At long last the weather ‘gods’ are looking upon us kindly: warm, dry, and according to the weather forecast it will be hanging around for a while, writes Hugh Besent.

Many farmers in the Dyfi Valley are busy silaging, all be it a little late and perhaps of not very high quality, but it will allow winter stocks to be adequate.

Last Thursday week, I had the pleasure of meeting Craig Williams MP and the Minister for International Trade Ranil Jayawardena MP, along with other NFU Cymru and FUW representatives at Greg and Dawn Pickstock’s farm in Llanfechain.

Issues discussed included trade tariffs, production standards and post Brexit talks.

We had assurances that any country exporting to the UK would only be permitted to do so as long as their standards were equal to ours or in excess.

As for trade tariffs, an area of great concern, we had assurances that we would carry on being aligned to the European Union.

As I see it, so long as the UK and European production standards and tariffs are maintained as of now, the future of agriculture and food industry can prosper.

On the farm, we are busy calving cows and heifers and it is going well. The warm dry weather definitely helps. Last week we had an unannounced caller from the Food Standards Agency in the form of the Dairy Inspector.

What a good job it is that my son keeps all the records up to date, and so he went away a happy man.

It is not only farmers that have food assurance inspectors that are rigorous, but all sections of the food chain, and no-one more so than the small, local, privately owned abattoirs.

In the 1930s there were 30,000 small abattoirs in the UK but now there are less than 250.

This cannot be a good thing in reducing the carbon footprint of food stuffs or for animal welfare.