BY the time you read this column, I have little doubt that New Labour will have struck another blow for freedom and voted to ban hunting with dogs, a tradition which goes back beyond the second millennium we are celebrating. At the same time 20,000 hounds will be made redundant which, curiously, is almost the same number as farmers that have been forced out of agriculture during the past 12 months.

I mention the hunting issue because the so called "debate and free vote" doesn't take place until after my deadline; and by next week, many wiser words will have been penned in the Sunday papers no doubt.

Turning to less emotive issues, nitrogen fertiliser has been the staple diet for all our farm crops but this year is going to cost at least 30pc more. I don't know the reasons, except that the Hydro plant at Immingham has closed, leaving us more dependant upon imported fertiliser.

The world price of ammonia, which is the root source of nitrogen, has followed Urea and gone from around £100/tonne up to £160/tonne. As a consequence, the Russian and East European makers are reluctant to fix their prices, at the moment, making our task a little harder this spring.

As far as I can glean, there are large stocks of fertiliser at the ports with very little movement onto farms, which is understandable considering the disastrous autumn sowing. Nevertheless, prices do not seem forecast to drop but if anything go the other way. At present, nitrogen is going to run around £130/tonne with some of the blended root fertilisers rising to £150/tonne.

This increase of around a third on last year is just the news we didn't want; but you might be well advised to see what deals can be done at the moment to ease the pain a little.

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Another simmering fiasco is sugar beet, a crop which long provided the ideal break in a cereal rotation, yielding reliable, if unexciting, profits with the added bonus of winter feed for our sheep flocks.

For almost the whole of the last century, we have had a sugar beet industry which has contributed to national self-sufficiency and sweetened our daily cuppa. It seems unbelievable that an unelected Brussels bureaucrat has the power to upset all this with a social dream, or nightmare, to open up the market to any third world country wanting to exploit it.

I had a word with Robert Sturdy, our MEP, who is the Agriculture Spokesman in Strasbourg, and he confirmed that this is the reality if we don't do something to stop the madness being perpetrated by the EU Trade Commissioner, Pascal Lamy.

At the present time, we have a well established system of quotas and tariffs which everyone accepts as a sensible balance between protecting our own farmers and offering a share of the market to poorer countries.

Monsieur Lamy is quite determined to press ahead with what he terms 'reforms' of the system, but which Robert Sturdy believes will lead to the decimation of our sugar beet industry. I would add that the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries do already enjoy duty free quotas, but these should be capped in order to allow British sugar beet growing to continue.

My big gripe is that one left-wing bureaucrat should have so much power and cause our elected MEP to raise the alarm bells.

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Peter Elwess dropped into the office yesterday and we discussed the confusion that has come about following the patchy failure of autumn crops and the unharvested root crops in relation to our IACS applications.

There was a largely unpublicised dispensation, the deadline of which ended last Monday, whereby areas of crop failure could be regarded as set-aside, provided MAFF was notified. However, further efforts to safeguard Arable Aid payments are ongoing with the NFU's Ben Gill putting a lot of pressure on the Ministry and the EC. The latest relaxations have been put to Brussels for confirmation but include the following:

Root harvesting dates have been extended until March 31 and growers can still enter the harvested area as set-aside.

The 50pc limit on voluntary set-aside is to be lifted.

Patchy crop failures may still be eligible for full field aid claims.

MAFF emphasises that it is trying to be flexible, but wants the farmers to make contact.

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Charlie Breese asked me to remind keepers of cattle that it is compulsory to register old animals by the deadline date of January 27.

He is sure that there are still one or two people out there who, firstly, haven't completed the form and, secondly, are unaware of its importance.

Failure to comply with this compulsory registration, which follows on from the cattle census last September, is an offence and will hit your pocket. Please make contact if you want some help.

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The last news item I report a little cynically and that is Baroness Hayman's announcement that the BCMS is to stay in public hands and at Workington.

There have been rumours in the past that the passport processing giant should be privatised, but currently MAFF is riding high on the euphoria of the rural portal introduction, which is the computerisation of the paper mountain that they have created.

I am still a little sceptical as, since it was set up, BCMS has processed almost 12m movements, of which well over 50pc have been dealt with by postcards.

It has taken several years to push MAFF into computer literacy and I suspect it will take considerably longer to convert 60-year-old farmers like myself from biro to mouse.

In the meantime, the paper and the hand-written errors continue to mount.

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And now to the livestock market this week - cattle numbers were down, but respectable, at 228 and I sold the 93 young bulls to face what was generally an excellent trade.

The quality of young bulls was pretty high, with all those of 'U' conformation making 100p or better. The best bull of the day came from Gerald & Keith Hutchinson of Ganthorpe at 120p/kilo, but there were a lot of good bulls running between 105-115p.

The only disappointments were the lightweight Holstein bulls which hit a low of 60-65p/kilo. I am afraid for this category. The message is pretty clear - that we must get as much weight and flesh onto these fairly moderate bone structures!

There was nothing wrong with the trade for clean cattle and the heifers amazingly averaged 99p/kilo up to a top of 129p for George Marwood. Intervention-type steers were making from 95-103p/kilo, with Andrew Rooke having a strong bullock at 109p.

Trevor Warriner had the highest priced steer of the day, at 112p/kilo.

Michael Harrison dealt with 1,562 sheep, which averaged 110p/kilo. Best price of the day went to Bill Natrass of Lockton for a pen of hoggs at 121p/kilo.

Lastly, we sold 280 pigs on the two days but trade was more difficult, struggling to average 72-74p/kilo. The best price on both days was 80p, achieved by Geoff Webster and H W Ward & Sons.

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The New Year for farmers markets starts this weekend at York and on Saturday, January 27, in the Sheep Shed at Malton.