Things have been pretty busy on the grain marketing front with, for once, a rising market.

And, with the EU Commission knocking 2.6m tonnes off its May estimates of soft wheat production and the same figure from its forecasts for barely output, the EU now looks to be on course for a considerably smaller harvest than anticipated only a few short weeks ago.

The new figures mean that wheat production is likely to be lowest since 2013 and barley the lowest since 2012 – and the futures markets reacted with a fair old jump in the early part of this week.

This rise has been underwritten by the fact that EU wheat stocks were pretty tight anyway – and now look set to fall by 4.6m tonnes over the course of 2018/19, instead of the expected 2m tonnes. On top of this, barley stocks are likely to decline by 1.5m tonnes when a 1.1m-tonne increase had been predicted in May’s estimates.

Weather conditions across Europe have played a major role in some of these changes. I would imagine that conditions in this country will have been playing their part in the rethink, too.

But, on the weather front, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt over the 36 years I’ve written for The Scottish Farmer and that is to even mention any apparently on-going dry spell is enough to see the heavens open for the foreseeable future.

So, it’s with some caution that I even make a reference to the notion of a heatwave, or draw attention to the slight issue of lower than usual rainfall.

I choose my words with some care as, with my son currently back home for a week or two from Australia – where his area has been battling with drought for the past 18 months – I’m reminded that these things are a matter of perspective.

For while there’s no getting away from the fact that we, in Scotland, are now likely to be looking at cereal yield reductions and maybe even the loss of some premium markets, the prospect of total crop failure remains, for us, pretty unlikely. But in several areas of Australia, they are now staring this eventuality straight in the face for the second successive year.

We’ve seen pictures of fields so brown and parched that you might have considered them newly ploughed from his area around Gunnedah, in the Liverpool Plains area of New South Wales.

But the cruellest aspect is that the average annual rainfall in that far-off part of the world, at 620 mm, isn’t all that far behind many good cropping areas in the UK – and the region is normally home to a whole range of crops, including barley, chickpeas, sorghum, soyabeans, wheat and even some cotton – as well as producing some pretty top-notch grazing.

However, last year’s crops were hardly worth harvesting and with many not even planted, this year’s look to be just as bad – and bought-in feed is all that has been keeping animals going now for months on end.

You’ve got to admire the Ozzie spirit though, for, whenever two farmers meet, after they’ve finished talking about the chances of getting any rain they usually remind each other that every dry spell ends with some rain – and that every day is a day closer to the next rainfall (although one cheery beggar who must have some Scot’s ancestry is keen to add – ‘aye, and a day further away from the last’.)

Of course, while knowing that there are people worse off than yourself might add some perspective to our plight, it doesn’t necessarily mean that our own situation in this country is all that swell.

This is especially so when, even after accounting for some upward pressure on grain prices, they’re not likely to compensate fully for lower yields. This means that already wafer-thin margins are likely to suffer further erosion.

So, it looks like the swing in climatic conditions from the extremely wet end of the spectrum at the beginning of the year to our own version of ‘very dry’ has done little to boost hopes for a harvest which is now bearing down on us with alarming speed.

With winter barley crops now well on the turn this side of the Border, the harvest kicked off in England this week, a good two weeks ahead of last year – which is amazing considering how far behind things were earlier in the year.

But the sudden spurt which many of the spring crops made through their growth stages doesn’t auger well for yields this year and a lot of the barley crops are looking pretty thin. Therefore, as well as poorer grain yields, it also means that straw is likely to be in short supply again this year.

While reports abound of last-year’s sky-high prices for straw rolling over into the 2018 harvest, there’s no getting away from the fact that when there’s less to sell, it makes for a tougher job for both the growers and the livestock lads who are buying the stuff and then have the prospect of paying to have it hauled more than half way across the country.

Of course, the grain crops aren’t the only ones likely to be affected by the dry weather – and both the tattie and the veg sectors have been doing their best to cope with the dry spell as well.

A long-term investment in irrigation equipment is likely to reap some rewards for many in this sector and will undoubtedly help sustain crops in such a challenging year.

But, of course, that depends on there being enough water in our rivers to meet irrigation requirements, a situation which can’t be relied on if the dry spell continues.

Though the long wet winter and spring meant that reservoirs for public water supplies were well plenished and to date there have been few hints of hosepipe bans on domestic supplies, a look at the water levels in some of the rivers and streams used for irrigating crops might paint a different picture.

Speaking at the beginning of the week, SEPA seemed remarkably laid back about the issues, stating simply that it hadn’t received any reports of significant issues arising from the dry weather.

However, its chief operating officer, John Kenny, said that the organisation was prioritising visits to catchments with lower water levels and planned to assess any potential environmental impacts with a view to taking steps to mitigate any adverse effects so things could change pretty quickly.

So, with registration and a whole raft of other legislation now surrounding any abstraction of water from our rivers and waterways, the authorities now know much more about who is using the rain guns which have been so highly visible in the recent conditions:

“With further hot weather forecast over the coming week, we continue to monitor the situation with partners across Scotland and will work closely with water users to ensure that the environment and other water users are not impacted as a result of this dry spell,” said Mr Kenny.

But, he was also keen to offer advice on some straightforward steps for farmers and others to reduce their use of water which would help protect ecosystems the waterways supported – adding that most were a matter of simple common sense.

And he said farmers could help by:

Ensuring irrigation equipment isn’t leaking or broken;

Spraying water on crops and fields at night to reduce evaporation;

Co-operating with neighbours to avoid drawing water from the same rivers at the same time;

Only irrigating when absolutely necessary.

Simple stuff, but it might just keep the irrigators going.