IT'S getting to a busy time of year for many farmers, not the least of which will be getting the harvest home – hopefully under better weather conditions than we have at the present.

But, we have to take due cognisance of the impact that a letter we used in last week's edition had on our social media pages which resulted in an unprecedented 100,000-plus hits to our website. The subject was a reader urging farmers to be more mindful of other other road users, especially at this busy time.

That it caught the imagination of the public should not be lost on the industry. Tractors are necessarily quite slow – though not as slow as they used to be – and so there is no doubt that they can be a contributory factor to road congestion, especially on rural roads. Therefore, as an industry, we must face up to the fact that other road users are important too and also be aware that there are far too many road fatalities whereby the word 'tractor' appears in the accident report. If it is not in the case of a tractor being in the accident, it's being the cause of frustrated drivers pulling out to overtake with tragic circumstances that shoulders the burden of blame.

As a whole, the industry must take this into consideration when training young people, especially, for tractor work on the road. Plus, there is no place for mobile phone use other than by Bluetooth in a tractor cab. Full stop.

Our major role to play

Climate change took centre stage again this week with the launch of a major report into global warming and our collective role in exacerbating its effects.

Farming will play a major role in mitigating the effect of greenhouse gases on any further man-made pollution and there are now few in the industry that can deny that. But people also need to be fed and not just fed up about all the rhetoric.

Sensible, sustainable and simple measures are available to many businesses but it needs policy to drive this forward. It is our responsibility and those who shape our future to meet the challenge by bold decision-making and action – and that does not simply mean that we shirk that onerous responsibility by exporting the problem elsewhere in the world.

Major decisions will be made at the forthcoming COP26 climate emergency meeting in Glasgow in November. At this important conference, many agricultural practices as we know them will come under the closest of scrutiny, which makes it all the more stunning that the Farmer-led Groups' recommendations which have already set out a road map to a sustainable and yet productive future have thus far received nothing more than a passing nod to their existence, but certainly not their acceptance.

As was famously said this week by more than one with a vested interest in climate change ... the clock is ticking ...