Hampshire oilseed rape grower Dick Hall is earning £369/ha from environmental payments, allowing the crop to rival winter wheat for profitability and making rapeseed the best break crop he can grow.

He is using payments from the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) to encourage good farming practices and balance the risk of growing this sometimes tricky crop, and also boost return from his crops which achieve average yields of 3.5t/ha.

He and his family have been growing oilseed rape since the mid-1960s, with his father being one of the founding members of the co-operative United Oilseeds, where Dick is currently the deputy chairman.

See also: Analysis: Signs of cautious optimism for oilseed rape?

The popularity of oilseed rape has continued down the years, with Dick now growing 100ha annually.

He sees it as an excellent and profitable break crop in the farm’s one-in-eight year rotation.

“Oilseed rape is our best break crop in terms of gross margin, and competes with winter wheat for the highest gross margin on the farm,” Dick tells Farmers Weekly.

His rapeseed, grown on the farm’s loamy soils over flinty chalk, achieved peak yields of 5t/ha in 2011 and again in 2015, during the days when neonicotinoid seed dressings were allowed.

But the current medium-term average of 3.5t/ha still brings good rewards.

© David Jones

SFI role

Dick is keen to use SFI to keep growing crops rather than move to, say, large areas of legume fallow to earn £593/ha (CNUM3).

By growing crops he can keep the land in good condition rather than allowing lurking blackgrass to take a hold.

He has been direct-drilling oilseed rape since 2015 and is able to use this as part of his 2024 SFI scheme.

He earns £73/ha (under SOH1), and add to that precision fertiliser application at £27/ha (PRF1), £55/ha for a companion crop of buckwheat (CIPM3), and £45/ha for non-insecticide use (CIPM4), bringing the total to £200/ha.

Add to that growing a summer catch crop as soon as the oilseed rape is cut, and then destroying it before October-drilled winter wheat, earning £163/ha (SOH3), and assessing soils each year for £6/ha (CSAM1), and the SFI full total comes to £369/ha.

He is also using SFI for other crops such as winter wheat and spring barley to bring in extra cash and improve his soils and the environment, as part of his three-year SFI agreement where he is in his first year.

“For each crop, the support from SFI is helping to reward us for good farming practices and balances the risk of growing the crops,” he says.

The UK government stopped new applications for SFI in March this year, but said details of a revised scheme would be announced in the summer as part of its overall spending review.

Rotation

Oilseed rape fits in well in the eight-year rotation at Corhampton Lane Farm, Corhampton, six miles south-east of Winchester, where Dick farms 840ha of owned and contract-farmed arable land.

This rotation consists of two years of perennial ryegrass grown for seed, followed by winter beans direct-drilled into sprayed-off grassland.

This is then followed by winter wheat, oilseed rape, winter wheat again, and two crops of spring barley, with the last undersown back to ryegrass.

His winter wheat crops are largely for seed production, so good break crops and a long rotation help him to grow non-contaminated winter wheat seed.

Establishment

His agronomy focuses on getting the oilseed rape off to a good start by waiting for adequate soil moisture.

He usually drills in late August/early September and using hybrid varieties like Aurelia and Attica with good early autumn vigour.

These are drilled with his disc coulter 4.2m Cross Slot direct drill with two hoppers – one filled with a mixture of rapeseed and buckwheat companion, and the other with starter fertiliser diammonium phosphate (DAP).

The rapeseed is drilled at 4-5kg/ha to give 50 seeds/sq m.

Dick hopes to counter cabbage stem flea beetle damage by drilling a little later than usual and using the companion crop, but he has still lost parts of fields to flea beetle damage, so it is an ongoing battle.

This season saw less flea beetle detected and early damage, but heavy rain in September brought plenty of slugs, and then lush growth in October attracted a host of pigeons.

Spring nitrogen rates vary between 180-200kg/ha depending on soil nitrogen and pigeon damage.

Oilseed rape emerging below a companion crop of buckwheat © David Jones

No insecticides

The farm has not used an insecticide for five years, so he is claiming the non-insecticide SFI payment.

He is also carefully monitoring insect numbers with magic traps, while there is ongoing independent research on insect levels.

Samantha Bishop, a researcher at Royal Holloway, part of the University of London, is studying natural pest control solutions.

She is exploring the effect of beneficial insects in different types of hedgerows surrounding oilseed rape crops on the Hampshire farm.

Her focus is finding natural pest control solutions, particularly for flea beetles in oilseed rape crops in a sustainable agricultural system.

The oilseed rape crop is usually harvested in the last week of July, straw is chopped and then as soon as there is good soil moisture.

A four-way mix of a summer catch crop – a brassica, mustard, buckwheat and fast-growing ryegrass – is drilled, which grows for 10 weeks before wheat is drilled in mid-October.

This qualifies for the payment of £169/ha.

Even after taking off about £100/ha for the buckwheat and catch crop seed, and the extra cost of drilling the catch crop, SFI still provides a useful bonus for following good farming practices.

His other cereals also qualify for SFI.

His winter wheat brings in £151/ha from direct drilling, precision fertiliser, non-insecticide use and soil testing.

Spring barley has the same plus £129/ha for a preceding cover crop (CSAM2) bringing in £280/ha.