I hate wishing time away but after 13 months of hoping next week’s weather will be better, it seems that’s just what I’ve done. I’ve written this year off as a grazing season and I’ll just manage it out for the rest of the year.

Fodder stocks are reaching a comfortable level and hopefully the winter will give a chance to reset.

There are many times over the last century when you could say farming in Ireland was at a crossroads. This time, it feels like it’s at a spaghetti junction.

Some of the roads are progressing as normal, albeit with a few warning signs, others are dead ends, and some just go round in circles of varying diameters measured in years.

It’s said regularly now that European food policy was responsible for the removal of trees and ditches in the 1970s and 1980s and now we’re being paid to put them back.

The 35% reduction in the number of suckler cows since 2013 comes as little surprise.

The suckler herd grew on the back of the introduction of milk quota so it was always expected to contract once that was lifted. The suckler heartlands will continue, but I think generational renewal will be the biggest challenge it faces.

You can see there is a clear interest in breeding cattle among young people but to earn incomes similar to their non-farming contemporaries could prove challenging.

Perhaps a little left-of-field thinking is required here.

A suckler cow offers a better chance of maintaining or increasing biodiversity levels than, for example, growing and cutting grass for a biodigester. I think a tiered environmental payment system for these areas needs consideration in the next CAP.

The likes of the Burren Programme showed that results-based schemes can deliver environmentally but also financially for farmers at a local level.

The co-operation version of ACRES has proved that broadening that is cumbersome, to say the least.

Surely, it’s worth finding a happy medium between these two models and giving farmers who are interested in increasing biodiversity levels on their farms through a results-based model a chance to do so?

There seem to be more incentives not to farm than farm at the moment

To have any chance of retaining communities in some parts of the country, the likes of this will need to be considered along with a production element.

There seem to be more incentives not to farm than farm at the moment.

Add in the outside demands on land for energy, housing, as an investment or rewilding, and there’s a danger that will impact on farming, especially the number of farmers, in the long term.

In an absolutely extreme scenario, some areas could see a return to the tenant farmer situation seen before the Land Acts passed in Westminster from 1870 to 1909.

An in-depth look needs to be taken at these areas, many of which are in the counties on the western seaboard. The impact can be seen in the populations there already, with falling numbers in primary and secondary schools.

Another tangible example of the population decline can be seen in the amalgamation of GAA clubs.

To try and stymie some of this a plan is needed, but is the appetite there to do it?