After a tricky growing season, has harvest surprised or confirmed worst fears for our Arable Insights’ farmer panel? Farmers Weekly finds out.

See also: Why Herts farming family are moving their business to France

North: Philip Metcalfe, Yorkshire

“Not terrible” is Philip Metcalfe’s summation of harvest at the 196ha Foxberry Farm in North Yorkshire.

Winter barley was the major disappointment with average yields of 7.87 t/ha from the two-row feed variety Caravelle, well below his target of 9.5-10 t/ha.

“That’s a little uncharacteristic of the local area, where winter barley has fared pretty well,” Philip says.

“But I made a terrible decision to roll last autumn.

“It rained after we drilled and didn’t get it rolled straight away, so when we had what I considered to be the last chance to roll before applying a pre-emergence herbicide, we went for it.

“But it rained afterwards, and I think we damaged germinating seedlings, which then sat wet and rotted.”

In contrast, winter wheat yields were actually slightly above average at 10.72 t/ha compared with the five-year average of 10.45 t/ha.

Dawsum, after beans, was the standout at 11.91t/ha, while a four-way blend of earlier-drilled Dawsum, Extase, Gleam and Palladium also yielded above 11t/ha.

Late-drilled Palladium after potatoes dragged the average down, yielding 9.27t/ha, and will be replaced by Scope next season.

“We obviously hit some timings right,” Philip suggests. “I can’t really pinpoint anything else we’ve done to give those yields as we’ve been dry like everywhere else.

“Our soil type does hold onto moisture, and I’m trying to increase organic matter levels, which hopefully is helping.”

Having had to accept a price for harvest movement, he’s using the futures market for the first time as a potential way to mitigate current low grain prices, buying May futures at £183/t.

“The trigger was when the grain left the farm. I’ve got between now and March to cash it in, so we’ll see what happens.”

A new crop will also be grown on the farm for the first time this autumn – ahiflower. An oilseed, not dissimilar to borage, it produces Omega-3, 6 and 9 oils that can be used as an alternative to fish oils.

Drilled in the autumn for Natures Crop International, it shouldn’t suffer from flea beetle, slug or pigeon damage, and can be direct combined without swathing in late June or early July, he says.

“It looks easier to manage, and if it yields well, it should return as good a gross margin as any other break crop,” Philip says.

Scotland: Doug Christie, Fife

Around two-thirds complete, Doug Christie still has spring wheat, beans, organic oats and organic linseed to cut, the latter with a stripper header.

“At £1,000/t I thought linseed was worth a go. It just needs to ripen properly as obviously you can’t use any chemical to hasten that.”

Of the crops cut winter wheat yielded a disappointing 8.5 t/ha on average. Insitor outyielded his larger area of Skyscraper by around 0.5 t/ha.

“I’d like to grow a bit more, but as a hard Group 4 it won’t go into Cameronbridge distillery, which is two miles away. Some other distilleries will take it.”

Taking a punt on selling forward in early August has paid off with prices of £185/t for movement in September and October plus a £6/t premium for biscuit quality, and over £200/t secured for a proportion of next year’s wheat.

That’s helped, along with keeping a tight control on variable costs, to maintain some profitability, but the severe squeeze on arable farming profitability and resulting loss of viability is partially behind a decision to grow more grass for beef production at the expense of cereal production, he says.

Malting barley contracts are not helping. He’s grown his smallest area of spring barley – just 20ha this season, which yielded 5.5t/ha.

Quality is the main concern, with many growers in Scotland finding high levels of screenings and low bushel weights meaning it is failing to make malting quality, and buyers “naming their own price” to take it as feed, if it needs moving quickly.

Fortunately, Doug’s crop has made malting quality, albeit with screenings just above threshold. “This is easily sorted with my old rotary dresser-cleaner I bought at scrap value, which has, over the years, been invaluable.”

“A lot of farmers are fed up with growing malting barley, while growing it in a direct drill situation adds another complication,” he says.

