The event, entitled Adapting Farming for the Future: Sustainable Production, Products & Markets, was held at the new-look, one-day Midlands Machinery Show event held at Newark Showground on 19 November.
Tom opened proceedings in the Lady Eastwood Centre with an address covering NFU work on IHT, SFI and a host of pertinent farming issues before introducing the first speaker of the day, Dmitry Feoktistov.
Dmitry, the NFU’s Sustainability and Climate Change Adviser, gave an eye-opening talk about how an increasing number of extreme weather events are impacting farmers and how crucial adaptation is.
The second speaker was Dennington Hall Farms Farm Manager, Ryan McCormack. The reigning Farmers’ Weekly farm manager of the year ran the audience through the amazing, ongoing sustainability work the Suffolk-based business is taking on at scale.
The effervescent Tom Allen-Stevens then covered on-farm scientific trials and how the Precision Breeding Act will impact UK farmers, before the final speaker, Ed Strawson, of Omnia, delved into farm data, demystifying an arcane part of agriculture and mapping out the incredible tech available to farmers to discover previously unreachable data about their properties.