THE barley is beginning to turn. The ears are still filling, but the verdant green is giving way to the yellows which will gradually fade to grey by harvest.

And that looks like being the earliest yet. Once or twice when I was feeding all my crop to intensive bulls, I put in the combines in the last week of July. The stuff was far too wet for selling, but new crop is always much cheaper than the old and, as it was to be eaten on the farm, it was economic to take it as early as possible. But this year, the winter barley should actually be ready in late July.

It looks as though the price will be right. After years of falling prices, cereals are going to be back to the golden levels of the 1990s. All right, £100 a tonne isn't worth nearly as much as it was in 1992 but it's a lot better than we got last year, or any time this century.

The contract many of us are dealing in these days is known as "cash and carry". You do the deal at harvest, get paid on the last day of September and the merchant has to uplift the seeds by the end of the year. And the rise in the cash and carry prices are really staggering. Last year barley was £69 in June. This year it's about £104. That's a rise of fully 50%. And wheat for "cash and carry" is up from £76 to £116, a rise of no less than 52.6%. For most growers that will represent a rise from a shocking loss to survival or even a profit.

I have to admit the only source of my statistics is Mossie so they could be a bit suspect.

The rise in cereal prices is mainly caused by droughts in the Ukraine, Poland, Australia and the United States. It is great news for our cereal producers but it is going to be very hard for the livestock sector - especially the intensive feeders. As pigs are fed mostly on grains, Mossie's feed costs must rise steeply so he won't be the one to underestimate the rise in cereal prices.

Mind you, I think the pork producers are going to be alright. The wasting disease, blue ear, has hit producers on the continent and in China where it is said to be killing a third of the herd. So a shortage has already pushed pork prices up and, according to Mossie, they are "jist aboot tae rocket".

I know one farmer who would have been hit very hard by the rose in the price of grains, but he's giving up the hens which needed hundreds of tonnes of cereals.

Jim Gardner puts the decision to put away the hens down as much to his wife as to the rise in the price of feed. The wife, who is a published writer of books under the nom-de-plume "A Farmer's Wife", has grumbled on at him for most of the 10 years since he put up his 28,000-bird chicken shed.

She has complained about every aspect of poultry, except the profit. There was the stink, the muck, the noise and feathers. Then there was the fact that the farmer and his wife couldn't get a day out let alone a holiday because, as sure as death, the minute they left the close one of the alarms would go off.

The temperature would rise too high. The birds would get too cold. The feed would go done, an air vent would block or the water pipes would freeze. Then the intensive poultry farmer just has to be there - and he has to act fast. When 28,000 hens start to die you need an awful lot of knackers' lorries.

With the astronomic rise in the price of feed and the free access that is given to British markets to countries with high animal welfare and hygiene standards like Thailand, and the wife complaining all the time, Jim finally gave in. He'd had enough. The wife was delighted. She had visions of visiting some of those places to which her friends who didn't have intensive livestock (or who had staff) had been. They would be able accept some of those invitations they had had to pass up for 10 years.

"Oh no, ye dinna," said her loving husband. "That's you got six months to write a bestseller or the chickens are going back in."

"Oh no," said the Writer. "This is you got six months to treat me better or I'll take you for half of everything you've got."

I tell you, with land rocketing up to £5000 and £6000 an acre, that threat is enough to make any farmer shudder.

Finally I got an insight this week into that other world inhabited by rod fishers. I have a son-in-law (he married the Younger Investment. A wise choice (for she stuck in a school and is still sticking in) who will live to be 120 if it is true that, in tallying up our three score years and 10 the Good Lord doesn't count time spent fishing.

Anyway, Jim has really been enjoying life. The weather has been just right. Not too much sun or wind and plenty of rain where he needs it. And he has got himself a place to fish which is five minutes from his home, where he can fish for nothing and where the trout pursue his bait like it might be their last.

When I asked him where this place was he said, "Well I could tell you, Charlie, but then I'd have to kill you."