“My yields were respectable for the first 10 years of direct drilling at 6-7 t/ha, but for reasons that are hard to pinpoint, it hasn’t performed that well in the past five years.”

East Midlands: Colin Chappell, North Lincolnshire

After a “disastrous” harvest in 2024, Colin Chappell has been relieved that harvest 2025 has bucked the national trend and been “fine”.

Barring a smaller-than-usual area of spring cropping and a lighter land contract farm, where yields were appalling, wheat yields on the home farm have ranged from 6 to 11 t/ha, he says, while Aleksandra winter barley did 9t/ha with minimal inputs.

The only other disappointment, again bucking a national trend, was oilseed rape at 3t/ha, through flooding.  

Star wheat performer was DSV’s new milling wheat Loxton, along with Beowulf, while Champion was a disaster, he says.

“It was a very shy tillerer, and didn’t seem to have any vigour to get it through the dry weather,” he says.

Inputs were cut hard, with a robust T1 fungicide used when it looked like higher disease pressure, before only following up if yellow rust came in. Herbicides were limited to a pre-emergence and early post-emergence.

“Total growing costs before rent were £85/t to £110/t for the milling wheat. Even at current prices of £168/t, it’s still profitable.”

With the early finish to harvest, Colin is looking to use the additional time to improve his environmental stewardship areas on the farm, while trying to avoid the temptation to drill cereals earlier.

“My grass-flower margins are more grass than flowers, so I’m trying to stitch more flowers into them.”

New margins will also be established this autumn rather than spring in an attempt to increase flower numbers.

South Midlands: Charles Paynter, Bedfordshire

With just 70 mm of rain from March through June, mostly in small amounts that quickly evaporated, it’s not surprising that wheat yields on Charles Paynter’s 221ha farm were down 2-3 t/ha on pre-drilling expectations. Best crops achieved 8 t/ha, others were much poorer, he says.

“It’s disheartening. When you’re trying to improve soil health on heavy land and have that small volume of rain, it’s very difficult.”

Rooting was poor after a difficult establishment period, and then drought and pest attacks exacerbated problems, with insecticides not being used in line with farm policy.

Yellow rust was also an issue, leading to some fungicide use early in the season, but after T1, the combined lack of disease, loss of tillers through gout fly and poor rooting, prompted a switch to foliar feeding.

“We used sap testing, which showed some issues with trace elements, but getting the [newly bought second-hand] sprayer sorted took some time, so we were about three weeks behind when we started, and the dry weather hindered take up.”

Foliar nutrition was also used on peas, which yielded 2.5-3.5 t/ha. Disease was low, but a large-scale pea aphid attack and the drought knocked back yields.

Despite the challenges this season, he remains committed to improving soil health and reducing synthetic inputs, albeit while acknowledging that sometimes pragmatism and adaptation will be needed.

“We’re still a long way from a healthy system.”

South West: John Farrington, Somerset

Harvest was quick with the bonus of no mechanical issues or drying needed for Somerset mixed farmer John Farrington. While final yields have yet to be confirmed, he was pleased, given the year, of what was coming off the central part of fields.

“The headlands have let us down, with some damaged areas from the wet winter, which will pull the average down.”

A decision to re-drill one field of wheat with spring barley paid off with a decent performance.

“I’ve kept some of the barley on farm rather than sending to a commercial grain store as I’m wondering whether I’ll need it for feed for the sheep in the winter.”

The early finish to harvest is allowing John to try to establish some much-needed over-winter forage supplies for his sheep flock.

“We’re struggling with grass, like most farmers. Normally all our sheep are out all winter, but we’ve already got some lambs in the shed on hay and cereals, just to ease pressure on grass.”

That makes establishing stubble turnips and cover crops with westerwold grass vital, with both used to graze sheep over winter.

“We’d normally direct drill straight after the combine and rely on moisture to germinate any seeds not covered to germinate.

