Meet your Blogger

Mark Hall
Syngenta Business Analyst
Welcome to my Syngenta website Business Blog
With increasingly volatile markets for crops and radical political changes across Europe, it’s an incredibly fast moving and dynamic position facing arable growers. As the Syngenta UK Business Analyst I spend my time assessing how these factors will affect farmers’ future decisions.
Having spent five years as a Velcourt Farm Manager and seven years with Strutt & Parker, as agronomist and farming consultant, I will be using the Business Blog to keep you up to date with some of my thinking on the future direction for farm businesses.
I would welcome and appreciate any comments on my Blog entries; please do use the feedback button to get involved at any time.
Yields we read about - pub talk?
I realise it is never clever to voice any form of benefit from others’ misfortune but having helped with harvest at home recently I can honestly say that the resulting price spike that’s occurred due to Russia’s severe drought is going to be a saving grace to us.
Much of the wheat land we have cut so far is loam overlying gravel and yields have been badly hit by the dry weather...
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Renewing your ELS? – Need more Points?
I have had a couple of chats recently with infamous agri-ecolomist (agronomist + ecologist!) Marek Nowakowski of The Wildlife Farming Co concerning ways to replace the points we used to claim for the different management plans under ELS. Some 12,000 agreements are due for renewal in 2010, 3035 have already been agreed for August 1st start.
Margins have become...
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RUSSIA TURNS WHEAT'S BOUNCE INTO A JUMP
Today has seen another hike in wheat prices around all of the major markets. November futures on the London exchange jumped £17/t this afternoon as Vladimir Putin banned exports from Russia (with effect from August 15th) in response to the horrendous drought and crop fires they are currently experiencing. November futures now stand at £168.75/t and May futures are at...
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