The ability to manage cashflow is now seen as a crucial part of running a successful farming business. It’s not hard to work out where the expression cashflow comes from, particularly during the autumn months.

Like many other farmers, the nature of my farming system sees money flowing in and out of the business from September to December in an almost tidal fashion. There are large cheques being lodged for beef cattle; this temporarily lightens my mood, and occasionally fools me into thinking that I am actually making money.

Then the conacre rent has to be paid, along with replacement bullocks. It brings a bit of suppressed panic back to surface again. Once I have all the stores bought and paid for, I glance again at the bank statement, and perform a few financial exercises in my head.

This provides a brief uplift in my mood, until I remember that the insurance man calls at the start of December, and he needs many thousands of pounds to protect me from all sorts of potential horrors.

And just when I’m beginning to wonder where it has all gone wrong, the Single Farm Payment (SFP) letter arrives. In the past, especially after a healthy year’s farming, the SFP helped to swell an already-strong bank balance.

More recently, it has been greeted with a huge sense of relief. This year, has seen an even greater dependence on agricultural support payments.

Comparisons of receipts for lamb, beef and barley over previous years helps to provide an immediate solution to the puzzle, even in a small set-up like this one.

When I add up £10 per head less for lamb, maybe £150 for each bullock, and £25 a tonne for grain, I can soon arrive at the conclusion that about £9,000 has gone missing from my farming purse.

Further estimated projections are then necessary to give me some idea where I’ll be at the end of March. As things stand, I’ll be okay as long as I adopt this now fashionable phrase – austerity measures.

Solution

One advantage of adopting an antiquated business policy is that I don’t borrow any money. I’m sure this has drawbacks, but at this moment in time, it is one less problem to worry about.

Even so, I am finding it hard to come up with a practical working solution, except for a good, old-fashioned tightening of the belt. However, with one youngster at university and another one likely to start next year, there is no such thing as existing cheaply.

I don’t care how you count it up – an average modern family, with a reasonable standard of living, needs a clear £50,000 per year to survive.

That sounds horrific, but if you add up all those hidden costs that lurk around in the background, this is an inescapable amount of money. Believe me, I have tried to work it out many times, and this is my best ballpark figure.

Cuts

The current crisis in agriculture should also be viewed through a broader lens. Something that I’ve been aware of for a while now is just how many people are affected by government cuts.

I have argued for years that my passport out of a financial deficit would be for my wife Susan to work full-time (she has been part-time for years) and leave me to look after the children. In theory, this would raise our income when farming was experiencing difficult times. However, it now looks as if cutbacks in the health service have done away with those extra available hours.

I was relaying this situation to another family member (a schoolteacher) and this triggered a full-blown rant on the state of the local education boards due to (guess what?) cutbacks.

She claimed to be even more disgruntled than the rest of us because, in addition to extra pressures at work, teachers have the added dissatisfaction of no longer being allowed to punish a child for being insolent and lazy.

It strikes me that we are all in this together. The far-reaching tentacles of a recession touch many more people than those directly in the firing line.

As far as offering a solution or a glimmer of hope that things will improve, I’m not feeling very confident. The best we can hope for is the likelihood of better times turning up unexpectedly and since this has happened in the past, I see no reason why it shouldn’t happen again.