richardbenson.com

LIKE A GIANT insect on wheels, this self-propelled crop sprayer was being brought back into a yard after a morning in some East Yorkshire fields when we spotted it. The driver was a wily, friendly old Yorkshireman who had the air of someone who had been working the land for years and years. As Kevin often remarked, farm machinery can be very technologically advanced – new sprayers are fully equipped with computers and GPS systems – but the people using it tend to retain a distinctly wry, reticent rural character. That contrast makes modern farming a fantastically interesting business sometimes. Given the debate about organic food and pesticides, some people would see this as a controversial machine, and the nostalgically inclined might see it as overly industrial and modern. Its driver, however, had done the back-breaking work that it removed the need for, and saw it as the technological marvel it undoubtedly is•