Harper Adams has become one of the leading agricultural universities in the world attracting students from across the globe with amongst the very highest rankings for student satisfaction.   The university has a link to Beijing Agricultural College so there were lots of Chinese students graduating.  We sat next to the Dominican Republic Ambassador who was there to celebrate the graduation of the first student from his country.  These are extremely challenging times for farmers in many sectors, including my sector which is dairy.   There seems to be a relentless move to scale and one wonders what future there is for “family” dairy farms with fewer than 500 or 600 cows.  It is these students who will be at the vanguard of change.  Indeed the Chinese are building a dairy with 100k cows and Professor Hugh Pennington (who was receiving an honorary degree) told me that from a bacteriological standpoint keeping cows indoors is better than having them graze.  I have to admit this makes me feel a little sad.