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To make a quick check on the impact of price or production cost changes on your net margin, have a look at the HGCA’s neat and extremely useful sensitivity calculator on www.hgca.com.

All that is needed is to enter area, yield history, fixed and variable growing costs and a selling price to get a chart showing the resulting net margins.
 
The tool highlights loss making combinations in red and can take account of any grain already sold, helping to identify target price levels for remaining tonnage. The sensitivity calculator works for feed wheat and oilseed rape and immediately shows the effect of changes in any of the main variables of crop production and output.

Defra will have its budget cut by almost one-third, after chancellor George Osborne unveiled his spending review at lunchtime today.

The department faces cuts of about £240m a year over the next four years, reducing its overall budget by 29% to almost £1bn.

It’s still unclear how this will actually affect farmers and as with all these things, the devil will be in the detail that emerges over the next few days.

What we do know is that environmental schemes (namely ELS and HLS) and ‘green’ energy should escape relatively unscathed...

“Tough, but could have been tougher.”

That seems to be the verdict of most commentators on Chancellor George Osborne’s first “austerity budget”, which saw a mixture of tax increases and spending cuts announced as he tries to balance the books.

For agriculture too, the “could have been tougher” response seems to be about right, with gains and losses identified in equal measure.

On the downside, the reduction in the annual investment allowance from £100,000 to £25,000 from 2012 will certainly hurt farmers investing in plant and machinery.

The increase in VAT to 20% will also impact on cash flow for farm businesses - most of which are zero-rated, but still have to claim back the now higher rate of tax...

Barclays head of agriculture Martin Redfearn makes full use of the tried and tested mnemonic “CAMPARI” to explain what a banker is looking for when deciding who to lend money to.

Broken down into its constituent parts, CAMPARI stands for Character, Ability, Means, Purpose, Amount, Repayment and Insurance, he told a recent poultry seminar.

Tick all of those boxes and you’ve got yourself a loan!

Well, I’ve got my own drink-related mnemonic when deciding what I look for when choosing a bank - and that is VODKA.

V stands for Value. A bank should offer its customers great value for money - and that means free banking and realistic interest rates. The current premiums over base rates on borrowings are a disgrace and as for the pitiful rates of interest on savings…

Five minutes after Chancellor Alastair Darling sat down following his Budget speech on Wednesday (24 March), the FW Business desk also sat down and compared notes.

Fortunately we were pretty much in agreement as to what we thought were the salient points to emerge for agriculture. The list was as follows:

• Doubling 100% investment allowances from £50,000 to £100,000 will help farmers buying new plant and machinery
• The increase in stamp duty on properties over £1m to 5% could hit some people buying and selling farms
• Phasing in the 3% increase in fuel duty by 1% on 1 April, 1% on 1 October and 1% on 1 January will soften the blow
• Reducing business rates for one year from October will help smaller, rural businesses
• These businesses may also benefit from some of the £94bn Lloyds Bank and RBS have been told to lend
• Raising the duty on cider is bad news for cider producers and cider drinkers alike
• Providing £100m for repairs to local roads should improve rural infrastructure
• Applying a 50p levy on land lines to gather funds for extending broadband in rural areas by 2017 is another positive
• Raising the ISA limit to £10,200, while not new or specifically agricultural, will benefit farmers with a few pennies to save...

The final Budget before the general election takes place at 12.30pm today (Wednesday).

FWi has arranged for a team of experts who work in the financial sector to provide a running commentary online as the statement is read.

Using a live blogging tool they will highlight the key announcements and share their thoughts on how they might impact on the farming community.

You will be able to follow the discussion as it unfolds from about 12.20pm - and add your own thoughts - using the box provided below.

2009 has been a year of ups and downs in the world of agri-business. Prices have reached record highs for some commodities, and dismal lows for others.

Some businesses have gone to the wall, while others have flourished.

But how much do you remember from the past 12 months? Are you a "Business Numpty" or a "Business Genius".

To test your knowledge, I have devised the following quiz:

Having sat through many pre-Budget reports and Budgets over the years, I can honestly say that today's offering from Chancellor Alistair Darling was one of the least interesting I can remember.

From an agricultural point of view, there was next to nothing. Even the invited experts contributing to our Cover It Live feature seemed to struggle at times - though their input was a good deal more entertaining than Mr Darling's monotonous tones.

Usually with these things it is the case that more substance emerges once the Chancellor has sat down and the accountants have had time to trawl through the press releases.

But even this process seems to have thrown up precious little. In a nutshell, the key points for farmers from today's pre-Budget speech are as follows:

• National Insurance contributions are to rise by 0.5% above a £20,000 threshold, but not until 2011
• VAT to return to 17.5% on 1 Jan, though farmers generally reclaim their VAT anyway
• Empty commercial properties with a rateable value of less than £18,000 will be exempt from business rates for another year (2010/11)
• Earnings from domestic wind turbines and solar panels to be tax free
• State pensions are to increase 2.5% from April 2010...

This week's Budget has been almost universally condemned in the mainstream media.

The Telegraph, clearly no friends of New Labour, described the increase in top-rate tax to 50% as "a return to class war", while The Guardian, generally more chummy with Gordon Brown's government, spoke of "Labour's last gasp".

Certainly the "bigger picture" stuff does leave you wondering. The Chancellor's forecasts for economic recovery look massively over-optimistic, while his policy to "tax and spend" our way out of recession is a gamble.

Time will tell whether he has got it spectacularly wrong or made the best of a bad job, though no one seems very optimistic.

But within the world of agriculture, there are undoubtedly more positives than negatives to emerge from the acres of small print that always accompany the Chancellor's speech.

The key positives are as follows:

• Capital allowances will double to 40% for this financial year only. The first £50,000 of any new investment can already be set against tax under the Annual Investment Allowance. But 40% of spending above that level on plant and machinery can also be claimed against tax. Sole traders, partners and farming companies can apply

• Agricultural Property Relief is being extended to the whole of the European Economic Area. Until now, farmers could only claim this relief from 40% Inheritance Tax on agricultural property in the UK. But this is now being extended to property held in the EEA

• Enhanced loss relief is being extended for two years. This means any trading losses made in 2008/09 or 2009/10 can be offset against profits made in the three previous years and used to claim a tax rebate

• The situation regarding VAT and farm rents has been clarified. It had been feared that, since VAT was cut from 17.5% to 15% last December, this could constitute a "change in rent". As such, rents on AHA tenancies could not have then been reviewed for another three years. The Budget confirms that this will not be the case

• Other more general positives include the decision to increase the maximum amount that can be saved tax free in ISAs to £10,200, an increase in the Capital Gains Tax threshold to £10,100 and the introduction of a £10m grant scheme for anaerobic digesters and composting machines

• The £2000 "scrappage" scheme for cars over ten years old should also have an "agricultural relevance"

Then there are the negatives: