The dry spell has gone but Brexit questions remain

It doesn’t seem so long since I was writing about the impact of drought, bone-dry fields and parched crops. Four months ago spare potato irrigation equipment was being employed in an unprecedented move to help cereals germinate - and farmers openly admitted they were praying for rain. The saying “be careful what you wish for” is undoubtedly now ringing in a few ears.

This week the stop-start seed tattie harvest is bogged down, ware harvesting is delayed and in Fife, Angus and Perthshire, cereals growers are fighting to bring in the last of the spring barley and oats. Further north the situation is much more serious and producers are despairing of sodden fields, mud and rotting grain. After a promising early start to the season, it has turned into a long, laborious campaign and the knock-on implications for establishing winter crops and meeting deadlines for environmental focus areas are all too galling.

The summer shows have ground to a close after some spectacularly dreich days for a few of the key events and the season of livestock sales is now in full swing. Tup sales got off to a dramatic start with 130,000gns paid for the outstanding Sportsmans A Star at the Scottish national Texel sale at Lanark, and trade at the great Kelso ram sales extravaganza broke the £3million barrier for the first time. The Stirling Blackface ram sale takes place on October 14 and, then, it’s the Dalmally sale a week later.

Meanwhile, pedigree bull breeders and suckler herd owners are gearing up for the major October fixtures at Stirling and Oban.

This is one of the busiest times of the year for the farming industry but looming over all the work, trade, ringside chat and impending conference season agendas is Brexit. The uncertainties thrown up by leaving Europe continue to be the backdrop to everything, from farm labour and future farm support arrangements to the challenges of global trade.

Mountains of documents continue to be produced, briefing papers prepared and every nuance of political discussion reported, yet there is no more certainty about what Brexit will mean for Scottish agriculture than on that momentous morning at the 2016 Royal Highland Show when we woke up to the prospect of life outside the EU.

The consequences are still as unpredictable as the weather.