Whether one likes it or not, there is a major push for renewables.

Last year, I went quite a distance in looking at the possibilities for solar energy on an excellent site beside a transformer station on the farm. I withdrew from all discussions because the land was not going to be classed as agricultural for Capital Acquisitions Tax purposes. The recent budget has changed that as long as less than 50% of the area of the farm is devoted to the generation of solar power. This strikes me as a sensible condition so once I clarified that the Capital Acquisitions Tax condition would apply, I restarted discussions and signed an option agreement and accepted the deposit.

I got lots of legal and accountancy advice but I was not prepared for the well-known, high-profile firm to effectively cease trading and put itself up for sale. I have given them a three-year option on my site and of course, I have been poring over the contract to examine precisely where I stand and if I must agree to see the option to my land sold along with the company. Apparently, my consent to a sale cannot be “unreasonably withheld” but I can see lots of scope for argument, or at least discussion, with any prospective purchaser.

At this stage, I don’t know if the application for my solar farm will be pushed to the back of the large, national queue that has built up, but certainly it looks as if some kind of delay will be inevitable as planning permission has not been formally applied for yet, even though reportedly productive discussions have taken place with the local authority. We are still at the early stages of what I suspect is going to be a lengthy saga.

Meanwhile, even though rainfall has not been that heavy over the last few weeks, Tuesday night and Wednesday morning has more than made up for the deficit and I have a larger area flooded than I have seen for many years. We still have some bought-in weanlings eating grass while we wait to sell more cattle and free up some pens. The mild weather has meant that the oilseed rape has continued to grow, with a mass of dense green except for the odd gaps. So far, there are no signs of pigeons but I doubt if they would do much harm in such a forward crop, though in the case of a prolonged hard frost, it could be dangerous to underestimate the damage they could do.

Meanwhile, we have now started feeding our own beans as part of the protein in the diet and with the ban on GM soya by my customers, we are making up the balance with a protein byproduct from the alcohol industry. I just wonder if enough research has been done to try and get to the stage where all the protein needs could be supplied by Irish-grown material, of which beans is clearly one.