Norfolk farmer Kit Papworth tweeted about dying barley and oilseed rape crops he'd seen during his drive across East Anglia today. "It is getting serious."

 Defra is putting together a ministerial briefing early next week about the impact.

 So how bad is it for you? What crops are suffering? How much yield have you lost? And how much longer can your crops go without rain?

 PS FW is doing all it can to break the drought... Barometer farmer story today about dry, FF and Crop Watch writers writing about it, this post. It usually works! Surely the forecast rain this weekend has to come now?!!

 We are at 850ft, on heavy clay, and in an area with an average 165cm rainfall.  We have had 2 small storms since Feb, and the grass has been struggling.  Having said that, it has just started raining, and I never thought I would be so annoyed to see it, just finished spraying thistles in some hay ground, and down it comes.  Wanted to spray last week, but it has been blowing a gale for 10 days.  Weather, whatever it does it will never be right.

Dan

Tipping down with rain here, just been and cleared all the drains in the yard.

Lightening in the distance, well out in the english channel, but is moving toward us here on Dartmoor.

The end of the drought for a bit!

We're in the driest bit of the country, (Guy Smith goes on about being dry, but it's only because he's got an official rain monitor there. If we had one this side of the estuary, we'd be drier!!) Things are a bit desperate, wheats are not taking up nitrogen as there's no moisture to carry it. Peas and spring barley are doing surprisingly well, I think they went in early enough and the roots are deep enough in the clay to keep some moisture coming up. The linseed however is looking disastrous at the moment. It only went in two days after the barley, but just hasn't germinated. 1mm of rain last week got some going, but I'm just hoping we get some useful rain this weekend to get the rest of the seed up,seven weeks after it went in!

165 cm, thats a lot of water!

We've had a couple of light showers, but to be honest we could do with a couple of wet weeks. Three weeks ago we were turning cattle out to stop the grass getting too strong. Now there's no grass left.

We  could do with some dry wether now to get with silage

Bit of rain down here over friday and saturday night.not really much,that said my grass is coming along nice and looking at some good yields.

Wasn't much of the promised rain around in Norfolk this weekend, at least while I was there. Very brief shower Saturday morning, and then the sun came out, which was nice for the Canary promotion celebrations, but not so good for desperate crops.

Sunday was dry too, at least until I drove back to London. 

Pleased some of the country had some much needed rain, but watch out for increased disease risk! See the Crop Watch blog for more details.

http://www.fwi.co.uk/blogs/crop-watch/

Forage shortage story from our Livestock team coming shortly. 

 It has been interesting to me that since I started following this forum in 2007 our weather patterns are very similar, when you have been wet during a given season, we usually have too, and vice versa.  Our temps are headed into the 90s today, with strong winds we are drying out fast.  On the 10pm news last night it was reported fire crews were battling a large grass fire in southwest Kansas, 10000 acres.  Generally by this time of year everything is too green to burn, but it is so dry now there was a large section of Kansas along with Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado and New Mexico in red flag warnings yesterday.

If all things go the rest of the growing season the way they have the last 6 weeks, we are going to be in pretty dire shape by September(it won't even take that long, we will be in dire shape by the first of July).

Here in the middle of East Anglia it looks like it's going to be yet another bad year for the hay crop.  Put some fertiliser on about 3 weeks ago, after waiting for forecast rain, (which never did materialise) and there's not much happening yet.

Had 30 seconds of drizzle saturday morning, and a shower last night which didn't even lay the dust...  Not mush rain forecast for this week either. :(

Over here in the hills the wisdom is that the grass will only burn off once a year. I really hope this is true as I am finding I have rocks I've never seen before. We are madly deer fencing more acres to try and avoid running out of grass for the second year running and give us more options for closing fields for hay.

kansasfarmer:

 It has been interesting to me that since I started following this forum in 2007 our weather patterns are very similar,

I too have noticed that when you get a 'severe' pattern of weather, we appear to get a much milder version about two weeks later. I guess the winds that blow over Kansas are going to get to us sometime later. Maybe if you sent up a weather balloon Fwi could offer a fantastic prize for whosever farm it fell on here.

Could you send me a bar of almond Hersheys please?

 

BBC Plymouth, Peter Wells, just ran a piece about wheat stocks running out, feeders bankrupt, rapid exodus from farming, etc, etc.

Surely the time has now come for HMG to appoint, if not a Minister, at least a Secretary for Shortage of Wheat.

In 1976, Wilson appointed Howells as Minister for Drought. Within the week, it tipped down everywhere, not stopping until April 1978. 

 

it must have been late in 76?

 This impressive looking storm has come up out of eastern Oklahoma, lots of red and yellow on the radar.  Been raining for 2 hours and have only gotten 2 tenths of an inch, would be what I would call a dry drizzle.  I was hoping for 2 inches, now I am hoping for a half inch.

We have a cheepo rain gauge, an open topped one, on the grass outside our kitchen window, for the last two months my wife has been topping it up with water for the birds.

There are a family of house Sparrows and a few others that drink from it. they are drinking the water faster than the rain can fill it, so I now have a bucket under a down spout from the outbuildings and measure the rain by rule of thumb

Oh and our weather is still only odd short showers, its just been enough to stop the pastures looking brown, the ditches have not run for couple of months, the brook is running low as if it were late summer, we are told the local reservoirs are low

 

         it must have been late in 76?

Second week of September - the very start of the autumn parliamentary term.

Obviously, all the politicos had been well away on their summer hols from June until then.

We've had nominal rain. Token showers here and there, some heavy but most have herdly enough to damp the dust. One of my custemoers has watched the showers pass either side of the farm and not a drop on their property! Very random and localised. Spring barley is suffering the most and is a real concern!

i remember 76 very well, a long hot summer and an early harvest.

our barley was ready two weeks quicker than usual, and our 2 men were still on holiday, so dad got on the spanking new claas senator,air con of course, and i hauled it in , aged 13. it was great. no drying required.

those were the days, when the sun really did shine for weeks on end.

 

glasshouse:

i remember 76 very well, a long hot summer and an early harvest.

We were combineing spring barley a week or so early as well, the problem was getting down low enough  without shoveling up too muuch soil and grit with the header, there was reasonably heads of grain but standing on a four inch stalk of straw with its head drooping as (barley does)

 

    a four inch stalk of straw

Much the same here 'twas, Owd Fred.

10 bales/acre was top whack. (edit:- 60 bales/tonne)

An important local farmer called my then contractor back in to bale up three rows of straw which, he claimed, a novice driver had carelessly missed.

He searched the field in question all over for several hours but never found them.

 

if its that bad this year, you will have to import an aussie air front for short barley.

 

In Australia, 4ins is quite normal, apparently. 

bankrupt:

BBC Plymouth, Peter Wells, just ran a piece about wheat stocks running out, feeders bankrupt, rapid exodus from farming, etc, etc.

Surely the time has now come for HMG to appoint, if not a Minister, at least a Secretary for Shortage of Wheat.

In 1976, Wilson appointed Howells as Minister for Drought. Within the week, it tipped down everywhere, not stopping until April 1978. 

 

 

Howell was a politician who actually delivered. He did his job so well that they then had to make him Minister of Floods!