January turned pretty wet with little field work possible, allowing us to catch up on maintenance and plan for the coming season.

We are committed to building a new potato store, packhouse and workshop to develop our business in Hungary and exit our site in the centre of the village. It has outline planning permission for 90 houses.

We have also been surprised by two approaches to purchase our Serbian business, one from Russia and one Serbian.

We need assistance from our advisers to facilitate changes to our structure to allow us to move money within the group more easily.

We have large demands for working capital in the Ukraine this spring which must be financed, which along with the building projects makes life interesting.

The potato market remains slow, with volumes well down on last year and the price continually having to be reduced to try to increase volume. At the current rate of sales we have enough for 250 days left.

Grain prices have not moved with maize trading in the E210/t range across central Europe. Wheat is about E20/t better.

Fertiliser is almost impossible to find. I did not buy enough early and we are paying the price now with ammonium nitrate at E285/t.

The Hungarian government has still not provided us with a decision on our biogas and dairy improvement applications.The comforting thing is that no one else has a decision yet either.