Given the amount of calls received from farmers in the past two weeks unhappy with how CAFRE delivered the first meeting of the new business development groups, there could be a significant number of dropouts before the programme effectively gets off the ground.

With over 3,000 offered a place, around 81% actually turned up to the first meeting. Those who couldn’t make it along on the first night will be given another opportunity to register during April.

For those who did go, it was a fairly inauspicious start, with a lot of hanging around waiting to be registered and for a photograph to be taken. In one regard, it was a useful insight into the bureaucracy pervading Government at present. From the outside, it looked as though CAFRE had pushed through the first meeting to get some of its budget spent before the end of the financial year.

With a significant number of groups still without a facilitator and CAFRE resources stretched, there is a danger that some might be disillusioned already. That might not be helped when reality hit, and people found themselves in groups with near neighbours. In hindsight, it might have been better if farmers were grouped together by size of enterprise, not by their postcode.

Despite all that, farmers should remain open-minded to working together in a group structure, and open-minded to the fact that participating might actually be a worthwhile exercise. There is plenty of evidence to prove that participants will gain financially in the long run. It is vital that farmers engage positively.

For it all to work, we also need to see a culture change when it comes to sharing information on physical and financial performance. Why all the secrecy? Is it to stop retailers finding out true costs of production? Being realistic, it is something they know anyway.