Archive Article: 2000/08/04

4 August 2000

John Best

John Best farms 320ha

(791 acres) from Acton House

Farm, Pointspass, Co Down.

Wheat, conservation-grade

oats and potatoes are main

crops on his 220ha (544 acres)

of clay loam arable land

MY pessimistic weather predictions last month proved totally unfounded with just 17mm (0.7 in) of rain and plenty of sunshine. Cereal crops have had ideal growing conditions with a minimum of disease pressure. With no barley on the farm, Barra oats will be first in line for the combine in the next ten days. These are about a week ahead of the Gerald and some Jalna oats.

The irrigator has proved a good purchase. It is on its third pass through the potatoes with few teething problems. Shirlan (fluazinam) at 0.3 litres/ha is controlling blight, and skin finish looks good.

All our cereals look well with practically no lodging. Warm weather in early July built up aphid numbers so all crops received 0.1 litre/ha of Hallmark (lambda-cyhalothrin) which, with hindsight, should have gone on with the final fungicide. Now, wheat is colouring, but it is still four or five weeks from harvest. With diesel at 20p/litre, drying will be expensive so I will certainly be using glyphosate pre-harvest to ease combining and reduce drying costs. Wild oats have been rogued from all crops and one or two fields have been earmarked for chemical treatment next spring.

An enjoyable day was spent judging our local UFU spring barley competition and apologies to anyone who disagrees with the result! The best fields were those in the high fertility situations which were pushed to the limit. However, I do think a normal Northern Ireland summer might have seen some of those crops lodged.

The annual "talking down" of grain prices by the trade has begun once again with all sorts of pessimistic price projections. Unfortunately, these do not seem to be reflected in reduced compound costs for livestock producers.

Hence there is growing interest in crimping grain for use on farm, ourselves included. It is a fully traceable feed source of known feed value, and guaranteed non-GM. It has the added benefit of an earlier harvest.

With no barley on the farm Barra oats will be first to the combine at Acton House Farm, where John Best says all cereals are looking well.