A very well used saying this year seems to be, “I have never seen so many pigeons before”.

The problem on our oilseed rape is beyond a joke and it’s almost a full time job chasing the damn things, and just when you think that it is going to start to grow away from them, we get more cold weather which has just made them stop pairing up and prevented them from thinking of more interesting things to do apart from eat our rape.

If you take into account the labour and all the various explosives we buy to try to keep them away, and add in any yield loss, the pigeon will have a serious affect on gross margins.

So, would the people suggesting getting out of sugar beet replace it with oilseed rape? Yes, I agree the beet price does need to go up and the long seasons have a huge affect on following crop yields, but at least you get a life and certainly here you have a crop that has increased in yield massively over the past 10 years, unlike rape which has pretty much stood still.

Add to that the chance to use over wintered stubbles to clean up fields and use muck to improve fertility and I do think there is still a very good place in the rotation for sugar beet.

While on the subject of beet, we haven’t been able to drill any at the time of writing, and the weather looks poor for Easter, let’s hope the weather men have got it wrong and we end up working over the entire long weekend. Sad, but I need to start getting jobs ticked off the list to help my blood pressure.

Finally, many thanks to the Suffolk Agricultural Association for a brilliant golf day last week at Woodbridge, a good year to win it with Dad as the president.

Richard Cobbald is farm manager for West Wratting Park Estate near Cambridge. The 1,300ha of heavy soils grow wheat, oilseed rape, sugar beet and spring barley

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