The Farmers Mart Feb/Mar 2015 - Issue 38 | Page 4

From The Editor The latest report to the Oxford Farming Conference says that while Britain is home to some world-class farmers, the industry as a whole is lagging behind other countries. »»The report, which makes comparisons with other countries worldwide, suggests that growers should spend a large proportion of their time controlling expenditure on machinery, labour and land occupation and producers should make better use of management tools including benchmarking, costings books, and discussion groups which could all help improve the understanding of farm costs. Fair comment: but I think most UK farmers would recognize that, while they clearly share much in common with their counterparts in other parts of the world, in Britain there are many factors that set th