Farming talk: Mart opens after period of closure

Aside from casting the contract into legal documentation, the main delay was due to engineering difficulties and ensuring the mart had a licence to operate.

While farmers are required to follow various legislative guidelines in their day-to-day farming, so too are livestock markets and every other premises engaged in the food chain and our experience has been chastening in a sense that pulling every aspect together in what was and continues to be a big project has been quite difficult.

It is difficult to be prepared for natural events and simply keeping nesting rooks out of the sale rings seemed an insurmountable challenge at one point.

Many businesses will have been faced with rising energy costs and ours is no exception and with an opening scheduled for early March, the war in Ukraine resulted in significant rises on top of already increasing costs.

To simply obtain quotations seemed impossible and with a large site with a half-hourly meter which requires continual monitoring, we chose to engage an energy consultant.

This was a key decision to ensuring we did not remain on deemed contracts at even higher rates long term, and having heard of dairy and other intensive farmers' problems in renewing contracts is a worthwhile hint.

Turning on the tap is something we are hesitant to do at any mart, much preferring to use borehole water which is of minimal cost by comparison.

In Carmarthen, the pumps all being shiny and new out of the box, we are in the process of installing water filtration and softening systems to ensure the longevity of the pumping systems and so that we can make full use of borehole water.

Reporting briefly on the mart, from a standing start throughout is good and with dairy numbers increasing gradually for which we are most grateful to our farmer support – just think how the softened water will bring extra shine and bounce to their coats.

Robert McCabe is a partner of Nock Deighton Agricultural LLP