I was quite shocked recently to realise that it was exactly 30 years and summers since I left school.
I wasn’t even 16 yet, I had a really terrible early 90s haircut and a deplorable fashion sense, and I was convinced that I wanted to follow in the footsteps of generations of my family by entering the fascinating and exciting world of agriculture.
Reference: 90th Anniversary Farmers WeeklyA journey spanning decades
Looking back, I don’t think I ever thought I would, could, or should do anything differently. It all felt like it was predestined.
Throughout my life, farming was a major topic discussed at family gatherings.
All my friends came from farming backgrounds and we spent most of our time together talking about tractors and cows (this was in the pre-YFC days, before girls and beer – which cost £1.50 a pint back then), and most other people I knew were also involved in farming in some way.
First Job
What else could I have done? And the fact that the old man offered me the handsome sum of £30 a week only strengthened my resolve: I would become a farmer, and a wealthy farmer.
Of course, that’s not the case yet, but I remain hopeful.
In 1994, John Major became Prime Minister, the Channel Tunnel opened, Sunday trading was legalised, the first National Lottery was drawn and Hyacinth Bucket was using a “smart phone”. Keeping up appearances.
Closer to home, a major event that happened in the agricultural world was the deregulation of the Milk Marketing Board and I remember well the anxiety and unrest that this caused in local communities.
At the time there were 35,000 dairy farms in the country; today there are just 7,500, so the concerns may have been legitimate, but the seemingly unstoppable growing power and greed of the supermarkets is arguably a much bigger cause.
Sure, a lot has changed in the last 30 years – some bad, some good, and some neutral – but what will it be like in 2054?
The biggest threat to all of us is climate change, but I’m eternally an optimist and believe that humanity will act long before that happens and start taking better care of the planet, and hopefully each other.
Technology takeover
Technological advances and artificial intelligence will likely change many aspects of our lives beyond recognition, with robot workers, driverless tractors and cars becoming the norm.
However, given the almost daily troubles we have just getting our printers and washing machines to work, and the enormous costs of repairing machines, I am skeptical.
Whatever happens, I won’t care, because by then I’ll be 75, probably with two new hips and knees, most of my own teeth gone, wearing hearing aids that I rarely turn on, and a cranky personality.
Hopefully, Mrs. Evans will still put up with my nonsense now and we will have a few grandchildren that I can lead astray and feed them copious amounts of sweets before handing them back to my legion of daughters just before bedtime.
Revenge is best carried out calmly.
But the biggest and most important question, the one that keeps me up at night, is: how much a pint of beer will cost by then? I don’t even want to think about it.