Harvest is just underway in the North East, with some farmers combining winter barley over the weekend.

A decent wind was helping to dry crops out after occasional showers, said Grainco’s Gary Bright, with barley cut yesterday (27 July) at about 15% moisture.

“We have started with one of the driest barley samples I’ve seen for many years.”

Although very little had been combined so far, early indications of quality were reasonable, he added.

Winter rape area was about 75% down due to last year’s wet autumn, and spring rape and spring barley were still a long way off ripe.

“We’re expecting a very small rape harvest. Quite a lot of spring rape went in, and that’s still flowering. It is very patchy and if they get 1t/acre (2.5t/ha) I’ll be amazed.”

Wet conditions last year had left some fields in a poor state, said Mr Bright. “The land that got sodden last year is still pretty bad, because it hasn’t had much chance to drain. But not a lot of crops went in on that.”