By Keith Dawson

Autumn is usually my favourite time of year, the harvest brought safely in and a new cycle of sowing and growth begun. The landscape of browns, golden stubble and new green shoots a pleasing mosaic to the eye. This year was rather different, with heavy rain and flooding causing harvest problems and damage throughout Europe.

This after droughts in many regions affecting yields in the summer. It took my mind back to 1985 and 1987 two annus horribilis in three years. Like those years, there has been a lot of damage to soils this year through compaction and erosion, particularly with root and vegetable crop harvesting. Like those years it will take a lot of time to recover structure and resilience in the soil. Sugar beet harvested in wet conditions is even worse, potential new Scottish growers please note. Cover catchcrops to build structure and pull water from the soil will again prove valuable in this current situation. It has also put a sharper focus on drainage, or rather lack of it. It's not fashionable but it is fundamental.

Conditions in North Poland and parts of Ukraine were similar, with harvesters stuck and needing pulled out. Now winter and sub freezing has arrived with a bang. It has also thrown an emphasis on another fundamental of good cropping-drainage. We are currently living off the natural capital our forefathers invested in the old tile drain systems which improved production throughout Scotland. There are now few drainage contractors left to do any remediation, even if there were drainage grants to do so. The same is true of lime and pH values. What a switch when farmers are now paid not to lime and drain.

What price food security? Well as Jacob Rees Mogg says "we can import it cheaper from overseas", whether beef or veg. What nonsense when one looks at the true cost.

In Ukraine in the last two decades, we have seen the upward curve of investment in farming as abandoned fields and moribund villages and infrastructure became more vibrant. It would be an immoral tragedy if rural Scotland were to reverse down this same curve due to changed support for farming and increased support for questionable carbon crops. We are at a crossroads in Scotland, with the new AgBill in process with secondary legislation under discussion. This was rightly up front and personal at the AgriScot forum with Martin Kennedy and Mairi Gougeon. The devil will no doubt be in the secondary regulation detail. Not a good sign is the £23m clawback announced at AgriScot.

For arable farmers there will be huge emphasis on "regenerative" farming in the Bill. A buzzword, with no definition or rules, that seems to have captured Minister's imaginations both North and South of the border. It is to be hoped that the definition will be broad and wide, as too prescriptive a definition will handcuff growers to inappropriate practices for their soils and climate.

Regenerative is highly site specific and has very little rigorous long term scientific data to back up its claims. One thing that is clear, from the few trials so far, is that, like organic, there is a highly significant cost and risk in a transition to regenerative, in the fervent hope of long term benefits to be gained.

There is a lot of relevant information in the archives from long term tillage trials-the SAC South Road Expt from the 80's, along with long term ley farming trials at Rothamsted and GRI where I did my PhD on greenhouse gas emissions and nitrogen dynamics. This should be dusted off, digitised and analysed. The yield loss and increased risk in the early years of regenerative must be funded from the public purse and the implications for food security and prices considered. Will longer term benefits negate proven yield deficits or will it be a sucker punch for growers, going the way of vegan products and lab grown meat hype?

As I've said many times over the decades "You can't be green if you're in the Red". There is little evidence of this joined up thinking in current Governments. Of course many growers already practice many of the tenets of regenerative, such as sound rotation and reduced tillage, as we have in Ukraine too. Nitrogen is also, like pH and drainage, still a key fundamental.

The Scottish Society of Crop Research (SSCR) Combinable Crops Winter Meeting held at James Hutton, earlier this month, covered the future role for legumes in Scottish arable rotations. Our SSCR Potato meeting is on March 12, and all are welcome. The legumes meeting was excellent and covered a wide range of issues with four knowledgeable speakers. From the importance of nutrients such as Sulphur and Molybdenum to the use of barley/legume mixtures to increase production. Recent research at James Hutton and Harper Adams has shown that with crop mixtures, a 26% increase in production per unit area can be achieved compared to single crop fields.

