At the market: The floating pound lifts Goathland

Following the persistent rain of recent weeks, and more on the day itself, the sale day succumbed to the pressure of 10,000 cloven hooves and 500 pairs of wellies, creating a consistency more like a badly set chocolate mousse than a grass paddock.

Paul Morse, the market's head cashier, always seems to get the best jobs, celebrating his 30 years with the firm under water behind the cash desk in the field tent - he may still be there but has bravely sent in this report.

"The 130th Goathland Sheep Sale experienced the worst possible conditions for a moor sheep sale, with my cash office carpeted in six inches of mud. It was impossible for vehicles to get into the field, so all sheep had to be walked in and out through mud and pools of water over wellington tops!

"Trade, thankfully, was much better than the weather and buyers came from as far as Nottingham and Skipton.

"No sheep were passed without a bid being made, despite ringside purchasers standing with only half their wellies showing.

"The champion pen of Swale ewes, shown by J Peirson & Son of Goathland, made a very respectable £30 and were sold to the judge, Bill Teasdale, who went about his job manfully despite the appalling conditions.

"The Swale gimmer lambs reached the dizzy heights of £21.50 for Dennis Metcalfe and would, on average, be almost twice last year's price; and similar could be said for the Scot and Swale wether lambs, with a top price of £18 going to David Hanson.

The half-bred trade was reasonable and, overall, most people would go away feeling much better than last year, and thankful to get out of the field without being stuck in the mud."

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Our experiment with helping folk over the cattle census has been fascinating and, up to press time, we have electronically returned over 10,000 cattle between York and Malton.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not so, the general reaction of the farmers taking up the offer has been one of heartfelt thanks; and there is still time to use us if you have not sent off the return.

Here are some points you should be aware of:

We have persuaded MAFF to keep open the computer website for a further two weeks to enable us to make proper returns.

We gather that the manual forms sent by post have a 70-80pc error rate which means that they will all come back for correction.

MAFF are delighted with the Yorkshire pilot scheme and have asked for a paper to examine further such possibilities for the industry.

Although the census itself is not compulsory we understand that you will not be able to move the older animals freely without a passport, and therefore it is compulsion under another name!

Even if you have sent in your manual form, it is worth getting your herd onto the database so that we can produce for you a clinical printout which can be used if there are any queries.

The first passport certificates have already arrived for the early forms that we despatched by e-mail and those farmers are now able to move their cattle without problems.

I still believe that the message is clear, that we ought to take the opportunity to get Ryedale's herd onto a database and old 'square eyes' Breese is still sitting in front of his screen waiting for business!

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The swine fever fiasco in East Anglia continues unabated, despite the superficial euphoria surrounding New Labour's conference.

There is no way they can paper over the huge fissures created in the UK agricultural industry and Nick Brown's compensation offer has been described by most affected producers as a disaster. Here are a few facts for you to digest:

The source of the outbreak has not yet been traced, but the finger points to imported meat from the continent where, in Europe alone, there have been over 1,400 outbreaks of swine fever between 1990 and 1998. Bear in mind we haven't had a single case for 13 years until last month.

Pig farmers within the restriction zones cannot get rid of their pigs because they have nowhere to slaughter them and numbers are just building up with increasing weight in the production line creating huge welfare problems.

Nick Brown's offer of £35 per pig compares with a probable cost of around £100 per pig and there are no proposals to bridge the gap.

It is estimated that the overdrafts of affected pig producers are, in total, increasing at a rate of £1m per week.

Had we been in Holland or France they would have done something now and argued later but this is good old England.

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I have had a note from John Sawkill who feeds me information on cereals from UKASTA; and the projected aid payments for crops are going to be as follows for England:

Cereals £88/acre

Oilseeds £125/acre

Linseed £132/acre

Set-aside £88/acre

It must be remembered that the above figures are subject to confirmation and do not make any allowance for a possible overshoot in the arable base area. The figures also do not include any provision for agrimonetary compensation which will be payable at the end of this year.

The actual amount of agrimonetary compensation payable will be dependent on whether or not the UK matches EU funding. As an example, the English cereal rate would see compensation of a further £4.50/acre, or double that if the UK did match that funding.

It does look a bit miserable when there is still quite a lot of harvest to get in, especially further north.

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In my campaign against bureaucratic insanity in Europe, there are two further shining examples of what is wrong with the European Commission's relentless itch to regulate.

1) Proposals are now drafted to standardise all European food hygiene laws, including new rules relating to food from shot game.

The 167-page consultation document is a potential nightmare whereby hanging just one pheasant in a garden shed could render the property liable for official inspection.

If any game is sold from a shoot, then at least one member of the shooting party must be qualified in "wild game pathology"; which would involve examining animals for "diseases, environmental contamination or other factors which may affect human health".

The lady EC official casually excused these farcical proposals by saying they would "improve the image of game".

2) A new directive on the use of ladders and scaffolding whistled through the European Parliament last week and, according to more sceptical Tory MPs, it will be compulsory for every window cleaner to fix his ladder physically to the ground. More serious, however, are the new rules on scaffolding which state that each time a builder needs to erect scaffolding he will have to draw up a written plan for its assembly, dismantling, and use!

I fear that it won't be long before Brussels consider new directives on wiping noses and other extremities!

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Tuesday also saw the market at Malton cope with mixed fortunes and bad weather.

Cattle numbers at 242 were respectable, but trade in the previous seven days had collapsed due to a surfeit of cattle coming onto the market from the West Country where the rain-soaked ground forced farmers to sell. In the event, all the quality cattle that had been fed were very little less and were making from 95p-105p/kilo.

With Philip away at Goathland, I sold the bulls first and Continentals would average around 94p/kilo up to a top of 116p/kilo for a smart suckler from Richard Elliot.

In the bull section, it was only the very poor-shaped Holsteins that seemed to be punished and there is a message to get more flesh onto them if possible. The same applied with the clean cattle, where most cattle coming straight off grass without any hard feed were difficult to sell and varied from 75p/kilo to 90p/kilo, whereas anything with a bit more shape and flesh could make from 85p/kilo to 100p/kilo.

The best steer of the day was shown by Mick Bulmer at 109p/kilo and the best heifer from George Marwood at 123p/kilo.

The fat lamb trade is disappointing and has also slipped over the passed week. There were 623 sheep and the average was around 78p/kilo up to a top of 97p/kilo for a pen shown by Geoff Wood of Salton.

David Lindley had 147 pigs that trade pretty decent at around 77p/kilo and a top price of 84.5p/kilo from Barry Green.

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Don't forget the Ryedale Farmers Market is this Saturday and Charlie tells me there is a record number of stalls with a most interesting auction on the side. The market opens at 8.30 am and the auction will be at 10.30am.