traditional tax-and-spend socialist government with better TikTok videos,”
Bank of England’s former Chief Economist, Andy Haldane.
thetimes.com/article/19965fd…
Andrew Watts retweeted
This is pretty much nonsense
The wet green bits are great
But don’t produce food
The land that does, a few metres out, is brown and burnt off with drought
The green bits don’t make it OK
Far more important would be how to make those fields more resilient…
Andrew Watts retweeted
When the people slagging off the media for doing their job include Zack Polanski, Jolyon Maugham, Zara Sultana, Jeremy Corbyn, Hacked Off, Labour MPs who want Leveson 2, That Islamist with his lists of erring hacks, Zia Yusuf and Nigel Farage - and those slagged off include the Times, the Telegraph, the Mail and the Guardian - it is possible to conclude that the media is indeed doing its job properly
Andrew Watts retweeted
Source: France 24. This is just not correct. Even if wheat doubled in price (100% increase) the value of wheat in a loaf of bread would only increase by 10pence.
Yet again others are capitalising at the expense of primary production share.google/rdmDJsBaX5siugU…
