Flindt on Friday: Chemical chiefs – try Charlie’s Challenge

It’s traditional at this time of year to make a plea on behalf of spray operators: “Come on, spray manufacturers; how about making life easier for those of us putting your products on the crops?”

And it’s traditional that this plea will go completely unanswered.

This year, I’ve come up with a different approach.

It came to me while I was doing another megamix on the wheat – one of Tod the Agronomist’s early May cocktails that can take as long to get into the sprayer as it takes to get back out again.

About the author

Charlie Flindt

Charlie Flindt is a tenant of the National Trust, farming 380ha in Hampshire with his wife, Hazel. He’s a weekly columnist writing for Farmers Weekly and never fails to raise a few eyebrows and tickle a few funny bones with his hilarious musings about the farming world.

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There was a straw shortener, a couple of fungicides and some herbicide to finally take out the unintentionally nitrogen-boosting beans.

But it’s not Tod’s fault it takes so long; it’s down to the fact that it’s still a nightmare (with a few exceptions) to perform the simple act of putting chemical into a sprayer.

The solution (I decided, once I had finally settled down in the cab) is simple.

First, we need a TV Channel. That’s easy. Hardly a week goes by with another one popping up somewhere down the schedules, shouting loudly from what looks like a Portakabin. We’ll call it FarmTV.

Next, we organise a new panel game, which will be a cross between I’m a Celebrity and On Your Farm.

The premise is this: senior management of assorted chemical companies will have to undergo hideous endurance challenges while, on the other side of the studio, a spray operator goes into a “spray store”, finds and opens the right can, empties the product into a hopper, rinses it clean – really clean – and puts it into a recycling bag.

The challenge goes on until the can is dropped. Hooters sound, party poppers go off, and the challenge can end.

(Although extra endurance time will be added, I’ve decided, for Naff Company Platitudes (NCPs) seemingly stolen from a local primary school.)

Imagine the excitement. The managing director of Bayer (NCP: “Science for a better life”) is locked in a box of tarantulas while a spray operator with a sore shoulder opens a can of glyphosate without using a hammer and chisel, or the special spanner that never seems to get delivered.

Or the head honcho of Life Scientific (NCP: “Being the best at what we do”) having a bulldog clip fastened to something extremely painful while an aged spray operator tries to distinguish between five-litre cans of product that are near identical at first glance, and require the best reading glasses and a crystal clear visor to find the name and the active ingredient, both printed in teeny tiny letters on the label.

What fun it would be to immobilise the entire board of directors of Adama (NCP: “Listen>Learn>Deliver” – yes, really), gaffer tape earphones onto their heads, and force them to listen to Ellie Goulding’s Greatest Hits while I try to rinse out a can of Arizona.

Bearing in mind that this usually takes at least 10 minutes, I can see heads exploding halfway through “Love Me Like You Do”. Top telly. A rural version of Squid Game.

Tell you what – we’re on to a winner here. We’d need a top co-presenter, of course; perhaps a well-known Cotswold farmer could be persuaded to join in. It could be a hit.

The big networks might snap it up. Trouble is, they’d insist on having Sara Pascoe presenting, and then the participants would have to strip off, because that’s all that seems to happen on TV these days.

It would all get too complicated – and embarrassing. I’ve changed my mind; let’s stick with a grumpy Farmers Weekly column, even if it achieves nothing.