It’s been an awful year for most farmers. The weather has been relentlessly challenging, mostly wet except when a dry spell was of little use (February), or actually damaging - the June drought did allow everyone to catch up on silage cutting, but it set second cuts back and destroyed late sown cereal crops.

And it’s hard to stay optimistic in times like these, with slurry tanks filling fast and no solution in sight for slurry. In some parts of the country, where intense flooding was experienced, there are reports of tanks close to overflowing already.

This is surely a force majeure situation, completely out of the farmer’s control, and some solution must be found.

I heard Francie Gorman and Martin Stapleton speak on the subject at the IFA presidential hustings in Enniscorthy.

They were both of the view that when - if - weather improves, farmers must be given an opportunity to landspread rather than risk tanks overflowing, a certain pollution point. I understand their perspective, but there is a problem.

No sanction legally required

As things stand, there is to my knowledge no legal mechanism in place to grant a derogation allowing slurry to be landspread once we move into November.

I’m not sure that any such sanction could be granted without legislation. And as that legislation would pertain to the Nitrates Directive, I’m guessing that it would need the approval of the Commission. Perhaps there are emergency powers that can be invoked. It isn’t simple.

The Department of Agriculture does need to show leadership and clemency where it can when farmers are facing impossible conundrums. For instance, there are dungheaps in fields all over the country.

It would have been reckless of farmers to have spread that farmyard manure when ground conditions were so poor, but farmers are in technical breach by having these heaps sitting in fields over the winter.

But here is nothing they can reasonably do - removing them would be totally counterproductive, tearing up fields and damaging the soil structure.

There is to my knowledge no legal mechanism in place to grant a derogation allowing slurry to be landspread once we move into November

One farmer suggested to me that if dungheaps were covered with silage plastic, it would minimise runoff from them. It seems an eminently sensible idea, and perhaps the Department could move to advise farmers to do so - and assure them that they won’t be penalised for their failure to do something, like spreading this autumn, that was simply impossible to do.

This seems an entirely more solvable problem than the rapidly filling slurry tanks, and it would at least remove one headache from farmers' lists.

The winter will pass, of course, and spring will come. Farmers will be praying that it comes early next year, with feedstocks decent, but not enough to see us through a late spring, and feed not as dear as last year's but little money to pay for it.

'Every dog does not have their day'

The optimist in me says that next year will surely have to be better than how this year has been.

Then again, I’ve learned the hard way that better times don’t follow because you want them to, or because the law of averages suggests they will. Don’t ask me, only tell me.

As a Wexford hurling fan, I trudged out of Croke Park year on year, after another narrow defeat to Kilkenny or Offaly. I somehow contrived at the age of seven to become a Tottenham fan as well, guaranteeing decades of angst interrupted by the odd trophy.

And Wexford and Tottenham are far from the worst examples from sport - we’ve had great days too. There is probably someone from Leitrim who supports Sheffield Wednesday, reading this and laughing at my self-pity. Every dog does not have their day, unfortunately.

I’ve learned the hard way that better times don’t follow because you want them to, or because the law of averages suggests they will

Farmers have upped their game massively in recent years. The messing that went on with slurry spreading and overuse or misuse of fertiliser is thankfully a thing of the past.

But being better prepared does not mean next year won’t be a huge challenge, and it doesn’t mean we will be able to beat the weather or other external factors that affect our little businesses.

The Irish rugby team was superbly prepared for the World Cup. Their performances were consistently excellent, going toe-to-toe with South Africa and New Zealand, who tonight contest the final. They dismissed a decent Scotland team with ease, and were within an inch of beating the All-Blacks.

And yet, the record books will show that Ireland lost in the quarter final in 2023, just like they did in every previous World Cup, apart from the one where we failed to get through the group stage.

It’s cruel, but sport is in many ways a reflection of all our lives - which can be cruel.

'Freak year' or a future indicator?

The nagging feeling is that 2023 might not be an outlier, a freak year, but actually an indicator of future weather patterns, or rather, a lack of any discernible weather pattern going forward.

For us tillage farmers, we’ve gone fully round the clock, and are experiencing a second successive awful autumn.

This is not normal, but it might just be the new normal

Planting is a grab-and-go operation, with most farmers miles behind what they would like to have done. Maize was mostly harvested, but only by round-the-clock operations. Potato crops remain in the fields, and are at the mercy of pests.

I’m hearing slugs are taking as much as 25% of standing crops, with pellets unable to cope with the incessant wet weather.

This is not normal, but it might just be the new normal. And the reality is that farmers will have to continue to produce food, and if its more costly and scarcer, it will get dearer.