I’m worried. Those of you who know me will say there’s nothing new in that. Yes, I’ve always been good at worrying and I’m the sort of fellow who can multi-task with worries; I’d usually be able to juggle at least half a dozen worries at one time.

Many of them never happen but some do and are seldom as awful as imagined. With cruel irony it can be a relief when a worry becomes a reality - the uncertainty is over. I make worrying look easy and most of them are about stupid stuff like the weather, which is pointless. Some are more high-brow and in the national interest, for example, the way the minority left gets so much air time on RTÉ television.

But this particular worry that’s playing on my mind at the present time, is also in the national interest. In fact, it’s actually in the European interest.

I’m particularly concerned at the amount of pesticides which are under review and may be withdrawn. The future for Roundup (glyphosate) is becoming very uncertain as it is for Bravo (chlorothalonil or CTL) which is another important chemical that’s been around for as long as glyphosate. I don’t object to scrutiny provided it is based on sound science rather than on populist nonsense.

Roundup is a victim of circumstance; it’s guilty by its association with Monsanto, that the general public seem to hate, presumably because of their pioneering work with GM crops. I am convinced that glyphosate is one of the safest chemicals which we use. Conservation agriculture like min-till and no-till will die a sudden death without Roundup and it’ll be back to biblical times with that carbon-releasing and soil fauna destroyer, the plough.

I’d rather stand at the rear end of a cow twice a day for the rest of my life than return to the wholesale use of the plough. Now, you’ll be aware (and one or two may delight in the fact) that I resort to the plough when we have to. I personally don’t have a problem with that but I greatly prefer to establish crops without resorting to the plough if it’s possible to do so.

My worries are just as real for Bravo. For the uninitiated, Bravo is a contact fungicide used for treating the most yield-robbing wheat disease, septoria. Unlike practically all the newer fungicides, it has no known resistance and for this reason is an essential tool in the annual fight against septoria. I would say it’s probably not possible to grow wheat in Ireland without Bravo, unless every summer is like 2018.

Buying new wheels

Finally, I’m in the process of trying to buy a demo hi-tech tractor equipped with RTK. RTK is an integral part of auto-steer whereby the tractor’s position in the field is pin-pointed to within 100mm by satellites. Basically, it facilitates ultra-accurate seed drilling without markers.

It has occurred to me just how far we have come in my lifetime. When I was a lad there was no technology in the tractor cab. For spraying you estimated your ground speed from the tables stuck on the tractor dash. And to alter the seed rate, you got out with a hammer.

My first piece of in-cab technology was a Farmeasy fieldmeter which was based on a Commodore calculator. Then I progressed to an RDS speed and area meter which was revolutionary. But progress comes at a price and at the moment the price is too high. So don’t be surprised if you happen to see me in or under a budget tractor at the Ploughing.