Christmas decorations are down, the worst of the winter possibly yet to come and bills from December are about to drop on the mat – assuming the post is not on strike.

At the bleakest of bleak times of the year, the last thing you want to read is a forecast that 2023 will bring more of the same to agriculture.

Political and economic logic might point in that direction, but optimism is a gap between forecasts and reality. This reflects the famous Harold Macmillan quotation, when he was asked about the biggest problem facing a Prime Minister. He responded: “Events, dear boy, events”.

This time last year few would have predicted the global economic turmoil Russia's unjustified attack on Ukraine – still then a month away – would unleash.

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Evidence for better times ahead here is weak, but there are some signs the peak in inflation may have passed; that could pave the way for an easing of interest rate rises and a much needed return of confidence to the economy.

From that would flow the better times farming and other business sectors desperately need – although agriculture is better placed that others for recessionary times. Its end product is in demand every day, regardless of people's incomes.

Farming does not boom when the economy booms, but unlike the retail sector, beyond food it does not enter the doldrums when society faces economic problems.

If the UK economy is going to be bad in 2023 as many pundits claim, then farming is one of the best businesses to cope. Because it is largely family run, it can tailor itself for tougher times.

As a bonus, if times get tougher and spending is under pressure diversification businesses offering activities for families could find an unexpected boom in their fortunes.

In Europe farmers are now officially in the new CAP. As the UK and its regions continue to debate the exact funding model for the industry, farmers will be wondering how the bureaucratic EU got this right more quickly.

This was despite the promises that Brexit would allow the UK to develop and implement a model free of the red tape and debate around the CAP. In tough times, that certainty in the EU of direct payments for meeting relatively simple rules is to be envied.

This is the big frustration of Brexit, particularly for those in agriculture who supported it. A government that made much of wanting Brexit has failed to exploit the potential it said it would offer UK agriculture to be different.

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Instead of living up to promises to create a UK agricultural industry that would be globally competitive, productive and profitable, it is simply delivering what farmers would have had if Brexit never happened. Indeed the UK situation is even worse.

Funding for agriculture is less certain and less generous; trade opportunities, despite promises of global trade deals, are less meaningful than businesses enjoyed when the UK was an EU member state. On top of that, the UK no longer has the protection against cheap food imports EU membership delivered.

At the start of a new year, things in agriculture in Europe could go one of two ways. There is, unquestionably, a battle between farm ministers and others over the pressure to achieve arbitrary green targets and the need for food security, built around availability and affordability.

Early in 2022, the food security arguments were winning the day, but as the COP events in Egypt and Canada turned the focus onto green issues attitudes in the EU swung in the opposite direction. Food security has tumbled down the political agenda and green issues are again in the driving seat.

This is little different to the UK, beyond the fact that here food security never even managed to become a political issue.

In Europe, attempts to resolve the fertiliser crisis looked promising, but progress has been limited by the assumption a key element of the solution is less waste and more precision in fertiliser use. Farmers will not disagree, but it is a long term green solution when what is needed now is a way to tackle the problem of farmers cutting back on fertiliser use, with an inevitable impact on yields.

It used to be corn versus horn as the key argument over policy, but now it is the green versus food security balance that takes centre stage. There is a sense that 2023 will confirm whether this is a battle agriculture has already lost.