A couple of pictures of ongoing barley harvest in south Africa, postd by "solly" on http://talk.newagtalk.com/ http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/CropTalk/uploads/img192.jpg http://talk.newagtalk.com/forums/CropTalk/uploads/img184.jpg

Ringo. If I knew how to attach pictures to messages on this website (I'm a computer duffer, I'm afraid) I'd post some images which might make some websiters sit up and think. If you like, log on to the IRIN website www.irinnews.org for a totally unbiased [United Nations] insight into the harsh reality of farming and food insecurity in sub-Saharan Africa. Barley and combines in S Africa is all well and good, but phenomenal numbers of people, farmers, tens of millions of them, are on the brink of starvation elsewhere - Zimbabwe [wretched policy failure, cronyism...] Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, Angola, Namibia, the Horn of Africa [again]... even comparatively well-watered areas of West Africa. Solly's OK, but they're in the s**t.

Agworldwide has a report that the drought free parts in W.Oz are combining high N and high screenings. Hope the brewers are listening.

The picture suggest they swath the crop like we do rape. I wonder if that's because the yield is more Australian than european?

Dad swathed barley two years running in E.Lothian in the mid-70s. Dry weather had led to loads of secondary germination and excessive greens at harvest. Went in the propcorn shed, seemed to be over 3t/acre which at that time was phenomenal.

Martin, see here: http://www.fwi.co.uk/forum/topic.asp?forumid=32&topicid=2056&nodes=2056&sectionId=

Many thanks Richard. Unfortunately my steam-powered compooter and I are not quite up to the task. As a former ox-trainer, I'm still struggling to come to terms with the internal combustion engine. On a John Deere I was lethal. I don't really need to broadcast images of starving people anyway - one doesn't have to read the Guardian to know that Africa is in a mucky fuddle. I guess that the point that I was trying to make was that I sometimes find the discussions on this website surreal: my job is to raise awareness about food and farming 'development issues' - poverty and stuff like that. My fellow websiters are quite understandably more interested in the nuts and bolts of farming in the UK. I do not have your attention. You have more pressing concerns, and I do appreciate that. The recent spat between Blair and Chirac illustrates my problem: the media coverage focussed on the 'mine's bigger than yours rubbish', while farm subsidies - the real villain of the piece - went largely unnoticed. Meanwhile my former friends and colleagues in Africa go to the wall. If I opened up a 'Thread', or indeed a 'Topic' on Third World Development would anybody be interested? I doubt it. Thanks for your advice, anyway.

Isn't that Mad Contractor in the first photograph trialing his new grain chaser bin, dryer/cleaner, road train system in readyness for the next UK combining season. Thought he had gone quiet over the last few days.

Yield generally between 1 and 2 tonnes per hectare. The weak Rand means that the grain farmers are mostly carrying big smiles this year, especilly the maize growers.