Patrick Godwin
Patrick Godwin
Patrick Godwin is farm
manager for the 930ha
(2300 acre) Lee Farm
Partnership, Angmering
Estate, West Sussex. Soils
are chalk-based with
combinable winter and
spring crops occupying
525ha (1300 acres)
THE combine and the hay tedder are both working as I write but the old adage that an English Summer consists of two fine days and a thunderstorm seems to fit the current forecasts.
I remember something from my O Level geography syllabus about the interaction between the Gulf Stream and the Azores High. Warm currents of the Gulf Stream bring warm moist air from the gulf of Mexico across the Atlantic giving us the traditional stream of Atlantic depressions, the lows that mean wet and often windy weather. However, in summer, the Azores High, a large high pressure system sitting over that tiny Atlantic outcrop traditionally pushes north to give us the fine weather we all remember.
Well, this year it hasnt happened. We have no Azores High and consequently no settled weather. You can blame whatever you like, El Nino, La Nina, or global warming, but the net effect is not good for my stress levels.
Over the past year some of my articles have bemoaned the Courage winter oilseed rape. Last weekend, in glorious warm weather, it yielded a respectable 3.6t/ha (29cwt/acre), above our budget of 3.2t/ha and a very pleasing result off this light land. It was also easy to harvest following 3 litres/ha of glyphosate a fortnight earlier.
The next crop on the list is organic conversion triticale. The yields for this will be most interesting as we have done nothing at all to it since drilling last autumn. Triticale is a very robust crop and has not suffered from any disease of note, keeping most of its green leaf area until it ripened naturally. It could be a close run thing between organic conversion spring wheat and triticale as to which tops the gross margin league table at the end of the year. I am not just talking about in-conversion crops, but across all our cereals conventional or in-conversion. *
Spring wheat and triticale, both in conversion to organic, could top the gross margin table on the Angmering Estate, reckons farm manager Patrick Godwin.