Joe Stanley

Last summer I was invited to sit down with Rich Stockdale of Oxygen Conservation for an in-depth chat about food, farming the environment & natural capital. Farmers have a unique opportunity to deliver for society: here I attempt to outline how 🎙️ oxygenconservation.com/podcast/e145-j…

I finally realise no conversations of value occur on this platform when it comes to food, farming & the environment. What should be a marketplace of ideas is largely a cesspit of wilfully misinformed tribalism. I’m out 👋

@JPBWFarm Wow. I hope you’ll reflect on that answer in time. You really should be ashamed. (And FWIW the successful pilot was launched under your last government).

@JoeWStanley Declare your interest, Joe. Not all of us have got a £650,000 contract from Labour to train civil servants.

Today, rural Britain begins to die. By 2035, Labour will have made 🪫 2% of our farmland under solar panels 🐄 9% of land lost from food production 🗺️ A civil servant's map to tell you what you can farm 🤝 A socialist land grab that lets activists seize control of your farm Destroying generations of history and the nation's food security with it.

We now have a target for steel production with tariffs on imports - action on ‘steel security’. Yet food production & food security remain off the table & in continuing decline. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

Core animal welfare and environmental standards must be introduced for agri-food imports, the NFU, WWF and RSPCA told government today at an event in Parliament. Read more from our President Tom Bradshaw 👉 ow.ly/cItV50YvXBL

Right now, in barns and equipment sheds across the American Midwest, farmers are making the most consequential decision of this war. Not generals. Not senators. Farmers. At $683 per ton urea, corn economics have collapsed. Nitrogen is the single largest input cost for corn production. At pre-war prices a farmer could justify 180 pounds per acre and expect a margin. At $683 the math breaks. Soybeans fix their own nitrogen from the atmosphere through root bacteria. They do not need the molecule trapped behind the Strait of Hormuz. The seed decision is being made this week across roughly 90 million acres of American cropland. Once the planter rolls into the field, the choice is irreversible. Corn seed in the ground stays corn. Soy seed stays soy. The acreage allocation locks in. USDA Prospective Plantings reports March 31. That report will tell the world how American agriculture responded to the Hormuz blockade. But the decisions it captures are being made now, in conversations between farmers and agronomists and seed dealers who are looking at nitrogen prices and making the rational economic choice: plant the crop that does not need the input you cannot afford. Every acre that shifts from corn to soybeans tightens the corn balance sheet for the rest of the year. Corn feeds livestock. Corn feeds ethanol. The Renewable Fuel Standard mandates 15 billion gallons of corn ethanol annually, consuming roughly 43 percent of the US corn crop regardless of price. That demand is inelastic. If acres shift and production falls while the mandate holds, corn prices spike. Feed costs spike. The protein cascade reverses. The US cattle herd sits at 86.2 million head, a 75-year low. Poultry and pork margins that were benefiting from cheap feed compress when corn crosses $5 per bushel. This is how a naval blockade 7,000 miles from Iowa reaches the American grocery shelf. Not through oil. Not through shipping. Through nitrogen. The farmer cannot afford the molecule. The molecule cannot transit the strait. The farmer plants soy instead. The corn supply tightens. The ethanol mandate consumes its fixed share. The remaining corn reprices. The feed reprices. The meat reprices. The grocery bill reprices. The decision is not political. It is arithmetic performed on a kitchen table by a person who needs to plant in three weeks and cannot wait for a ceasefire, an escort convoy, or an insurance normalisation that the Red Sea precedent says takes years. The deepest penetrator in the American arsenal cannot reach a sealed Iranian doctrinal packet. But the fertiliser price it failed to resolve is reaching every planting decision on 90 million acres of the most productive farmland on Earth. The war’s most irreversible consequence is not happening in a bunker. It is happening in a barn. And by the time USDA publishes the data on March 31, the seeds will already be in the ground. Full analysis in the link. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…

I should be on the farm today planting barley or spreading fertiliser, but instead we’re at the High Court for a Judicial Review where we’ll ask the Court to step in and declare that the Chancellor’s decision not to consult properly over IHT changes with the public was unlawful.

In this video, @jennybussell updates on our @Syngenta hybrid wheat (X-Terra) trial 🌾

Last summer I was invited to sit down with Rich Stockdale of Oxygen Conservation for an in-depth chat about food, farming the environment & natural capital. Farmers have a unique opportunity to deliver for society: here I attempt to outline how 🎙️ oxygenconservation.com/podcast/e145-j…

As someone who has made a good chunk of their income from taking people into woodlands for recreation and outdoor education - this is such a batshit idea. 1/depends how annoyed I get

That isn’t to deny that we need more people into the countryside (for health, wellbeing and the economy) but it must be carefully managed & we must accept the inevitable trade off between public access and nature.

There’s a chasm of difference between what nature needs to thrive & what people (and their dogs) might want. Populism isn’t the sole preserve of the right, neither are the false solutions it promises. Make no mistake: more people = less nature.

Curious as to what this particular politician says in his answer which has any relevance whatsoever to the challenges facing UK agriculture in 2026. Important to interrogate the actual policy platform & basic comprehension of all parties looking for our vote.

DYK: under ~6.4 million hectares of England & Wales’ fields lie an intricate network of gravity fed drains, removing excess water & improving agricultural productivity? At @AllertonProject we’re studying the environmental impact of such drainage (and there’s no shortage of 💦)👇

@CharnwoodGeo It was a privilege to farm this landscape for so many years. It really is a special place.

⭐ Last year we announced our official 100 Treasures of Charnwood Forest, featuring famous sites and forgotten artefacts from across the Geopark. 🏺 What's included from your community? 🌐 Explore the Treasures: charnwoodforest.org/100treasures/

A major issue with neonic flea treatments entering waterways in very large quantities, a pathway previously blamed on agricultural use (banned since 2014). The entire neonic saga has been a case study in unintended consequences & misappropriated blame. bbc.co.uk/news/articles/…

📢 RED DIESEL PRICES GOING UP FARMERS - please comment below with your experiences of red diesel prices going up in the last week? We’re putting pressure on the govt on heating oil and I want to raise red diesel too but I need your evidence.

I did wonder at @EmmaforWycombe’s comments at NFU conference under questioning about the pressures farmers are under with bTB & govt’s control strategy that she insisted any policy must account for ‘all stakeholders’. In this tragedy, the only stakeholders are farmers & cows.