It was clear as we were going through the 2020 harvest that it wasn’t going well but in farming there is no option but to keep going, to cut as much as possible in difficult conditions and then plant in the hope for a better next year.

The planting has been completed but so has the gathering of the payments due after the 2020 harvest. We are down a full 30c in crop sales. What that will do to overall farm profits I will have to wait for ifac, who do my farm accounts, to tell me but the overall implications are clear.

There is no point in repeating the tedious details of not being able to get sowing done in the autumn or the floods of February. Or the extraordinary prolonged drought from March to June, to be followed by difficult harvesting conditions that made the normally valuable winter barley straw impossible to save in conditions suitable for the top-end of the stud farm market. This is in addition to failing for the first time in many years to have the seed wheat meet its germination threshold.

All in all, it was a harvest to be forgotten apart from the lessons to be absorbed so that we can do our best to do better in 2021. On a brighter note, the efficiency of the Department in getting basic farm payments out in time should not be overlooked. We have now received the 15 October and 1 December payments, as well as the special beef finisher payment brought in to compensate for the first of the COVID-19-related losses, though I see the unfair EU convergence flattening continuing as well as a bigger financial discipline penalty than I expected.

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