While we rarely need much excuse to take in everything that’s new and shiny at the Royal Highland Show – maybe we should be looking at the new developments on the trade stands with a closer and more critical eye this year.

For we will be doing so in the face of tides of deeply contradictory advice, one side telling us that we spend way too much on machinery and other equipment – while the other tells us that we must keep up with all the latest innovations in order to drive productivity forward.

For this year’s show takes place against the background of a chorus of organisations telling us to focus on what we can influence and not to be paralysed by the blinding lights of Brexit bearing down on us. It’s a message, it has to be said, which is generally pedalled by consultants and advisers with very little skin in the game.

So, if you do find yourself at some of the seminars and meetings at Ingliston over the coming days, expect to hear that farming is currently standing on the brink of major changes and despite the threat to the very viability of our businesses, we’ll hear that the future will hold great scope for the sort of innovation which the industry, hide-bound by previous support measures, has been too staid and conservative to adopt.

But what is likely to be missing is any real sign of the sort of action needed from politicians and policy makers to grasp the nettle and move the industry forward.

For, while the Royal Highland Show has often seen many new groups and initiatives announced and set up, this week’s event needs to be a launch-pad for decisive and positive action.

On this front, while the recently released report from the Agricultural Champions at least produced some conclusions and made some recommendations, I was a bit flabbergasted by last week’s announcement from the National Council of Rural Advisors – one of the other bodies set up at last year’s Highland to help set the agenda for future policy – that, after a year of meetings and top-level discussions, they were putting the issue out to public consultation.

Now it might have been a bit naïve of me to think that they would have finalised a report which, taken together with that produced by the ‘Champs’, could have resulted in the sort of firm political announcements that we need being made at the show.

But I wasn’t the only one hoping for such an improbable result – and there’s a growing clamour in the industry to move on from the talking shops and to get some real action from the political classes.

So, with this level of performance in mind, you might forgive me for feeling a bit cynical and jaded when, just last week, I heard that yet another working group had been set up by the Scottish Government. This one is to look at how the many developments in science and technology might be better rolled out in order to help boost the industry.

Undoubtedly new technology will drive huge changes in the industry – but whether, as some have flagged up, this will be on par with the move from horse to tractor remains to be seen.

For while we undoubtedly live in a time if change, many of the actual benefits accruing from what is often a substantial investment in new technology are marginal at best.

I would admit that while satellite guidance systems take much of the strain – and some would say skill – out of sowing cereals and drilling tattie crops, the financial benefits returning from the investment – in hard pounds and pence – might make such a move difficult to justify.

While you probably have fewer sprayer and fertiliser overlaps, the savings (or reduction in losses?), will be only minimal.

However, take the issue a couple of steps further and add in soil testing, yield and weed mapping, variable rate fertiliser applications and tailored spray programmes and things do begin to make a bit more sense.

So, while it might be difficult to initially justify the expense on an immediate financial returns basis, keeping on top of the new technology has a value in itself.

I guess it’s a similar story in the livestock sector – knowing which animal has done what in its lifetime and who it had bred with, while useful to some extent, doesn’t really take us that much further forward than the talented stockmen amongst our forefathers who actually knew each of their stock individually.

But if you can use the data gleaned from this information to improve breeding and feeding strategies, then they begin to look like more of a sound investment.

So, it was actually quite refreshing to speak to the chair of the new agri-science and tech group – and to actually feel that here was someone inspired enough to care about the possibilities which were out there and which would be placed within our grasp over the course of the next few years.

Robert Ramsay – a farmer and sales director with agri-tech company, Soil Essentials, who chairs the new committee – said that the group had yet to meet and so he was limited in what he could say, but he was keen to see some radical ideas pushed forward, both forcibly and fast.

After even a brief chat, I was left feeling that our industry might indeed be standing on the brink of the next agricultural revolution – and that farming, which has barely scratched the surface of the potential benefits, might be able to play catch up with the many other industries which were already exploiting the potential of new technologies.

Therefore, I’d be more than a little surprised – to say nothing of massively disappointed – if, 12 months down the line, this group is also putting the issue out to public consultation.