Writing Farm Letters and Emails With ChatGPT

Most farm letters are hard because of what’s riding on them, not because of the words. Ask the landlord for a new roof on the grain store and you’re also thinking about the next rent review. Push back on a contractor’s invoice and you might lose your slot at harvest. Query a moisture deduction with the merchant and you still want them collecting next month. Writing the letter itself is the easy bit.

ChatGPT handles the easy bit well, provided you do the thinking first. If you type “write a letter to my landlord about the roof”, you’ll get something generic and stiff, and it will take longer to fix than to write from scratch. If you give it five facts, a tone and the outcome you want, you’ll usually get a draft that needs a couple of tweaks before it goes. The rest of this post shows that difference with four real types of farm letter.

What it costs and which tool to use

The free version of ChatGPT is fine for letters. ChatGPT Plus costs about £20 a month, which gets you the better models, higher usage limits and the ability to upload a PDF tenancy agreement or invoice and ask questions about it. If you’re writing two or three letters a week and also using it for other farm paperwork, Plus pays for itself quickly. Microsoft Copilot (free in the Edge browser, or bundled with some Microsoft 365 plans) and Claude from Anthropic do the same job equally well. Use whichever you already have open.

Before you paste anything in, open Settings, go to Data Controls and switch off “Improve the model for everyone”. For anything sensitive, use a Temporary Chat. Leave out bank details, CPH numbers, and the names of third parties who haven’t agreed to it. ChatGPT doesn’t need the landlord’s real name to write the letter, and you can type it in yourself afterwards.

The brief that makes the difference

Every prompt below follows the same shape. It’s worth memorising, or saving as a note on your phone:

WHO I AM: [role, type of farm, size if relevant]
WHO IT'S TO: [person/company, relationship, how long]
FACTS: [dates, quantities, prices, reference numbers, what was agreed]
WHAT I WANT: [the specific outcome, with a deadline]
TONE: [e.g. firm but friendly, formal, apologetic, brief]
LENGTH / FORMAT: [letter or email, max words, UK English]

You’ll notice there’s nothing clever in there. ChatGPT pads with generic waffle because it doesn’t know any better, and the FACTS line is what stops that. The WHAT I WANT line matters most of all. If you leave it out, every draft trails off into “I look forward to hearing from you” without asking for anything.

Example 1: Landlord, asking for a repair

You’re a tenant on a 1995 Act farm business tenancy, and the asbestos-cement roof on the 600-tonne grain store has been leaking since a storm in February. Under your tenancy the landlord is responsible for the main structure, and harvest is ten weeks away.

WHO I AM: Tenant of Hill Farm (310 acres arable) under an FBT since 2019.
WHO IT'S TO: Landlord's agent, Mr Harris at [agents]. Good relationship, 
we speak a few times a year.
FACTS: Grain store roof (fibre cement, approx 18m x 30m) damaged in storm 
on 18 February. Six sheets cracked, two missing on the north side. 
Reported by phone 22 Feb, no visit yet. Tenancy clause 4.2 puts main 
structure and roof on landlord. Store holds 600t; harvest starts approx 
25 July. I have a quote from Westfield Roofing for £4,850 + VAT to replace 
8 sheets and check fixings.
WHAT I WANT: Written confirmation by 30 May that landlord will carry out 
the repair before 10 July, or agreement that I can instruct Westfield 
and deduct from rent.
TONE: Polite, businesslike, no threats, but clear that the deadline matters.
LENGTH / FORMAT: Email, under 250 words, UK English.

The draft comes back like this:

Subject: Hill Farm – grain store roof repair (clause 4.2)

Dear Mr Harris,

Further to my call on 22 February, I'm writing to follow up on the storm 
damage to the grain store roof at Hill Farm. Six fibre cement sheets on 
the north side are cracked and two are missing, and the store is 
currently letting in water.

Under clause 4.2 of the tenancy, the roof and main structure are the 
landlord's responsibility. The store holds around 600 tonnes and harvest 
is expected to start around 25 July, so the repair needs to be completed 
by 10 July for the building to be usable.

To help move things along, I've obtained a quote from Westfield Roofing 
for £4,850 plus VAT to replace eight sheets and check the fixings. I'm 
happy to share this.

Could you please confirm in writing by 30 May either that the landlord 
will arrange the repair before 10 July, or that you're content for me to 
instruct Westfield and offset the cost against rent?

Kind regards,

It needs two edits. Attach the quote rather than offering to share it, and get your land agent to check the rent-offset line before the email goes. A deduction from rent that the tenancy doesn’t permit can cause more trouble than a leaking roof, and that’s a legal question ChatGPT can’t answer for your agreement.

