IN YORKS output from the 40ha (100 acres) of winter barley Brandsby-based contractor Keith Snowball has cut so far are unspectacular.

“Yields are down on the whole with odd exceptions,” he said. “The samples are a bit lean, especially of Pearl. We cut some which did 2.8t/acre for malting, but six-rows are doing fairly well and there’s lots of straw.”

A six-row crop grown with pig slurry looked particularly promising, he added.

Mr Snowball expected to start combining swathed oilseed rape early next week, but some crops were still only just being desiccated, he noted. “It looks to be the crop of the season.”