FARMERFOCUS
FARMERFOCUS
Kevin Littleboy
Kevin Littleboy farms 243ha
(600 acres) as Howe
Estates at Howe, Thirsk, N
Yorks. The medium sandy
loam in the Vale of York
supports potatoes, winter
wheat, rape and barley, plus
grass for sheep
IT IS unfortunate that the ill informed, publicity seeking, so-called environmentalists, trashed the small demonstration of roundup resistant sugar beet at Cereals 99.
It is a shame too that they dont know what they are looking for – the wrong oilseed rape trial plots had been attacked. How the answers to all the questions posed by these people can ever be answered when the trials repeatedly get attacked I fail to understand.
Whatever view one takes, we all desperately need independent assessments to assist all decision-makers from consumer to producer. Biotechnology has been used for nearly twenty years to produce food ingredients and medical products, and Golden Promise barley grown in the 60s and 70s for malt was bred by subjecting a sample of Maythorpe grain to gamma-ray mutation in a nuclear reactor in Aldermaston.
It is astounding how clean the crops are considering the high disease pressure. My sincere thanks to my agronomist, Nigel Foster of Phoenix Agronomy, for persuading me to use strobilurins on both wheat and barley, and thanks must go to my sprayer operator Ian Harding too. He has got timings spot on in another difficult year.
Congratulations to my next door neighbour Chris Brown MBE for his astounding achievement in conquering Everest, and placing a Keep Britain Farming poster on the highest point on Earth.
Any farmer in the north would be mad to miss the best agricultural show in the country, July 13-15 at the Great Yorkshire Showground, Harrogate. HRH Prince of Wales will visit on the last day, his first visit since taking over as Patron from Her Majesty the Queen.
My trial of genetically-modified sterile brome in the hedge bottoms has shown amazing vigour this year, so I have placed plastic bags at all field entrances to help the environmentalists collect the debris when they destroy the trials. And if you happen to see a wild oat, please pull that too – they are the taller ones.
Strobilurins all round at Howe Estates have kept crops clean. "The barleys a cracking crop," says owner Kevin Littleboy.
Mike Rowland
Mike Rowlands 141ha
(350-acre) Bowden Farm,
Burbage, Wilts, is in organic
conversion with 32ha (80
acres) going fully organic in
Oct 99. Potatoes, carrots,
wheat and peas will rotate
with grass for suckler cows.
At Amesbury 404ha (1000
acres) is in conventional
seed production
HAVING spent a week worrying about making organic big bale silage, it is now in the bag, or rather the wrap, and all seems well.
This must be beginners luck. Not being sure whether to make round or square bales we have made both to see how they fit into our winter system. Planting extra red clover in the silage mix proved worthwhile, bulking the crop up more quickly.
I have been approached by many people concerned about the future marketing of organic grain. How we market this to be fair to the producer and still maintain continuity of supply for organic stock feed is a problem. Do we need an organic grain marketing co-op, or could it be traded on the internet? Whatever the answer, something has to be done to secure organic grain for the growing stock sector. A high yielding winter wheat bred for little or low disease would help. At present feed wheat is so short it has been fetching as much as the milling wheat, and contracts from abroad are needed to make up the shortfall.
Our conventional crops look well in general. My son has worked very hard to ensure optimum timing for all inputs and it seems to have paid off this season. It must not be forgotten what an impossible autumn we had and how totally impossible it must have been on heavy land.
We are keeping up the blight control programme with a fully systemic spray on our conventional potatoes. However, the organic potatoes look very well too. We hope we will be able to control the fat-hen this year – undoubtedly it cut yields last year. That was also the highest blight year risk for 30 years and it concerns me that the permitted sprays under organic production are being questioned. Admittedly we desperately need a safer alternative. But in the short term we are being much more sparing with applications and frugal with the quantity of active.
Feed grain supply for organic farmers poses a problem, says Wilts grower Mike Rowland. Prices have rocketed to match milling premiums.
