The European Commission held a major 'Outlook' conference, in Brussels, earlier this month and it coincided with a meeting at which the US and EU both promised more action to ensure agriculture contributed to climate change mitigation.

That's a worrying suggestion for farmers on both sides of the Atlantic, if this is based around anything other than firm science. Which it probably won't be!

However, the conference itself delivered a classic mix of good and bad news. The truly bad was a negative view of prospects for dairy markets, while a positive was further evidence of a determination by the farm commissioner, Phil Hogan, to tackle the practical problems with greening.

Getting the bad news out of the way first, the dairy report was a 10-year projection of where markets might go. Such a long forecast is always difficult, but this would would have to be a long way out for it to bring any Christmas cheer to dairy farmers.

While it is a wide-ranging forecast the headline conclusion is that it will be 2020 before there is any realistic prospect of milk prices recovering to where they were in 2014. The reasons are familiar, with supply and demand in Europe and globally set to remain out of balance.

One of the central problems is that China will not be the buying power it once was, with suggestion that its purchases may be half what they were in 2014. This is partly because of some weakening of Chinese growth - but it is mainly because China has opted not to hold such big stocks.

This suggests the price spike created by Chinese demand in 2014 was just that - an unusual boost in demand that is not going to return. This does not mean there will be no improvement from present prices, but recovery will be less dramatic than hoped.

This has to add to the pressure on the commission to act, since it cannot continue dismissing what is happening as a short-term market blip.

As with all long-term forecasts, it would not take a huge event to blow this off course. A major, probably weather-related supply side event could do that - so, too, could a re-opening of the Russian market, which is now more likely thanks to the West and Moscow separately attacking ISIL in Syria.

That said, dairy farmers need to do their planning for 2016 and beyond on the basis of only a modest improvement in milk prices. This is certainly not what is needed, given the debts built up over 18 months, when many farmers have been selling milk below the cost of production.

On a more positive note, Phil Hogan, confirmed that he is prepared to act over 'greening'. But before he gets there, he will have to get a positive result from a public consultation on environmental focus areas (EFAs).

These are central to greening and much as farmers view them as impractical green groups would like to see regulations made even tougher. The consultation on EFAs has already been agreed, but the suggestion from Hogan is that this should be extended to cover whether there is a case for a fundamental review of greening.

Arable and other farmers across the EU will be saying that case is already clear - but for the commission public opinion has to be taken on board. When this consultation happens, it is vital farmers make their views clear about the practical problems with greening.

Past experience suggests green groups can muster big numbers of people to support their cause, while farmers tend to leave things to their lobby organisations. So remember that, to the European Commission, numbers are often more important than the quality of the submission.

If farmers can get through the hoop of the case being made for a review of greening, they will be pushing on something of an open door with Hogan. He does not like the policy, believing it is too complex and impractical to be effective.

He has said that in the 2017 mid-term review of the CAP he is prepared to go through the process of securing three-way agreement between the commission, farm ministers and the European Parliament to change the greening legislation and not just the implementing detail. However, for that to happen agriculture has to make a strong case for a review, and it then needs to ensure other voices do not hold sway to make the existing bad situation even worse.