Farmer Focus: Harvest gets off to an encouraging start
Billy Lewis © Richard Swingler It is 22 July as I write this, and harvest is in full swing across Herefordshire.
As you travel the county, it is clear that August is going to be a rather quiet month for most cereal growers.
The majority of wheat crops have now been cut. We are a little late to the party in that respect, having only cut our first field last night. Words you never thought you’d hear in July!
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Our crops haven’t seemed to be in much of a rush to ripen, which is no bad thing.
We have, however, cut the triticale, which I am very pleased with. The winter oats are also wrapped up.
The triticale, which was cut at 12.5% moisture, left us with a corrected yield of 8.55t/ha and mountains of straw.
For a low-input second cereal, I can’t find any fault with that. We’ll be planting a lot more of it this autumn.
The winter oats were a little down on last year, with a corrected yield of 7.68t/ha. I’ve never seen a crop where the grain has been so dry while the straw was still so far from being ripe.
It was left in the swath for a week before being baled. Annoyingly, grain quality was also a little down on last year. Whether we’ll be able to market the oats as milling spec will probably depend on whether other growers have had the same issue.
We’ve had an encouraging start to harvest, the markets have started moving upwards, and the weather is making life relatively easy. It’s hard to feel down about the job at the moment.
However, in a couple of weeks once harvest has been tidied up, we’ll certainly be hoping for some rain.
Our pastures have completely frazzled, and the prospects of making any more silage are looking slim. If the dry conditions continue, it’s likely we’ll be feeding the livestock hay in August.
The weather in this country is undeniably changing. I can only see two possible outcomes: either we adapt very quickly, or we accept that our level of agricultural output will reduce in the years ahead.
