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“I got up at 5:30 and fed the dogs. I took them up the fell on the quad bike to check on the ewes. The grass is very short at the moment, and the ewes looked a bit thin, so I took them some hay up in the Landrover. I spent the afternoon mending the fences in the lower field.”
A cereal farmer
“I got up early and was in the farm office by 8:30. The fertilizer I had ordered arrived at 9:00, and I made sure it was safe in the barn before I went to the tractor shed. I spent the rest of the day ploughing, ready for the wheat to be sown next week. Angus used the other tractor for sowing oilseed rape in the next field.”
The climate of a particular place affects what types of plant grow well there. The important factors are:
Hours of sunshine
Temperature
Rainfall
Cereal crops need lots of sunshine and quite low rainfall.
Tropical fruits need high temperatures and lots of rain.
Grass for pastoral farming grows best in cool, wet climates.
However, there are ways of beating climate. Greenhouses can be used to grow crops that need high temperatures, and irrigation systems can be used to overcome lack of rainfall.
Economic factors also affect the distribution of farming.
Farmers that produce perishable goods, such as milk, strawberries and eggs have to farm close to people who buy these products. Otherwise the food would spoil before reaching the consumer.
Farmers must also be able to employ enough skilled labour to run their farms.
These factors mean that it is sometimes difficult to farm in remote areas.
Transport improvements are greatly reducing these problems, especially in more economically