First cut silage has been safely gathered in and in near perfect conditions, with no effluent from nearly 600 acres ensiled.

It’s amazing how the grass growth spurt we got at the end of May and early June salvaged what would have been poor yield. We will need a big second cut, but the regrowth got off to a great start.

Lambs have also been doing well, with the first of the Texels away in mid-June at record prices. Hopefully, the recent price fall will stabilise as Michael has a lot of well fleshed lambs coming forward to market as they continue to thrive.

With cows and calves at grass, late May and June has seen the start of a big project to redevelop a significant part of the old steading at Drumbuie. I have certainly had many memories to ponder over, watching pretty much my whole farming life’s work at Drumbuie being demolished over a period of a couple of weeks!

But it is undoubtedly the right thing to do, with some of the older converted buildings really no longer fit for purpose. The new accommodation and slurry storage will allow the business to grow and be fit for the 21st century.

Like everything in life, you are either committed to something or you are not, and we see a bright future for quality beef production done efficiently, and in a climate-friendly fashion, so we are committing to be the best we can be as a business.

It would be nice if that same commitment was being demonstrated by the Scottish Government. The Farmer-led Group (FLGs) reports have all been submitted three months ago and our Suckler Beef Climate Change Scheme was also submitted in early March. Since then, despite manifesto and '100 Days in Office' commitments, absolutely nothing has happened.

Lots of warm words, but absolutely no action, which seems odd when the Scottish Government announced that we were facing a climate emergency. I always thought that in an emergency things needed to happen quickly, but that appears not to be the case as far as rural Scotland is concerned.

Meanwhile, we continue to get bombarded with propaganda and misinformation about the impact on the climate of red meat and milk production. The most recent salvo was in the BBC coverage of the latest comments and updated report from the Climate Change Committee (CCC) which advises the UK and devolved governments on climate change.

The CCC is chaired by John Gummer (now Lord Deben) and its chief executive is Chris Stark. You may remember John Gummer as agriculture minister in the 1990s at the time of the BSE crisis, feeding his daughter a beefburger to try and reassure the public that eating beef was safe. Bit ironic in his present role, isn’t it?

The BBC’s Environment analyst, Roger Harrabin, reported last week that the CCC says people should be told by government to eat less red meat and dairy to save the planet and their health. In fact, 20% less meat and dairy by 2030 and 35% less by 2050.

I find this odd and annoying in a number of ways. First, governments are not elected to micromanage people’s everyday lives. We should all be provided with 'independent' information and then make up our own minds on how we live or indeed on what we eat and drink.

This nanny state concept using flawed, or biased information to justify sweeping statements like this on the BBC should be ignored – and indeed will be by the majority of ordinary folk. You can see the increasing anger and frustration of many people fed up to the back teeth being told what to do, day in, day out, as far as Covid-19 is concerned. The last thing they/we need is more of this after the pandemic.

Secondly, I have spoken to Chris Stark on a number of occasions and he is very supportive of our work on the Suckler Beef Climate Scheme, as well as the other sectoral reports from the FLGs. I discussed these ideas for a reduction in red meat consumption in some detail with him.

In these discussions, he made it clear that the CCC were particularly concerned about intensively produced meat, especially processed meat. He is actually supportive of the continuation of suckler cows and sheep producing healthy beef and lamb whilst managing the environment and biodiversity across the hills and uplands of Scotland.

Of course, this gets totally lost in the noise, particularly when it suits a journalist to run a biased line that he or she happens to believe in.

Thirdly, red meat demand has increased by 12.6% by value and 9.4% by volume since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, so why on earth would a politician fly in the face of something which is popular, risking annoying or upsetting those same voters and meat eaters? It’s just plain stupid and will never happen.

So, in such circumstances, the meat-hating minority should stop preaching to the meat-loving majority and instead work with farmers, as we have suggested, to reduce the impact of meat and milk production on the climate. That way everyone wins, which makes the current agriculture policy inertia in Scotland even more difficult to understand.

Meanwhile, officials charged with this task continue to frustrate the industry at every turn. As well as the BBC publishing this biased coverage last week, ScotGov went one better with one of the most astonishing acts I have ever witnessed.

For the last two years, a committee called the Farming and Food Production Future Policy Group has been struggling to prepare and agree on a report (yes, another one!) about future agricultural policy for Scotland. I understand from several members of the group with a farming or food background that they have been, and continue to be, very unhappy about some of the content and tone of this report.

As a result, they refused to support its publication. So, what happened last week? It was published anyway after a FOI request from someone allegedly desperate to see it. Why, I have no idea?

But there you have it, even if a significant number of committee members refuse to sign up to a report, it appears it can be published in draft form anyway these days with the names of the participants redacted. This is equally astonishing, because if you go onto the Scot Gov website, their names are all still there for the world to see!

If that wasn’t bad enough, the dirty tricks campaign against our Suckler Beef Climate Scheme continues, with the further publication of a large quantity of e-mails from civil servants to Fergus Ewing and vice versa, under a FOI request from a journalist.

All of these actions are clearly and deliberately designed to block any progress in implementing initiatives designed by farmers for farmers, which politicians may support, but officials hate. And, of course, to attack Fergus personally for having the misfortune to do his job and try and support and develop the food and farming sectors in Scotland.

Quite simply, I have never witnessed or been involved with something so distasteful in my entire life. If it doesn’t get sorted out shortly, believe me, this may well destroy the positive relationship rural Scotland and farmers have had with successive governments since devolution – or maybe that’s the plan?