Dramatic weather patterns impacting UK farming

Continuing our focus on Climate Change and the key impact for farmers, we spoke to Derek Pearce of L F Pearce and Son in UK about his experiences. Derek’s business includes Arable farming, contracting and the business has also diversified into grain storage, cleaning and groundworks largely working in agriculture.

• How is climate change affecting your business?

We have noticed that seasons seem to be changing which means more dramatic weather patterns for the business. This means working with it, adapting crops to suit and evolving systems to better adapt to conditions.

• What are the biggest problems that climate change is causing on your farm?

There are longer spells of dry weather and wet weather which means on our heavy clay, the soil is either swimming or baking!

• Are there any benefits from a changing climate?

I guess in a word no, but then technology needs to catch up to adapt to it. Different crops suit different conditions and these are currently novel crops that will over time become main stream crops, crops such as Soya and Lupins.

• Have you invested in technology to help address climate change?

We use the latest green engine technology where we can and have adapted our system so that the minimum amount of machinery hours go into producing a crop. We also try to send crops to local customers where we can save on food miles.

• If you have invested in technology, what has made the most difference to tackling climate change?

Good question, believe it or not information that is available to us from around the world from the farmers who have learnt to adapt to different conditions.