I hope you all had a merry Christmas and a chance for a few days relaxation over the holiday break.

Jayne and I hosted both our families here at Valetta and saw the New Year in with some water-skiing at Lake Hood our local, man-made recreational lake.

As the season rolls on, it is a good time for reflection and pondering on the year ahead. The crops look very well, we had a wet, kind spring and have seen a rather dry finish – which has tested the irrigation out over the past few weeks.

Early grass seeds, hybrid oilseed rape and pea crops have seen their last drink and will head into harvest over the next four weeks.

See also: Read more from our Arable Farmer Focus writers

Pricing is still very subdued and we are nervous at what the autumn contracts will provide for grass, clover and vegetable crops.

There has been a stellar recovery in the dairy price out here and that should start to generate interest in feed and grain crops – and that additional trade will see pricing lift with increaseddemand.

However, it is still hard to see the fundamentals of world grain prices underpinning the recovery seen in the farmgate milk price.

Volatility is the word for 2017, perhaps. The social and political unrest that has led to Brexit and President-elect Trump will continue to have profound effects worldwide.

Here in New Zealand, we see a general election in late 2017 with our steady, conservative National Party gunning for a fourth term against a Labour/Greens coalition.

The Greens, albeit as a minor partner, seem to be driven by a socialist, vegan mantra and are strongly anti-farming.

If we look worldwide, the global financial crisis was caused by the unbridled largesse of the financial markets, and ever since the taxpayer has funded the losses while the party has continued.

Maybe it is time for the markets to learn that capitalism can have consequences and profits must be offset by losses.

Here for the New Year, Jayne would like to see me finish a few projects and have a little bit of time off, so maybe that should be my resolution.

David Clark taking some time away from the farm to have a go at water skiing over the festive period

David Clark runs a 463ha fully irrigated mixed farm with his wife Jayne at Valetta, on the Canterbury Plains of New Zealand’s south island. He grows 400ha of cereals, pulses, forage and vegetable seed crops, runs 1,000 Romney breeding ewes and finishes 8,000 lambs annually.