Sugar and Price. And something not nice.

On this farm we produce about 0.2% of the UK's wheat. In the scheme of things, that's not a great deal. When it comes to negotiating a sale price for what is our second largest crop by value, we are price takers. The problem is that the UK represents just 2% of the world wheat production. The market is set by the leading producers and importers of the world, and the UK simply isn't one of them. Markets rise and fall and currency exchanges make the UK price variously better or worse than our continental cousins.

This is pretty much the situation for everything we produce. Only in perishable produce does the producer have some control over the price. But with lettuces being flown in from China and potatoes from Belgium and Egypt, we are truly in a world market. And in a world market, we have to compete against producers with higher subsidies and more favourable conditions than we have. Only a low value product with a high density and a strong local market could UK producers really compete. Particularly when the customer is financially dependent on it.

Surely this marketing panacea could never exist. It does. Sugar Beet. Sold to a monopoly processor, owned by multinational conglomerate ABF PLC, Sugar Beet is a crop grown predominantly in the eastern counties by around 4000 growers. ABF currently makes around £30 per tonne out of every tonne of Sugar Beet delivered to it. It has just offered a measly £30.67 per tonne to growers for the 2014 crop.

Me, sitting on a 'clamp' of Sugar Beet' in 2012

That's a poor price by anyone's standards. Particularly by the standards of other European farmers, who receive up to 50% more than that for the same product. Despite the best efforts of the National Farmers Union Sugar Beet Board, this is the only price on offer. You see British Sugar have offered a price that they think that the majority of farmers will accept. Why would we do that? 

Because farmers don't like change. And because they've always grown sugar beet. And because they haven't done their sums.

Because at this price, far from being "the most profitable crop in the rotation" as promised by British Sugar's senior management, it's a poor price which makes the crop less profitable than almost all other crops.

And the thing is, we don't have to grow it. There are no rules. We could easily grow something else. 

Because we can do something else with our fields, but you can't do much else with a sugar beet factory.