“This year, we’ve disced everything just so we have a bit of soil to drill into and cover seeds.”

Another tweak John is considering for the coming season is to use liquid rather than granular fertiliser on headlands for increased accuracy to improve performance.

South East: Barney Tremaine, Sussex

A distinctly average harvest, with highly variable results across different crops, soil types and drilling dates, is making drawing any conclusions difficult for Barney Tremaine, farm manager at Cowdray Home Farm.

Wheat drilled after November, particularly on sandier land, surprisingly outperformed earlier drilled crops, with spot yields on the combine yield monitor for the low input feed crop hitting highs of 13 t/ha, he says.

“To put that in context, our budget yield is 6 t/ha.”

Understanding the reason for the surprising results is difficult, with perhaps the likeliest explanation that in-season water demand from later drilled crops coincided better with 30mm of rain in June, he suggests.

On heavier land, earlier drilled crops generally were better – perhaps helped by historic use of farmyard manure increasing water holding capacity.

“I think we’re seeing some of the benefits of the work we’ve done around soil health, increasing resilience.”

One example was his wheat grown for Wildfarmed.

Grown on good ex-dairy ground, it yielded 7-7.5 t/ha at 11.5% protein from just 120kgN/ha, matching other fields of still low input feed wheat that had fungicide and other inputs.

“This year, even on a conventional price, the Wildfarmed would have a comparable margin.”

With low wheat grain prices, the farm continues to grow more grain to feed its dairy cows.

“We’ll easily use 500t this season through the dairy, and possibly more depending on where we end up with beef numbers. At the moment it is cheaper to feed it ourselves than to sell it.”

Wales: Richard Anthony, Glamorgan

Yields averaging over 5t/ha, with some fields doing over 7t/ha, made OSR the clear winner of crop of the year for Richard Anthony, farming near Bridgend in Wales.

Hybrid variety Vegas was particularly outstanding, he says, while attributing the exceptional yields to good establishment and a long flowering period in the spring.

“We have enough moisture at that time, and it just kept on flowering.”

A modified Mzuri drill is used to drill oilseed rape, three companion crops and put down liquid feed. “It’s been a game changer in the way we grow the crop,” Richard says.

Wheat has been a mixed bag, down on the long-term average yield at 8-9t/ha, but better than perhaps expected given the weather.

“Everything we cut in the first 10 days of wheat harvest was over 10t/ha.

“We then moved to a new block of land that we took on last autumn with low organic matter levels and I didn’t think it would do very well, but that did 7t/ha, which is quite remarkable,” he says.

Of the varieties grown, Champion produced the highest yield while Graham was also exceptional, he says. Fitzroy was the main disappointment with low specific weights.

Guardsman is a likely replacement, with its barley yellow dwarf virus resistance and performance in our and other on-farm AHDB Recommended List trials the main draws.

East Anglia: Jo Franklin, Hertfordshire

A later start to harvest than most others in the local area gave some hope of at least a better result than perhaps expected given the near complete lack of rain through the key growing months.

And to some extent that’s how it turned out for Jo Franklin with Skyscraper and Skyfall wheat yields averaging around 8t/ha on Grade 2 arable land.

“We’re fortunate in hindsight not to have the other 1,000 acres of Grade 3 light land we used to farm,” she says.  

Given rain to support crops in the spring, she says yields of 10t/ha should be possible on the Grade 2 land.

“But in the past five years, that’s been rare – we’ve only had one year that you could call normal, so perhaps 8t/ha have become a good yield.”

Spring barley was average to poor, while blue peas didn’t do particularly well at 1.5t/ha.

With Jo and partner Rob Hodgkins moving to France, while seeing out the remaining two years on the FBT contract for the arable farmland, the rotation and cropping needs to be simple next season.

“We’ll likely be around 50% winter wheat, with the rest split between spring barley and a fertility building ley for grazing,” she says.