This Week in Farming: Bluetongue vaccine and drought update

Welcome back to another edition of This Week in Farming, your one-stop shop for the best Farmers Weekly content from the past seven days.

First, here’s your markets (opens as PDF), with a pleasing bump in the liveweight lamb price this week – a little bit of comfort to everyone feeding extra this season.

Now, on with the show.

Bluetongue latest

Bluetongue virus continues to ravage farmers, with stocks of vaccine now running very low as drug manufacturers work to get more product in from the EU.

More information has also emerged this week about mortality rates in flocks in the South West and experts have been warning that retaining fleeces on sheep is no barrier to the midge – and a welfare risk in this weather.

Yet there is no premium for vaccinated livestock at breeding sales, and demand for ewes is strong with records being broken at Thame Summer Sheep Fair.

Calf prices are also soaring, with some thinking that fears about tighter available numbers owing to the virus’s impact on cow fertility is helping keep them high.

Drought latest

With almost three-quarters of England now officially in drought, farmers continue to race through the last of the cereal harvest (and assist with tackling wildfires).

Deputy arable editor Emma Gillbard digs into the science on whether drought or heat had a greater negative effect on this year’s crop yields – and what that means for management in future.

We’ve got advice for dairy farmers on managing grassland amid the wait for rain, and the latest prices from the hay and straw markets – with yield and quality of straw better than expected.

Tech on a budget

The focus will be on saving not spending for most growers, which is why we’ve got a combine specialist’s guide to putting your machines back to bed once the season is over.

And we have all the information you need to fit ultra-accurate RTK guidance kit to older machines for as little as £1,100.

Finally, if you are thinking to put your hand in your pocket for a new combine, we speak to operator Guy Walker from Wiltshire-based RD Agriculture, who has been driving one of the first Claas Trion 760s in the country this season.

AHDB data project

Levy board AHDB has moved to dampen concerns that its Farm Data Exchange project is a reheated version of Red Tractor’s ill-fated Greener Farms Commitment, which detonated prior to launch.

Separately, we’ve two other reports this week on making the most of information at your disposal, with the first being the result of a major project looking at optimum ewe condition score, with the best results surprisingly from a body condition score of 4.

And farmers in England gearing up to submit an SFI application next month will want to read this piece on which bits of mapping software may be most helpful.

Who’s up and who’s down?

It’s been red faces all round for agronomy and crop marketing firm Frontier this week, after they were forced into a hasty U-turn on an implausible bill for grain drying sent to Cambridge farmer Tom Clarke, the former AHDB cereals and oilseeds chairman.

On the up will surely be whoever ends up buying this eye-catching 1,242-acre Dumfries estate that came to market recently – a haven from the worst of the sizzling heat on top of all its other features.

Listen to the FW Podcast

Don’t forget to listen to the latest Farmers Weekly Podcast, brought to you by Johann Tasker, Hugh Broom and Louise Impey.

This week, the team discuss the growing role for farmers fighting wildfires, as well as the latest news.

You’ll find it anywhere you get your podcasts, or listen free on the FW website.