WHAT a challenging time for all of us across the farming community, the wet weather resulting in yet another difficult harvest and now a tough planting season.

On my farm in Wiltshire, I had hoped for better weather after last year where the continuous heavy rain meant that our combine’s yield monitor wasn’t showing the normal colourful yield map as we sliced our way through our wheat harvest.

Unfortunately, this is a trend we’ve all seen over the last couple of years, the weather being unpredictable, even the three weather apps on my phone can’t agree on what’s going to happen.

As farmers we are used to dealing with challenges, especially during harvest, including the weather, and we work hard to ensure business as usual - which normally means running out into yard like a Formula 1 pit crew to get out with the combine during breaks in the rain.

More extreme weather events mean that it’s now getting harder to do our primary role, which is to produce food for the nation, and ensuring food security for everyone. Because of this, we need to know that government is supporting us through policies that build profitability and resilience into farm businesses to allow us to invest and unlock a thriving food and farming industry.

With the Autumn Budget only days away, our immediate priority must be to secure investment through government delivering a renewed and enhanced multi-annual agriculture budget of £5.6 billion and urging Defra to rollover its reported underspend, and use the money for its prime purpose; to support environmental protection and enhancement, to benefit food production, and invest in the future of profitable farm businesses.

This, alongside fairer market returns, would build confidence, offer us farmers long-term sustainability and benefit the regional economy and our communities. Let’s hope the new dairy Fair Dealings Obligations Regulations can pave a way for this as the NFU has long campaigned for transparent, fair and functioning supply chains.

In difficult times, we do all that we can to feed our nation with sustainable, high quality, delicious food and we need support and leadership from this new government to ensure that this is something we can continue to do in the future. Being a farmer can be hard and challenging, but it is a rewarding job that so many love to do – we know we have the support of shoppers, we just need to have the support going forward from our politicians.