I had assumed that when the crunch came that fertiliser prices would settle down and I would not have to pay the spoken of prices of around or a bit less than €700 for ordinary CAN.

But as two of my regular suppliers contacted me over the last week with the news that they could not see any dramatic fall on the horizon, it was time to make up my mind.

In the end, we hedged our bets and bought a bit less than half our nitrogen needs and will then wait and see what happens in the spring.

But the emotional blow of such a severe readjustment in the price of such a critical input has been very real.

If such a massive disruption can happen with one product, where are the normal predictable trading patterns?

From our point of view, we will continue to rely on slurry and clover for our grazed grass. It will be silage and tillage that will rely on bought-in N.

Efficiency of slurry use will rapidly come into focus

It is clear the amount of nitrogen we will use at these prices will be reduced in that each extra kg of nitrogen will give an ever-reducing amount of product, so the lines of cost versus extra product will cross much earlier.

Efficiency of slurry use will rapidly come into focus and I can see us going down the trailing shoe route earlier than we had budgeted for.

Meanwhile, we continue to bring in cattle as the late growth is finally grazed off. With the price of grain, we will try to use our silage to get as much weight gain as possible on cattle before they go on to full feed for the final six weeks or so.

While a pure Aberdeen Angus may well finish on good silage alone, I have little confidence that the dairy-bred steers will.

The volunteer beans in the seed wheat looked at one stage as if they would die off as they went a pale yellow colour

Out on the tillage fields, as I mentioned last week, we had got all our autumn herbicides on the winter crops in excellent conditions.

The volunteer beans in the seed wheat looked at one stage as if they would die off as they went a pale yellow colour, but in the good growth conditions they seem to have shrugged off the setback and will need a conventional herbicide in spring.

I must admit I am not in favour of a Zoom meeting on such important issues

On the business side, I have registered for the Glanbia vote. I must admit I am not in favour of a Zoom meeting on such important issues, especially when there is no pressing urgency to carry out such far-reaching changes.