If translated into practice this would mean increasing your farm size by over 20% without buying any more land! Another intriguing vision was held out by researcher Edward Dickin of Harper Adams, who has worked on their robotics hands free hectare project. If much smaller robotic machines are the future, will this lead to much smaller strips of different crops in fields to gain the benefits of mixed cropping and robotic precision farming? A different arable landscape? Time will tell.

In Ukraine we have completed our second wartime harvest, a phrase I never imagined writing. Yields and starch content have been good and on budget in a challenging year. Our local team have excelled, as visitors to our farm from our P4P convoys often comment, on the immense progress they have made in wartime conditions. They have even been successful in jumping through the considerable audit hoops to gain some modest grants from US Aid for our potato starch factory development and local contract grower ring. Never let anyone tell you that foreign aid is not audited and policed intensely in Ukrainian.

On the other side of the world in Brazil planting and some replanting of the first crop soya continues, from five to 15 days late due to intense temperatures and lack of rain at drilling.Temperatures of up to 45⁰C, in an El Ninõ year, have also caused some minor problems in storage. This delay in planting will not affect the soyabean crop too much but will delay the drilling of the second (safrhina) crop of corn on those farms that can grow two crops per year. For the first time many growers are considering a low input/low yield approach to this second corn or alternatively not drilling second corn at all, but merely an essential cover crop to maintain carbon and structure.

Note that investments of $1000-2000/ha have been made in remediating this land using high rates of lime and P to balance the soils inherent acidic ability and P lockup. This is around 20-30% of the land value. Replanting of soya has been carried out on around 5-10%

On the domestic front there has been much political activity affecting agriculture and beyond. With Nellie the Effluent being replaced by Steve Barclay in DEFRA under the latest Richi Soonout reshuffle, a PM so weak he qualifies as a homeopathic remedy. English growers are suffering under this Government. Brexit continues to impact both exporters and importers, with extra costs and risk. Scottish seed potato growers are still struggling with no EU exports. As Prof Chris Elliot has pointed out the Brexit lack of border checks for food imports is also increasing the incidence of food fraud. Advances in technology are not being matched by the funding and political resolve to combat this increasing crime against the consumer and undercut domestic producer. Food security is not only about plenty but quality and safety, as salmonella case increases show.

Meanwhile, the cost of living crisis exacerbates the obesity crisis in the UK by forcing the less well off to eat lower quality food and less fruit and veg. A health timebomb ticking. Our Scottish soft fruit industry is in crisis, partly due to Brexit and labour issues. A former success now in peril. The Covid enquiry and Johnson's Toad of Toad Hall testimony has shown that the Government's eye was on Brexit, not a growing pandemic in the early months of Covid. Leading to a worse tally of deaths than might have been otherwise. Growers have rebelled against the further greening of the Red Tractor scheme. A greening initiative without a proper mandate nor good governance from within.

COP28 was again another weak COPout, as many times before, with little solid agreement, "transition away from fossil fuels" the weasily, all things to all words. A desert mirage in my view-Emissions Impossible. Sixteen years after Al Gore was awarded the Nobel Prize, not one of his predictions made in his Nobel lecture has come to pass. Richi Soonout took a 200 seater private jet to Cop28, he could have taken more than half the Conservative Party, but he didn't even take "Dave" Cameron who had his own jet, as did King Charles.

"Do as I say not as I do."

The climate minister being recalled early from COP to vote on the Rwanda bill also says it all. If one looks at the actual data climate related deaths are still at an all time historical low. Fossil fuels cannot in reality be phased out for many decades.

In Ukraine the war continues and Western delays in the right military aid have led to a stalemate of sorts. This tells only a part of the story, with Ukraine having destroyed over 5000 Russian tanks and decimated some of their crack units. At the same time they now have a foothold on the far bank of the Dniper, have control over a large area of the Western Black Sea and have developed a new maritime grain export corridor along the coastline of Ukraine and Romania. The Russians have taken heavy casualties and far too many young Ukrainians have died in defence and attack.

