For Taggart and his father, Murray, it has been a particularly good season on their farm at Cust, near Oxford.
They had their best ever wheat yield of 14.9 tonnes per hectare of Graham wheat.
The only blemish had been a lack of rain in December, combined with flooding in the Waimakariri River, which led to restrictions for farmers on the Waimakariri Irrigation Ltd scheme.
"We still want the rain, but a dry December isn't the end of the world."
It had been a good season for peas and cereal crops, while the deep-rooted wheat crops are able to find water in dry conditions, he said.
Conditions had remained dry for most of January, but there had been a couple of small rains in February.
But the later season, following a cool spring, meant ryegrass and summer feed crops were late in ripening on arable farms, leading to a reduced demand for store lambs, Taggart said.
"If it's dry and you don't have irrigation water you become reluctant to buy store lambs, but the price has dropped back so I would have thought there would be some demand.
"If you've got the feed you would be buying, so maybe the environmental conditions are creating some uncertainty, but I guarantee come March demand will go through the roof."
Taggart and his partner had a baby just before Christmas and with the farming business "ramping up", he might need to do "a bit of shoulder tapping" soon to find a successor as arable chairman.
"I really enjoy the role and you meet a lot of cool people and you learn a lot. I was 27 when I was first elected and there's a group of really young guys on the executive which is nice."
