Richard Hackett: We need to establish crop varieties that can cope with a bit of adversity

Too many of our varieties exhibit Goldilocks-type tendencies when it comes to adverse weather events – we need varieties with more ‘MacGyver’ in their ability to overcome hardship

Resilience required: Wheat damaged by rain. Photo: Getty — © Getty Images/iStockphoto

Richard Hackett

It appears we had all ‘forward bought’ the last few growing seasons. The last few years have in general been benign for crop production, especially during springtime: rain when we needed it, dry spells when we needed it; sufficient temperatures when we needed them.