Finally, the ground is drying up and, as importantly, warming up, and we now have some decent grass growth.

The second half of March and most of April flipped between blashy cold, wet spells and frosty mornings followed by dry, barren days. As ever, the success of the lambing season is determined by Mother Nature and in the year of my 50th lambing, she proved to be pretty unkind.

April 11 into April 12 was one of the top five killing nights for lambs that I have experienced. Torrential cold rain from late afternoon was replaced after midnight by sleet then snow – all while lambs were still wet. This was followed by hard frost first thing in the morning – brutal is the only word to describe it.

Having seen the forecast, we hadn’t put anything out of the sheds for three or four days and fortunately there was a slight lull between in-bye and hill lambings. Nevertheless, even week-old lambs were struggling to cope – reports from round the country suggest many hundreds didn’t!

On a brighter note, it is great to see cattle and sheep prices finally reach realistic levels as feed and fertiliser costs start to fall significantly. I’m not sure anyone predicted lamb at £7/dwkg, prime beef at over £5/dwkg and cull cows at £4.50/dwkg – but that’s where we are.

However, that is not stopping the exodus of suckler cows from Scotland’s hills and uplands. Indeed, the cull cow price, as I’ve written before, is accelerating the decline of the numbers.

Red meat is scarce around the world, but it is in demand despite the best efforts of vegetarians, vegans and so-called Green groups. This demand makes the inaction of ScotGov on a coherent ag policy to encourage sustainable food production even more astonishing and unforgivable.

Of course, the new (or rehashed), SNP administration is being held to ransom by the Greens as far as a rural policy is concerned, but they only have themselves to blame.

You would have thought that an industry which could contribute to Scotland’s GDP like red meat production and processing would be encouraged. But not one bit of it – the political landscape is still dominated by independence at any cost.

Despite the rhetoric of Humza Yousaf, with his limited support, even in the SNP party, there is zero chance of another independence referendum any time soon. The complete meltdown of his party has seen to that.

In such circumstances, what is the point of pandering to the extremist views of a tiny minority of the Scottish electorate who don’t even recognise GDP as a measure of economic activity, never mind worry about it?

For the record, the Greens got around 35,000 constituency votes in the 2021 Scottish election and just over 220,000 – or 8% – of the regional vote. That has been enough to allow them to totally dominate and effectively run ag policy with the help of willing, hapless, policy officials ever since.

Fergus Ewing, a lifelong champion of rural Scotland, food production and business, was cast aside by Nicola Sturgeon, no doubt at their insistence, despite achieving more in his time in agriculture than any of his SNP predecessors – certainly his successor.

The recent personal attacks on Fergus by Green MSPs, led by Ross Greer, only served to underline the deep divisions that are now appearing in the SNP regarding this dire partnership. Now the ex First Minister has gone, more and more of her party are choosing to speak out, mostly for the first time, against some of the madness that has masqueraded as government policy for the last few years.

In that regard, NFUS is currently discussing the future of LFASS, which it seems to have been doing for years to no avail. Both LFA support and other support payments in the future will undoubtedly have tough conditionality measures attached to receiving them, that is certain.

And the influence of the Greens, if they are allowed to continue in their present role in government, is going to impact big time on the types of measures that officials intend to introduce. They are publicly calling for increased emphasis on tree planting, peatland restoration and other practices that sequester carbon and enhance biodiversity for farmers and crofters to receive public money.

I get that, but they are also calling for, and I quote, 'new support schemes for farmers to reduce emissions through land use change and destocking … especially in upland areas'.

They support a 25-30% shift away from meat and dairy consumption – the nonsense being peddled by the dubious science used by the UK Climate Change Committee, which is also music to the ears of ScotGov ag policy officials who have also embraced this nonsense.

At no time in any of the rants or utterings of these people or, indeed the SNP administration, does anybody point out or discuss the economic impacts on rural Scotland of this fanciful, Central Belt propaganda.

But worse is the meek acceptance of this by NFUS who seem to be acting as little more than postmen for ScotGov and the Greens, passing informal consultation documents to its livestock and LFA committees without a murmur of dissent.

Even more bizarre, if that’s possible, is giving the same discussion time at these committee meetings for this drivel from ScotGov officials as that allocated to fallen stock charges and QMS standards being changed yet again (for whatever reason, who knows?).

These proposals represent the nuts and bolts of the very future of thousands of farm businesses around Scotland, particularly in LFA areas. The problems these ill-thought-out proposals will cause will be terminal for many businesses.

This is especially true in the islands of Scotland. Islanders are already reeling at the super-charged cost increases of the last few years, exacerbated by totally knackered ferry services that's literally destroying their quality and standard of life.

This, for many farmers and crofters, will be the final nail in the coffin, hammered home by this appalling SNP/Green coalition.

The proposals being put in front of NFUS committees by their own hierarchy are heavy on bureaucracy and planning and almost bereft of actions. 'Animal health plans', Nutrient budgets', 'Soil and biodiversity plans', and compliance audits are all very well, but what are the actions and outcomes that go with them?

A hundred or so mitigation measures are all very interesting, but so what? Nobody can implement 100 changes and most of the measures being put forward for discussion aren’t even captured by the National Inventory, so won’t help in the calculations to reduce emissions anyway.

Capital investment will also be required for many measures, but if Government offer say 40% of this, where is the other 60% coming from, especially when livestock farms are being forced, (or ‘decided to’) reduce stock numbers?

These proposals in front of NFUS committees are typical of ScotGov officials’ total failure to offer coherent plans to encourage food production and environmental enhancement to operate hand in hand, particularly across LFA Scotland.

Driven by an SNP administration totally out of touch with the real needs of rural Scotland and a Green party who have their own agenda, NFUS need to seriously change their tactics. Being in bed with this lot is a disaster.

The hierarchy is so determined to be loved by ScotGov that they might as well move to Saughton House. If they keep squashing the wishes of the membership like the former First Minister did with her party, it might just end up in the same place – gagging the livestock and LFA committees is a classic example of that.

How dangerous and how bad do things have to get before there is a real challenge to all this nonsense?

Maybe it is time to jump on a plane to Holland and find out how we can launch a Farmers-Citizens Movement, the same as our Dutch counterparts.

There is no current opposition to all this gibberish from NFUS, so why don’t we pay a sub to a rural party instead who will properly represent your voice against this garbage. I’m not joking, it is working for the Dutch, why not us?