Kevin Prince has wide experience of farming and rural business in Hampshire, where he lives near Andover, and across southern England as a director in the Adkin consultancy. His family also run a diversified farm with commercial lets, holiday cottages and 800 arable acres.

July and August 2023 will be remembered by most farmers, and UK staycationers, as pretty dire, at least in weather terms.

The stop-start nature of harvest for many farmers in our region has resulted in increased costs and reduced margins. In contrast, September started with a heatwave which simply added insult to injury by making the establishment of this year’s crops that much trickier. It does appear that there is a new normal being established and that the stable(ish) periods of weather which our grandfathers and great grandfathers appeared to be able to rely upon are disappearing.

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Greater flexibility and perhaps some new varieties, if not new crops entirely, appear to be a requirement for the future for farmers in the UK to remain profitable as weather patterns continue to change. The danger of this is that new, heat- and drought-resistant varieties will of necessity be imported and we have already seen the damage done by diseases imported with plants as many of our familiar landscape trees have fast disappeared. Biosecurity will literally be vital to life but at present is a much neglected spin-off from Brexit as delays push back its introduction still further.

As I write this it appears that some semblance of normal weather has resumed as we return to autumnal mists and a noticeable change in air temperature. This will be a relief for livestock farmers who had to protect animals from 30 degree heat during the first week of September while at the same time watching grass burn up in a sustained week of high temperatures instead of being available as feed now or last-cut hay for storage. 

Hampshire Chronicle:

The slight chill and different hue to the light in the early mornings I always find immensely comforting. It is reassuring that some things do not change.  So too is the fact that every year the evenings drawing in takes me by surprise, as does the fact that my wife still feigns some interest every September when I share with her the news that it is darker earlier than I had expected!

As a child I can remember listening to my father and grandfather comment to each other every year “the evenings are drawing in”, and wondering how on earth they could still discuss this every year.

The answer, I am sure, is that whilst to me it is interesting and slightly irritating that I need to retreat an hour or so earlier at this time of year to somewhere near a light than I would have a month ago, to my grandfather and his father this would have been a very significant factor in the economics of the farm. Before the times of LED tractor work lights, phone torches, or clever hats with built in head torches were even thought of they were losing vital hours off the working day. The economic repercussions of this, if combined with bad weather could, in certain years, be very significant.

There are no such serious implications to our generation of the changing of the season and shortening of the days; we simply flick a switch and carry on with our own artificial light. But sub-consciously at least I make a point of noticing the change and continue boring my wife by commenting on it!