Teddy Maufe
Teddy Maufe farms 407ha
(1000 acres) as the tenant of Branthill Farm, part of
the Holkham Estate, Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk. Sugar
beet lies at the heart of the
rotation, with other crops
including winter barley,
wheat and oats, spring
barley and triticale
AS THE century draws to a close there seems to be a growing Luddite attitude being whipped up against conventional food production. And the GM debate, which is currently a separate issue, is fuelling this movement.
The positive strides in conventional, non-organic food production are in danger of being totally overlooked. We now produce more food, with less disease and contamination on the end product. This is achieved using increasingly environmentally friendly sprays coupled with rigorous testing of end products for residues. Food in times past was not as wholesome as we are often led to believe and without our gains from conventional production the whole planet would be a very hungry place.
I do not think we would wish to banish other 20th century gains for mankind, such as antibiotics or anaesthetics. So we should defend proudly, with a clear conscience, responsible modern agriculture. We conventional farmers must fight our corner or we will be drowned by a tide of ill-informed public opinion, swept along by the latest scare stories. That plays right into the hands of the organic lobby.
On this conventional farm we have applied Corbel (fenpropimorph) at 0.5 litres/ha to oats as mildew was spreading rapidly. Controlling the disease is a must if we are to obtain a clean, high specific weight sample for human consumption. Riband wheat has just received an earwash of 0.3litres/ha Amistar (azoxystrobin) due to continuing damp, ear disease conducive, weather.
We have tractor hoed all the sugar beet once and are now leaving some cut up fodder beet on the headlands to distract the pheasants from the beet plants.
Our Case Axial Flow Combine is having its annual service. Seven harvests on and we are still more than pleased with its performance and reliability. Its one flaw is a tendency to spread the chopped straw back into the standing crop. After several seasons searching for a modification kit, at last, at Cereals 99, I believe I have found one.
Seven seasons and still going strong. Norfolk farmer Teddy Maufes combine has just been serviced ready for its eighth campaign at Branthill.
James Hosking
James Hosking farms 516ha
(1275 acres) with his
parents and brother at
Fentongollan, Tresillian,
Truro, Cornwall. Land is
equally split between share
farming, various FBTs and a
tenancy. Crops include
wheat, oats, barley and
daffodils, alongside sheep
and cattle enterprises
MAY was an exceedingly dry month here and the later drilled linseed and winter cereals on lighter ground were starting to suffer. Then we cut grass for haylage and down came the rain – it never fails! Luckily we managed to bale it before the rain really set in, and the rain did a lot of good. Linseed leapt forward and is now finishing flowering, but some winter barley did lodge around trees and wood edges.
We applied a 0.3 litres/ha earwash of Folicur (tebuconazole) to wheats just as flowering started. In light of the wet weather we probably should have increased the rate but after the spend on strobilurins at T1 and T2 I decided to stick to the original budget. The weather delayed a second 0.25 litre/ha application of Alto (cyproconazole) on oats. Most were still clean, but on one very sheltered field my oat crop walker, a small white spaniel, came out orange. Time to use the up 20% button on the sprayer control box.
Daffodil lifting preparations have started with desiccation and inter-row cultivations to break the ground up. Most of the foliage is still green which indicates a successful fungicide programme. By contrast a trial plot on the farm which has not been sprayed died back at the end of April. To date we have used sulphuric acid as the desiccant but this year we are trying a propane burner too.
The results are very encouraging which is a relief for both environmental and public reasons where houses are nearby. Soon the bulbs will be lifted onto the surface with a modified potato de-stoner and left to dry in windrows.
Casual labour gangs start bulb picking at the end of the month, and the crop comes in for processing. The bulk of the brassica modules start to go out, and then we are into cereal harvest and replanting the daffodils. Mid-June is the lull before the storm, and the last chance to snatch a holiday.
Daffodils still green in June demonstrates a successful fungicide programme, says Cornish grower James Hosking. Trials with a propane burner for dessication are promising.