Article taken from the Westcountry Farmer
One of my customers has decided to stop growing winter wheat and oats, favouring spring barley, grass and even spring linseed instead.
Wheat is coming under scrutiny on more marginal land despite this year’s relatively good harvest. In round figures the crop costs at least 25% more to grow than barley, so with prices well below £120/t at the time of writing, a crop yielding less than 8t/ha is unlikely to make a profit.
This won’t make a huge change to the overall wheat area – it’s on a local scale. The oat crop, however, is the real loser. At £80/t, oats are not viable on any ground. As one grower put it: “I can sit in bed and lose money.”
Oat buyers appear to have no interest in supporting growers. There’s no long-term commitment. Companies can buy oats cheaper from the Continent, a great shame when we can grow them consistently well in the South West.
Some growers are letting their land out for vegetable growing, others to spring barley and one is looking at linseed. Longer term, I think we will see more maize grown for AD plants as more are built specifically to use crops as a feedstock.
Wheat drilling will soon be upon us. While no one knows how long this relatively dry spell will continue, I would urge everyone not to start too early – it makes the crop more expensive to grow, especially bad news given current prices
Even a week can make a big difference at this time of year. Soils are warm and moist at the surface and there’s a danger that early-drilled wheat stands will get too proud, with all the management headaches that entails. They are also at higher risk of barley yellow dwarf virus and take-all, two key problems in the South West, and weed pressure is greater.
Choose ground that is the cleanest and has the lowest take-all burden first, along with more exposed fields and those prone to waterlogging. Winter barley should not be sown until well into October.
Pre-emergence sprays supply the cheapest and most effective weed control. I can see more pendimethalin/diflufenican mixtures being used as growers look to cheaper chemistry. In blackgrass areas further east a full-rate flufenacet will still be required, backed up with 600g of pendimethalin and perhaps 60g of diflufenican.
Pre-ems must go on as soon as the drill and rolls have left the field for optimum control. Annual meadow grass will be controlled to one true leaf before efficacy tails off, but meadow grass can establish and grow very quickly, so pre-emergence is best. Some winter barley growers in particular still don’t spray early enough – the latest timing should be when tramlines are first visible.
Aphicide will need to be applied as soon as possible in seed not treated with Deter. I recommend lambda-cyhalothrin. Some growers have opted for a single-purpose dressing to save money, but they will need to check early and often for aphids. Deter only provides six weeks’ protection at most, so all crops will need monitoring through the autumn and winter.
Volunteers in oilseed rape will need controlling, especially barley. However, the benign conditions that have encouraged strong growth have also helped oilseed rape plants outgrow slug problems and flea beetle damage has not been a problem in the West.
Seedling weeds need to be tackled before they become established. In non-clover stands fluroxypyr or a dicamba/hormone mix will do the job. Use 2,4-DB or tribenuron where clover is present, but wait for three trifoliate leaves before application.
I have never seen maize plants as big as this year. Harvest looks like being two weeks early, but it will be interesting to see how cobs finish and where starch levels end up, especially on some newer hybrids which have shown plenty of early vigour.
Most people seem to be getting their heads around the three-crop rule introduced in the latest CAP reform. There is a lot more confusion about Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs); there are plenty of points still to be finalised, but we won’t know more until October.
Cornish hedges appear to be a particular problem for the Rural Payments Agency. These built-up banks of earth are often faced with stone, with hedging on top, a structure that in the eyes of a civil servant appears not to fit neatly into any definition of a field boundary.
Martin Stuart is an agronomist advising for Agrovista in Cornwall
(Martin.Stuart@agrovista.co.uk)
One of my customers has decided to stop growing winter wheat and oats, favouring spring barley, grass and even spring linseed instead.
Wheat is coming under scrutiny on more marginal land despite this year’s relatively good harvest. In round figures the crop costs at least 25% more to grow than barley, so with prices well below £120/t at the time of writing, a crop yielding less than 8t/ha is unlikely to make a profit.
This won’t make a huge change to the overall wheat area – it’s on a local scale. The oat crop, however, is the real loser. At £80/t, oats are not viable on any ground. As one grower put it: “I can sit in bed and lose money.”
Oat buyers appear to have no interest in supporting growers. There’s no long-term commitment. Companies can buy oats cheaper from the Continent, a great shame when we can grow them consistently well in the South West.
Some growers are letting their land out for vegetable growing, others to spring barley and one is looking at linseed. Longer term, I think we will see more maize grown for AD plants as more are built specifically to use crops as a feedstock.
Wheat drilling will soon be upon us. While no one knows how long this relatively dry spell will continue, I would urge everyone not to start too early – it makes the crop more expensive to grow, especially bad news given current prices
Even a week can make a big difference at this time of year. Soils are warm and moist at the surface and there’s a danger that early-drilled wheat stands will get too proud, with all the management headaches that entails. They are also at higher risk of barley yellow dwarf virus and take-all, two key problems in the South West, and weed pressure is greater.
Choose ground that is the cleanest and has the lowest take-all burden first, along with more exposed fields and those prone to waterlogging. Winter barley should not be sown until well into October.
Pre-emergence sprays supply the cheapest and most effective weed control. I can see more pendimethalin/diflufenican mixtures being used as growers look to cheaper chemistry. In blackgrass areas further east a full-rate flufenacet will still be required, backed up with 600g of pendimethalin and perhaps 60g of diflufenican.
Pre-ems must go on as soon as the drill and rolls have left the field for optimum control. Annual meadow grass will be controlled to one true leaf before efficacy tails off, but meadow grass can establish and grow very quickly, so pre-emergence is best. Some winter barley growers in particular still don’t spray early enough – the latest timing should be when tramlines are first visible.
Aphicide will need to be applied as soon as possible in seed not treated with Deter. I recommend lambda-cyhalothrin. Some growers have opted for a single-purpose dressing to save money, but they will need to check early and often for aphids. Deter only provides six weeks’ protection at most, so all crops will need monitoring through the autumn and winter.
Volunteers in oilseed rape will need controlling, especially barley. However, the benign conditions that have encouraged strong growth have also helped oilseed rape plants outgrow slug problems and flea beetle damage has not been a problem in the West.
Seedling weeds need to be tackled before they become established. In non-clover stands fluroxypyr or a dicamba/hormone mix will do the job. Use 2,4-DB or tribenuron where clover is present, but wait for three trifoliate leaves before application.
I have never seen maize plants as big as this year. Harvest looks like being two weeks early, but it will be interesting to see how cobs finish and where starch levels end up, especially on some newer hybrids which have shown plenty of early vigour.
Most people seem to be getting their heads around the three-crop rule introduced in the latest CAP reform. There is a lot more confusion about Ecological Focus Areas (EFAs); there are plenty of points still to be finalised, but we won’t know more until October.
Cornish hedges appear to be a particular problem for the Rural Payments Agency. These built-up banks of earth are often faced with stone, with hedging on top, a structure that in the eyes of a civil servant appears not to fit neatly into any definition of a field boundary.
Martin Stuart is an agronomist advising for Agrovista in Cornwall
(Martin.Stuart@agrovista.co.uk)