Getting to Number One

To get to Number One in the charts is not easy. If you have no talent it is, though sometimes you may not think it, impossible. What can you do is to recognise talent and back it.

Global warming is pushing up the temperatures, by the 1980's a few English farmers were growing maize, others were going abroad. I was doing both, mostly short frequent trips to visit French farmers who were newly made friends (Bretons actually, quite different). Early one morning I was loaded into a coach full of farmers. We sped across France along empty roads arriving at a huge conference centre. Time for speeches by the French Minister of Agriculture, then the man from the Ministry of Agriculture. They inspired French farmers, they were contemptuous of British Agriculture. "They are not serious." Spain was a threat, earlier, more sunshine, they could only be matched by more research and better plant breeding. Britain presented a great market to be fought for and won. Spain, well, the farmers cheered, they knew what to do, blockade the border, trash the goods.

After the political fire, I sat with 100 farmers to eat a four course lunch with some great wine. The conference centre was the hub of a research station so I wandered. Finding plots of maize of outstanding merit, notes were made and a choice, which seemed suitable for England, made: returned home resolved.

Enquired about seed - none available; wrote to France - the French never reply or write letters; phoned to say I was coming to France to collect seed legally or illegally; ten days later without warning seed for 17 acres was delivered, no invoice just a message, "We may come to inspect" - they didn't. A few more bags on the truck were heading to experimental stations.

So we grew 20:80 (also known as LG 20:80 Maize Seed) - WOW! Now forgotten but top of the charts through the 1980's it started a revolution in maize growing, feeding cows, fattening bullocks, rearing calves. Two years later they came to make a film about 20:80, no-one ever saw it, I was the star but ended up on the cutting room floor, gutted.

Eurolink introduced me to those French farmers, still visiting. It is good to know your enemies, to understand their codes, to learn. Try it. By the way, the conference was organised by I.C.I., remember them?

Paddy Cumberlege