Will Cumber’s harvest has been slow this year on his farm near Abingdon, Oxfordshire.

“My Claire wheat is about ready to cut. If only the weather would co-operate.”

However, he has combined 30ha (75 acres) of Soissons on light land with average results.

“It didn’t really yield very spectacularly. It was on a stony field and didn’t really survive the drought we had earlier this year.”

The Soissons yielded 6.18 t/ha (2.5 t/acre), at 12.5% protein, 80 kg/hl specific weight and hagberg between 300 and330.

Earlier in the year Mr Cumber was concerned with orange blossom midge.

“The threshold is about ten midges on the sticky tape, but overnight it looked like we were getting about a hundred.

“We had terrific problems with orange blossom midge but we sprayed it off at the right time and I don’t think we have a problem now.”

But he wasn’t able to spray off his organic wheat and now thinks that has been affected by the midge.

“The grains are very small; it went through the dresser with a 25mm sieve and I’d say about 20% of it fell through.”

This year Mr Cumber’s organic wheat yielded 3.71 t/ha which is low in comparison to last year’s yield at 6.18 t/ha.

“What we need now is a week’s worth of good weather,” Mr Cumber added.