OUT-TAKE:

'We can only hope that the mind of our new Prime Minister has broadened and is willing to take some account of the advice which the industry can give her to help avoid cranking the burgeoning food crisis up to the same level as the existing energy one'

In spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love, or so wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson – but in autumn, a farmer’s turns, perhaps not quite so lightly, to drawing up plans for what to grow next year.

While we might have just lived through one of the quickest and most straightforward harvests in recent years, along with prices way beyond what anyone would have expected a mere 12 months ago, taken together, the cold shower of ag-flation and the continued dearth of policy detail are likely to dampen any gung-ho ardour for the next round.

It never seems to be a straightforward exercise to plan ahead for the next crop rotation, but the exercise seems to be particularly fraught with uncertainties this year.

It’s likely to be fertiliser prices which will be one of the main considerations, though, given Putin’s decision to escalate his programme of throttling supplies to Europe leading to further reductions in the production of ammonium nitrate.

With CF deciding to shut down the UK’s only ammonia manufacturing plant at Billingham, citing sky-high gas prices, and N fertiliser production down by 70% across Europe – with Yara and other manufacturers closing down plants even before the latest hike in gas prices – the question might not be how much will it cost, but rather will there be any available.

Importing the raw constituents from other parts of the world has been mooted as one way round the issue, but competition for what is available is likely to be high. Therefore, it might be time for all the governments who have stated that they are serious about food security to, quite literally, step up to the plate in order to ensure that the knock-on consequences don’t leave their citizens hungry.

But that’s going to be a tough call for any government with an eye on keeping its electorate happy – especially when it its likely to mean that they have to make a choice between supporting heating, or eating.

But with our own new leader in the shape of Liz Truss having pledged an energy plan ‘within a week’ of her elevation to the top job, it looks pretty certain in which direction the UK Government will be leaping.

As an aside – and while it might be unfair to comment on her premiership at such an early stage – an interview with the lady a few years ago when she visited the Royal Highland Show during her not-brief-enough spell as Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, back in 2015, might be colouring my opinion of our new PM.

Being contacted by her press office in advance of the Defra ministers planned visit to the show, a one-to-one interview was proposed. While that initially sounded like it might offer the chance for a bit of a scoop, the fact that it was being organised to take place not in the showground, but in Edinburgh during the day of the show pointed to a slight lack of understanding of the hectic nature of the Ingliston event.

Eventually deigning to meet the press at the show, the MP for South West Norfolk then wanted to meet the agri-hacks individually, rather than fielding the usual open questions from the group as a whole – an approach which has traditionally been adopted to allow a wider range of questions to be asked.

Eventually, though, after one of the show directors delivered our ultimatum on a joint approach, Ms Truss realised that we were serious that it was either an open question session or nothing, and we eventually settled down to a briefing.

However, with the Brexit referendum set to take place the following year, we were determined (with some prescience as it turned out) to winkle out some indication of what would happen if the vote went in favour of leaving the EU, effectively gauging if there was any sort of Plan B being drawn up.

Despite being asked the same question six times by six different journalists, Busy Lizzie, a staunch remainer back then, went no further than repeat each time the mantra of the day that there was no need for any such plan as such an outcome didn’t even merit consideration.

(Interesting, then, that our new PM is now a firm supporter of ‘all the wonderful the opportunities’ which Brexit offers us…!)

So, as she draws up her plan to address the energy crisis over the next seven days, I guess we can only hope that the intervening years have seen the mind of our new Prime Minister broaden – and that she is willing to take some account of the advice which the industry is keen to give her to help avoid cranking the burgeoning food crisis up to the same level as the existing energy one.

But while we might have some fears that such a hastily concocted plan that's set to be drawn up over the course of a few days might turn out to be more than a little half-baked, closer to home the opposite has been the case. There’s been a lot of heat generated over the hugely disappointing lack of detail in the long-awaited Scottish Agriculture Bill which was finally launched for consultation, last week.

I can only echo the thoughts expressed following another disappointing political event and say that not only did the minister fail to pull a rabbit out of the hat – but didn’t even bother to bring the hat along.

For, despite the delightfully vague promise that the Bill will ensure that Scotland becomes a world leader in sustainable and regenerative agriculture, there’s really precious little else in the way of the sort of hard and fast information which we need to either plan the future course of our businesses or to actually get to grips with climate change available in the Bill.

Given the fact that we were all led to believe the big policy reveal was taking so long because it was crucially important that we got it right, it’s little surprise that there was huge disappointment at the lack of detail after such a long and drawn-out gestation.

In terms of giving us time to adapt our businesses, to say nothing of actually addressing the challenges of climate change, we don’t seem to be all that much further forward than we were two years ago – and the clock is now ticking swiftly down to 2025.

This, of course, means that not only will we need to make bigger changes to survive in the new regime, but we’ll need to make them over a much shorter time period.

Putting it in agricultural terms, it’s a bit like setting up a committee to decide how to respond when the bull breaks out and is heading at full tilt towards the heifers’ field.

In this case, rather than telling everyone which way to run to stop the bull, the decision seems to have been to announce the adoption of an approach which is environmentally sound and which offers equal opportunities to all gender groups and individuals with a focus on animal welfare issues in order to ensure a just transition in the bull’s direction – all of which is in line with a vision paper drawn up earlier in the year.

By which time the bull has jumped the fence …

But, just when our backs were turned and our attention diverted, a major revelation was actually made this week. It was carefully hidden deep in the latest Scottish Government’s 'Programme for Government 2022 to 2023', which was published on Tuesday.

While there was little, or no mention of food production in that tome, in a section on restoring the environment, ScotGov revealed that in order to support the development of a thriving farming sector, it will:

“Explore capping and/or tapering base-level payments to release additional funding to meet the goals of our agricultural vision, including the urgent actions required to reach net zero emissions.”

So, for all those busy trying to plan ahead, as Jeremy Clarkson was wont to say: “And on that bombshell…”