Richard Cobbald wonders how many will be paid their SFP on time

December is here, which brings the festive period and lots of fun and laughter. This started early for me when last week I read that DEFRA was targeting to pay 86% of farmers by the end of the month. That was the best laugh I have had in years.

Let’s hope I have to eat my words, but on past performance, there will still be many unpaid farms well into 2012. They just won’t have time to pay us, have Christmas parties and whinge about their pensions in just one month. I guess that has just pushed my payment to the bottom of the pile.

While on the subject of the Rural Payments Agency, this year I did my application online, so retrieved all my details including field sizes from the government gateway. So I have been astonished to have received a number of letters telling me some of the field sizes are wrong, amazing when I didn’t alter a thing from the information they sent out. If I ran my farm like that, I am sure I would become part of the increasing out of work figures.

We have finally had a cold spell to open up the oilseed rape a bit, allowing us to get the blackgrass residuals on; this also seems to have encouraged the pigeons to start having a go at the crop. We knew it would happen, but have been very happy not to have seen them until this late. So now to inevitably upset the locals with our seasonal military-like assault on the grey flying rats.

All cereal crops were drilled early and look really well and should withstand anything the winter wishes to throw at us; in the case of our very lush winter barley, a few hard nights will do it some good.

All that remains is to wish you all a very happy Christmas and a perfect growing season for 2012.

Arable Farmer Focus: Richard Cobbald