Fog of uncertainty is no help to farmers after such a wet year

“We are resilient people.”

Those were the words of an Ayrshire dairy farmer this week as we stood in his icy, eerily empty silage pit; a store that at the end of any other December would have been stuffed full with a winter’s supply of feed for hundreds of cattle.

I’d asked how he was going to cope after a summer and autumn of relentless rain had saturated the land, written off crops and left the unit totally dependent on bought-in hay, beet, draff and silage.

Costings for his dairy cows alone have risen from 6ppl to 14ppl so, together with buying a second-hand feed wagon and extra tractor to run it, he estimates the business is £100,000 back on where it would have been had the rain held off for just a few days during the critical harvest times.

Yet this farming family is undeterred by the setback and already planning how to make the farm less vulnerable to future weather events.

It’s this dogged attitude that has kept the industry moving forward despite commodity price crashes, radical changes to the CAP, foot and mouth, BSE and a series of disastrous weather events, and individual businesses are now drawing on that strength as they try to progress in a vacuum of farming policy.

“Embracing change” is the theme of next week’s Oxford Farming Conference and there is anticipation that when Environment Secretary Michael Gove addresses movers and shakers from international food, farming, conservation and retail industries, he’ll provide some clarity on the future shape of a British agricultural policy.

Support payments may have been guaranteed until 2022 but farmers desperately need a framework they can get their teeth into, and it needs to come soon.

We’re about to enter the last full year under the CAP, after all, and 2018’s Agriculture White Paper is looming.

For starters, we need to know exactly what Mr Gove means by a “green” Brexit, if he envisages sheep producers farming alongside reintroduced species, and how much he is prepared to sacrifice in animal welfare standards to secure cheap food imports.

Other luminaries at the event include the United States Department of Agriculture’s Under-Secretary of State and the vice-chairman of the European Parliament’s agriculture committee.

Afterwards, sparks will fly at the Oxford Union when speakers debate: “This House believes that by 2100, meat-eating will be a thing of the past”, and by the end of the evening it will take all of Perthshire producer Jim Smith’s talent as a “stand-up farmer” to encourage the industry to laugh off its troubles.

Scottish farmers will adapt to whatever is asked of them. History has shown they’re inventive, flexible and yes – resilient.

They just need to know what they’re up against.

Picture: PA. UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove will speak at the Oxford Farming Conference next week.