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Know How / Harvest

Harvest is the busiest time of year for arable farmers. Get ready for harvest with advice on hiring harvest workers, maintaining combines and harvest kit and preparing grain stores and crop storage. Keep-up-to date with harvest progress around the country and get the yield results as they come in. 

Advice and tips

POTATOES

What potato growers need to consider before diquat ban

This is the last season that potato growers can use the broad-spectrum herbicide diquat to desiccate their potato crops, therefore, growers are being urged to look at alternatives this summer.…

BUSINESS

Business Clinic: Insurance tips for student harvest help

Whether it’s a legal, tax, insurance, management or land issue, Farmers Weekly’s experts can help. Here, Paige Dalby of insurance broker Farmers and Mercantile explains what checks to make when…

DISEASE MANAGEMENT

Why fusarium risk is rising in wheat and how to manage it

With rising incidence of fusarium ear blight and changes to mycotoxin legal limits on the horizon, experts are advising wheat growers to adopt a more water-tight, integrated approach to minimising…

ARABLE

Tips for raising oilseed rape yields

Oilseed rape growers taking part in an Adas-organised yield competition averaged 0.5t/ha more than their counterparts in Germany last season, a country that has historically out-yielded the UK. While the…

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Case studies

BARLEY

Barley grower sees winter crop come up trumps

Malting barley grower Andy Roberts’ strategy of growing both winter and spring crops paid a dividend this summer as good quality from the former made up for a more problematic…

HARVEST

Video: Farmer shares lessons learnt fighting huge crop fire

Since the early start to harvest at the beginning of July, Twitter has been awash with reports of crop fires across the country, exacerbated by tinder-dry conditions. As the hot,…

PULSES

How winter bean grower in Yorkshire achieved top yields

A perfect bean-growing year produced a record yield for one East Yorkshire grower and a good enough sample for human consumption to win a prestigious quality award. Robin Smyth grew…

ARABLE

Video: Hands Free Hectare - what next for the farming robots?

Excitement, pride, trepidation – just some of the feelings buzzing around a perfectly square hectare field in Shropshire as a driverless combine took its first bite of a crop that…

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Community

HARVEST

Harvest 2019 photo competition – get your snap on FW's cover

Farmers Weekly's annual harvest photo competition has launched for 2019 – giving keen snappers the rare chance to see their work on the cover of the magazine. We want to…

FARMLIFE

Harvest 2018 photo competition: Winner and best of the rest

We've had a bumper crop of entries for this year's harvest photo competition – almost 1,000 reader snaps were uploaded to our gallery. We were impressed by the creativity of…

FARMLIFE

Get your harvest photo on FW's cover – competition open

There's still time to enter your best photos of harvest 2018 into our competition to find a jaw-dropping front cover image for Farmers Weekly magazine. We want to celebrate harvest…

HARVEST

More ways of coping with being a 'harvest widow'

Our article, "10 ways of coping with being a 'harvest widow'", seemed to strike a chord with all those spouses leading a largely solitary existence while harvest is under way. It…

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Insights

HARVEST

Two diquat alternatives trialled in linseed

Two alternatives to diquat for desiccating linseed crops are currently being trialled, with the aim of being available to growers for harvest 2020. Linseed growers currently only have two options…

HARVEST

How the drought has affected potato yields and quality

The eating potato crop is forecast to be nearly 20% smaller than last year in north-west Europe because of the summer drought, with tuber size and quality also suffering. Some…

VARIETY SELECTION

Cereal varieties: Winners and losers at harvest 2018

During the 2018 cereal harvest, wheat varieties were more likely to perform slightly below their long-term averages than to exceed yield expectations.  That’s why most of the 2018 results shouldn’t…

HARVEST

Harvest 2018: The 5 top-yielding spring barley varieties map

Throughout the harvest season we are updating our handy map with the latest data from 2018’s AHDB winter wheat Recommended List harvest results. Use the map below to find the…

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News

HARVEST

Harvest 2019: Barley yield prospects rise with Welsh 10t/ha

Merchants are reporting better than expected winter barley yields as combines start to roll across southern England and Wales, with one Welsh grower reporting his best barley yield. Philip Darke,…

HARVEST

Harvest 2019: Warwick OSR shows good yields after beetle battle

Warwickshire grower and contractor Paul Wilson is seeing good oilseed rape yields after a tough battle with cabbage stem flea beetle throughout a growing season hit by long stretches of…

HARVEST

Harvest 2019: Good yields seen for six-row barley in Suffolk

Winter barley harvest was racing head on one big Suffolk Breckland estate over the weekend, with the farm manager happy with the yield following a very dry spring. Six-row hybrid…

HARVEST

Harvest 2019: Oilseed rape combining starts in Kent

Oilseed rape harvest kicked off in Kent over the weekend, with yields slowly improving as combines move through crops and on to better-quality land. James Loder-Symonds started cutting the variety…

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Opinion

HARVEST

Opinion: Dad's sayings fit Harvest 2016 very well

For some reason, that probably lies deep in my subconscious, I think about Dad a lot at harvest time. He died in autumn 2007, so this is the ninth harvest…

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Video

HARVEST

Video: Hampshire grower happy with barley yield and quality

Hampshire grower Sam Burge is pleased with initial yields of his Maris Otter winter malting barley crop destined for the craft ale market. Cutting of the 35ha specialist variety began…

TECHNOLOGY

Video: Hands Free Hectare safely avoids pedestrians

The Hands Free Hectare project has demonstrated a range of new safety features at the Cereals event in Lincolnshire this week. The next stage of the project will see the…

SUGAR BEET

Video: Sugar beet yields bounce back from summer drought

Sugar beet yields are coming in higher than expected following the severe summer drought, with 15% of the crop now harvested and feeding British Sugar’s four plants. While beet yields…

HARVEST

Video: Winter wheat harvest success for Hands Free Hectare

The Hands Free Hectare team has successfully harvested the world's first winter wheat crop to be grown by robots. The project, which first set out to grow and harvest a…

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