First wheat arrives at GrainCo

Winter barley harvest in the North East of England is about 90% complete, but very little oilseed rape and wheat has yet been cut.

However, that doesn’t make harvest particularly late, according to Gary Bright, managing director at GrainCo.

“We don’t normally get wheat coming in until the last week in August,” he said. “So far, we’ve had two loads of wheat in – and a lot of crops are about four days off.”

Early drilled wheat looked quite reasonable, but later crops were thinner, with a number of bare patches. “I think yields should still be better than last year.”

However, farmers had a lot more spring crops in the ground following the difficult autumn drilling period, said Mr Bright.

“There are a lot of spring oats, barley and beans, which should do as well as they ever do.”

Many growers had sold their spring crops forward on contract earlier in the year, and had therefore locked into some decent prices, he added.

“Perversely, we are buying very little winter crop – but have oats and spring barley on contract at £200-£210/t.”

Winter barley quality had been excellent, with bushel weights at 68-72kg/hl. “It’s a complete reversal from last year.”

But yields were more variable, with well-established crops yielding 7.4-10t/ha and poorer crops just 2.5-5t/ha. “Most farmers reckon they will only average 6.4-6.7t/ha.”

Mr Bright had so far received only two loads of oilseed rape into store, but wasn’t expecting much from the crop.

“A lot of it got abandoned, so we’re expecting a tiny oilseed rape harvest. Some remaining crops are thin and full of weeds – although others could yield okay.”

Wheat quality should be reasonable, although the early loads were suffering from low protein levels, he added. “A lot of merchants are getting excited about the size of the crop, but I’d struggle to be persuaded that it’s not a below-average yield.”

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