The President’s view

Presidents Musings

Paul Hemingway

As I write this in late May the sky seems to be lifting both from the point of view of the weather and the prospects for a return to whatever a ‘normal’ life may look like going forward.

The farmers will be pleased to see the back of a very dry April and then a very cold and wet May – not great growing conditions for any crops. With the season running probably two to three weeks behind what is normal for this time of year there are very busy times ahead for both dairy and arable sectors.

Award winners

The IAgrE AGM and Awards evening have been successfully held in the ‘virtual space’ and received wide applause. My thanks go out to the Secretariat team who worked so hard to pull the meetings together and enable them to run so smoothly’. I was very impressed by the coverage that our Awards received on social media following the event. It is clear that this type of recognition is much appreciated by award recipients and my congratulations go out to each and every one of them.

Of course, IAgrE does not have the monopoly of awards in our sector. I was particularly interested to read recently of the awards made to trainee service technicians by the Land-Based Engineering Training and Education Committee (LE-TEC). This year, of the top three technicians recognised places one and two went to girls working as service technicians for ag machinery dealers: Laura Bassnet from Ernest Doe Ltd and Lauren Savage from Lister Wilder Ltd. What struck me particularly was the fact that neither came from agricultural backgrounds but they both speak positively about the diversity and challenges of their jobs. They are also very complimentary about the support they receive from their employers. Chris Laidler who works in product support for CNH Agriculture was also recognised. All three winners exhibited real enthusiasm for their chosen careers and have recorded short videos which are available to view on the LE-TEC website:

www.landbasedengineering.com career please point them towards these videos.

Lunchtime lectures

The IAgrE Lunchtime Lecture series is continuing to receive good attendance. Thanks to Craig Grant and Andy Scarlett for their recent talks, video recordings of which are available on the IAgrE website. It is planned to continue these talks on a monthly basis for the foreseeable future.

The machinery trade seems to be pretty buoyant at the moment with manufacturers and dealers having very healthy order books for tractors and other capital equipment. This seems to be proving difficult for some manufacturers to fulfil due to parts supply issues of various sorts. Component sourcing from Asia, particularly India, will be challenging due to the ongoing Covid crisis there. It is a reminder to us all that whilst we are seeing blue sky ahead in the UK much of the rest of the world is very far from this situation.