Example 2: Contractor, disputing an invoice

Your drilling contractor has billed for 142 acres. You make it 118: the field sheet in Gatekeeper says so and so does your RPA land parcel data. He’s a good operator, you want him back in September, and you think he’s simply invoiced from last year’s job list.

Just typing “write a letter disputing an invoice” gets you something that reads like a solicitor’s letter. That’s the wrong tone here, so say what you actually want:

TONE: Friendly, assume it's an honest mistake, keep the relationship. 
No legal language. Sound like a farmer, not a lawyer.

Put the figures in the FACTS line: invoice number 2231, 142 acres at £32/acre (NAAC-level rate for direct drilling) = £4,544 + VAT; actual area 118 acres = £3,776 + VAT; difference £768 + VAT. Add that the 24-acre field at Long Meadow went to grass this year and wasn’t drilled. This is the email you get back:

Hi Dave,

Thanks for getting the drilling done so quickly in September, the 
wheat's come through well.

Just a quick one on invoice 2231. It's down as 142 acres, but I make it 
118 this year. I think Long Meadow (24 acres) might have carried over 
from last year's list, but that went into grass in the spring and wasn't 
drilled.

At £32 an acre that brings it to £3,776 plus VAT rather than £4,544. 
Could you send over a revised invoice when you get a minute? I'll pay it 
straight away.

Cheers,

All you’d change is maybe the opening line, if the wheat hasn’t actually come through well. Leading with the likely cause gives Dave an easy way out, and offering to pay straight away gives him a reason to fix it quickly. You could write all that yourself, but it takes you fifteen minutes on a wet Tuesday night and ChatGPT does it in about twelve seconds.

Example 3: Buyer, querying a deduction

Merchant letters are where specific numbers matter most. Say a 29-tonne load of feed wheat was tested at 15.8% moisture on intake against a 15% contract spec, and you were charged drying and shrinkage. Your own Sinar meter read 14.6% on a sample taken at loading. The contract is on AIC No.1 terms.

FACTS: Contract ref FW-0918, 100t feed wheat, ex-farm, AIC No.1 terms. 
Load 3 collected 14 Oct, ticket 55812, 29.04t. Intake moisture 15.8%. 
Deduction: drying £4.50/t + shrinkage, total £318.40. My moisture at 
loading 14.6% (Sinar AP6060, calibrated Aug). Retained sample kept, 
sealed and labelled.
WHAT I WANT: Retest of their retained sample, or independent analysis of 
mine; deduction withheld pending result. Reply within 7 days.
TONE: Firm, factual, professional. I want to keep selling to them.

The draft states the ticket number and both readings, then asks for the retest. It names AIC No.1 without trying to quote clauses, which is exactly right, because ChatGPT will sometimes invent a clause number when it doesn’t know one. If it ever gives you “Clause 14(b) states…”, delete it or check it against your copy of the contract. Wrong references undermine an otherwise strong letter.

Example 4: Complaint, to a feed supplier

A complaint letter has to record what happened in order and ask for something you can measure. Here’s the situation: 12 tonnes of 18% dairy blend delivered on 3 September; your nutritionist’s sample came back at 15.2% crude protein; across 180 cows the herd average dropped from 31.5 to 29.1 litres over nine days, with milk at 42ppl.

Tell ChatGPT to do the sums and show you the working:

Calculate the lost milk value from these figures and show the working 
so I can check it before it goes in the letter.

Yield drop: 31.5 - 29.1 = 2.4 litres/cow/day
Herd loss: 2.4 x 180 = 432 litres/day
Over 9 days: 432 x 9 = 3,888 litres
At 42ppl: 3,888 x £0.42 = £1,632.96

Check the arithmetic yourself, since language models still get sums wrong occasionally. Then ask for a letter that sets out the timeline, attaches the lab report, asks for a credit on the 12 tonnes plus £1,632.96 lost milk, and gives 14 days to respond. Ask for “formal, unemotional, the kind of letter that could be shown to a third party later”. That last phrase changes the draft completely. The adjectives go, the dates and figures come first, and you’re left with something that would hold up if this ever went further.

Edits worth making every time

Even with a good brief, read the draft back and look for these:

If a draft misses, don’t start again. Reply in the same chat with “Shorter, and drop the second paragraph” or “Make it sound less formal, he’s a neighbour” and let it revise. Two rounds of that is normal. If you’re on round five, the problem is usually a missing fact in the brief.

Letters are one part of the wider admin load. Our guide to ChatGPT and AI for farm admin covers record-keeping, scheme paperwork and the other places it saves time. For correspondence, though, the method doesn’t change. Know what you want before you open the app, put the numbers in the prompt, and read the draft once as if you were the person receiving it.