View from the East by Dr Keith Dawson

THE DRILLING season is almost complete in Ukraine with some welcome rain helping things along – although a little too much. We are rarely satisfied.

This temporarily halted wheat drilling in the west of Ukraine and rain in Odessa has been even heavier, with tractors bogged down, which is highly unusual.

Our oilseed rape is in much better shape than last year at this time, with less than 1% of concern. Forward crops have received their growth regulators to keep the growing point in the safety zone. On a recent drive the length of Czech Republic I hardly saw a poor rape crop.

We surely cannot get three mild winters in succession and a strengthening La Nina means we may not be alone. Sadly, those sons of Satan (otherwise known as marketing managers), have effectively doubled the price of the PGR/fungicide metconazole by adding an indifferent growth regulator to it and withdrawing the straight active – Nein danke!

We have switched to tebuconazole + chlormequat at half the price per hectare in protest.

Barley likewise, has emerged well and forward crops are tillering and well rooted. Wheat area is forecast to be slightly. up on last year, which was 20% down on the previous year, but not up enough to achieve 2015 levels.

The record sunflower area here has done well and the oil price is strong, encouraging a swing from flour to flower. This could help wheat prices.

Root crop harvesting continues, with good yields and sugar content in the beet. Prices have been strengthening on depressed cane yields elsewhere.

Rain has eased bruising issues with potato lifting, but temperatures are now dropping and the race to lift and transport beet to the factory is on. It is amazing to see the difference between barley crops sown only 10 days apart as soils cool.

While the soil temperatures have been cooling, the temperatures along the frontline in Donbas have heated up with 57 artillery shellings on one day alone in mid-October despite the Minsk 'ceasefire' agreement.

The assassination of the Russian separatist commander and war crime suspect, Arsen Pavlov 'Motorola' in his Donbas appartment lift, probably by another competing seperatist faction, has added further heat to the situation.

What the West has not yet grasped, despite abundant evidence, is that Putin is a wartime leader and thirsts for conflict to sustain domestic kudos. Almost 10,000 have died in the two year conflict so far and 2m migrants 'displaced' – by UN definition they cannot be called 'refugees' as they flee west within their own borders.

An even more troubling sight is that of conscripted young men leaving the farm to head east to protect their homeland and face the daily shelling and sniper bullets. Ploughshares into swords. Imagine if that were your son or brother!

With all the doom and gloom spewing into our living rooms via the media and from politicians with a vested interest in making us feel dissatisfied and worried, it is easy to overlook the fact that every year the world is getting better off.

I can thoroughly recommend Johan Norberg's new book 'Progress – Ten reasons to look forward to the future' – a powerful reasoned antidote to pessimism. It is a truism that as a species we are happier, healthier, freer, better fed and educated, longer living and better travelled and entertained than any of our ancestors.

A few thoughts, then, on agriculture which has evolved dramatically in the last century. In the US in the 19th century, it took more than 40 weeks of work per year to purchase the annual family food supply and the calorific intake was below the average in Africa today.

In the 21st century, it takes around six weeks of work, or 85% less time, to buy a wider range of more varied annual food of a higher calorific value.

This reduction in working hours, driven by agricultural technology development, frees up residual income for all the luxuries unheard of in the 19th century, such as TV, cars, travel and foreign holidays.

Research on life expectancy at the age of 50, in what are now rich countries, at the turn of the last century showed it was markedly influenced by month of birth. Life expectancy is almost six months longer for those born between October and December, compared to those born between April and June.

This only applies to the Northern hemisphere and the reverse is true in the southern hemisphere. Migrants from the northern hemisphere to the southern retain this benefit if born between October and December.

Why is this? It is due to the availability of fresh fruit and vegetables during the mother's pregnancy and early infancy.

The switch to Permanent Global Summer Time on our supermarket shelves has given those of us born in June an extra six months of healthy life. Thank you Tesco :)!

In 1850, it took 150 men all day to harvest and thresh a ton of grain and now one man can carry out the same task in a scant few minutes. Maybe in the future, not even one man?

In 1960, there were 51 countries which consumed less than 2000 calories per day per person – it takes 1750 just to survive lying still. By 2013, this had fallen to just one country and food prices are now half of what they were in the early part of the last century.

An almost record wheat harvest this year has depressed prices still further as we all know from our grain cheques. The biggest driver of yield has been the use of nitrogen fertiliser, which has led to the undernourished population in the developing world dropping by 300% to only 13% – still too much, but huge progress.

With increasing populations, more than 2bn people have been released from hunger in the last quarter of a century. A huge triumph for agriculture, open trade and all our efforts, as well as the greening effect of rising C02 levels.

This CO2 greening effect has been the equivalent of adding a new 'continent' twice the size of mainland USA in the last 30 years. This alone has saved major depletion of global wildlife and biodiversity.

There's still a way to go, but immense strides forward have been made and it's a real success story, allowing residual income after food costs to expand dramatically for all global families.

Where will technology take us? Attending recent global innovations conferences in Amsterdam and London, it was not difficult to envisage a world where 'flocks' of synchronised drones, even now able to carry 100kg payloads, spray large areas of crop piloted by GPS from the farm office whilst 'herds' of terrestrial 2m unpiloted cultivator/drilling units toil tirelessly below 24hrs a day.

In Rwanda, of all places, drones are already making vital deliveries of blood for emergency transfusions to outlying villages. Science fiction or science fact – time will tell.