As our main contact in the Lviv 24th mobile brigade said to me last month as we broke bread together, "Defence is strong, but Attack is Hell." A sheep farmer before the war, he was clear that resolve at the front is still high, though tempered with experiences we cannot imagine, as it is on the Home Front. Sadly on every visit to the "Field of Mars" military cemetery in Lviv grows ever larger. On our visits it is rare that we do not witness several military funerals. Young lives and potential lost to this great nation in defence of their and our freedoms. We must continue our support in these dark days or pay a much higher price in time. Now is not the time to falter.

Late last month we completed our tenth PickupsforPeace convoy, as the first snow fell on the beautiful city of Lviv. We passed the immoral blockade by Polish lorry drivers keeping Ukrainian lorry drivers waiting for up to two weeks to deliver their loads. Hopefully by the time you read this the new welcome government of Donald Tusk will have sorted this aberrant nonsense, signs as I write are positive. As with Slovakia and Hungary, and even in US politics, there is a stench of Russian influence in play. Queues built to over 40km a week or so after we left for our flights home.

Fortunately military and humanitarian aid is exempt and we drive straight to the front of the border queue, a welcome sight. Our blue light police escort flies from the Ukrainian border on into Lviv. This time we delivered a further 37 vehicles filled with medical and other aid. This takes us to 265 4WD vehicles delivered to help humanitarian and military causes. Way, way above our initial hopes of around 50. Over 450 volunteer drivers have taken part in driving these vehicles across Europe bringing their cargo of supplies, hope and morale boosts. Just over £2.7m of aid has been raised since March, a huge testament to the generosity and teamwork of the agricultural community. As well as mine clearance and casualty evacuation, we have been working with Air Defence in Ukraine.

We have been collecting and delivering used Scottish trawler nets to provide a valuable screening from Iranian Shahed drone attacks against electricity generation infrastructure. Ukrainian Air Defence are very skilled, but around 5% still get through, targeted against civilians. Ukrainians are immensely inventive but need our resources. One innovative approach in mine clearance is using drones with infrared sensors, to detect and pinpoint mines. Mines show a different infra red signature from the surrounding soil at the start and end of the days as the soil warm or cool differentially to the mine.

This looks like it is going to be a cold winter, so power will be a key pawn of war. Since the dreadful attacks on October 7 from Gaza, Ukraine has slipped from the news agenda. At the same time the drone, missile and ground attacks there have intensified. It was no accident, in my opinion, that the 7th was also Putin's birthday, Gaza a birthday present from Iran to the Kremlin. There is no doubt they are in bloody cahoots and the tragic diversion has served the Russians well, as have the Iranian backed shipping attacks in the Gulf. As I've noted in this column before, we need to be very wary of this new axis of evil of Russia, Iran and North Korea, aided and abetted by China and India, and cheered on by much of Africa, the Arab world and even Brazilian presidents. It is no accident that premiers of Australia, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan have visited Kyiv recently to show their support. Together with donating large military aid, they look at the effect the defeat of Ukraine would have on hostilities in the South China Sea and Taiwan. The cost of victory in Ukraine is high, but it will be much higher and even closer to home next time. We must not let Ukraine down.

So as you sit down together at the Christmas dinner table, quite rightly tucking into great Scottish produce, look, as the wise men did, to the East. Let us all spare a thought for those young, and not so young, men and women, hunkered down in their freezing trenches, also looking to the East, fearful of another artillery or drone attack. All of them bravely fighting for the freedoms that until lately we all took for granted. Let's make our New Year's resolution to support their fight even more. A fight for all of us and our grandchildren too. Ukraine is the frontline of our freedoms too.

Wishing all readers a Happy Christmas and for all of us a Peaceful 2024.