We still have beef cattle to sell and the selling season is ending even more catastrophically than what we considered to be a price collapse in the post-Christmas period.

The real question, from a selfish point of view, is do we replace with stores that have undoubtedly dropped in price or do we hold off in the anticipation that they may continue to drop even more? At this stage, we will probably wait a bit longer to see how the trade develops and when the buying for grass eases.

It is an extraordinary year by any standards, with new reports of fertiliser supports to ease the financial shock of the price hikes.

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We have, like most people I suspect, already applied for the new departmental diesel subsidy and while welcome, it won’t remotely compensate for the increased cost in running machinery. Nevertheless the speedy implementation of the measure is appreciated, and it was also very easy to apply.

My green diesel supplier sends out the invoices by email and, while I used resent the absence of a post-delivered paper bill, the fact that it was in digital form meant the invoices could be accessed immediately instead of rummaging through endless paper and simply emailed over to the AgFood department portal.

Meanwhile, actual farming has to go on. We have applied the last of the nitrogen to the winter wheat and are just preparing to go out with the final head spray on the winter barley.

It was a rare piece of really positive news on the tillage front to see Diageo, the owners of Guinness, build and open a new brewery just down the road in Newbridge. Hopefully it will turn out to be a significant user of barley to meet the growing demand for stout.

Our crop of spring beans has benefited from the welcome rain that fell, but they have also been subjected to an attack of weevils with the characteristic notches on the leaves. We were advised to treat immediately which we did, but it’s another cost in a year that has been characterised by hugely increased costs across a range of inputs.

On the question of costs and possible trends, I have always found it interesting to keep an eye on the Chicago Board of Trade wheat price. Many would regard it as the true indicator of the world price. Over the last few months, it has continued to rise and on Monday it was 23% above the price of this time last year. We will be watching to see if this increase is reflected here this coming harvest.