Talking arable – Arable Farming

My beekeeper, who is a lovely little Italian chap, calls round each autumn to see where the rape will be and for the last four years has left grumpy.

Unfortunately, the pollen gap will only now be further increased with the poor performance both agronomically and economically in the 2023 season of both oilseeds and pulses. With many more 2.5 tonnes per hectare than St/ha crops, the accountant and grower will be making some tough rotational decisions on their viability.

This will only inevitably lead to more continuous cereals and some Sustainable Farming Incentive options being selected instead of trying to maintain a balanced, sustainable and productive rotation. Add to this the fact that many of the stalwart wheat varieties, such as Zyatt, have performed very well indeed following a barley or as a second wheat at harvest 2023 and the risk-averse growers will only and rightly be increasing these choices.

As someone who has always detested political financial incentivisation in agriculture this disastrous scenario must surely be an exception. The Government is currently very happy to pay farmers to plant flowers/cover crops, etc, so surely, in these days of massive food inflation, a viable oilseed/pulse area payment must be the way forward to encourage these crops to be grown and to take some of the financial risk away from the grower. The bees, insects and soils will all benefit, plus the grower will rebuild rotational sustainability and the UK taxpayer will get value for money.

As for my beekeeper, we are planning on planting 40ha of peas which cheered him up enough for him to leave us a jar of his lovely honey as a thank you. This could turn out to be the most expensive jar of honey ever – or not. Who knows?

Regarding cover/catch cropping, this autumn there seems to be a real issue with the dreaded green bridge. Many fields have now moved from suffering the usual increased pest pressure on the headlands to having this throughout the entire field. While walking one client’s block of catch crop fields prior to wheat drilling the entire field was a mass of aphids, with every volunteer cereal plant infested with BYDV. Glyphosate had already been applied but the decision was taken to also pulverize the entire surface vegetation rather than to direct drill as the pest pressure would have simply been overwhelming.

By the time you read this article hopefully most of the winter cereal drilling will have been completed, with the usual nerve shredding studying of the weather forecast, date checking, assessing black-grass emergence and other crystal ball gazing put aside for another season. Without doubt, in terms of stress levels, it is much worse than harvest or any other of the big arable growing decision periods and yet again another old saying of ‘well sown, half grown’ rings very true.

Fingers crossed we all get this balancing act as correct as possible for another year as it is the major factor in an arable farm making a profit or not.

The first lift of sugar beet took place in early October in lovely dry conditions and no dramas, with British Sugar chomping at the bit to get it delivered into the factory and the hauliers clearing up the 900t heap in no time. As usual the beet returns were unfathomable, but needless to say the sugars were low and the adjusted tonnage much less than the actual tonnage delivered in. As previously covered, if you are a beet grower you will sort of understand this, if not don’t ask. But at £40/t, with harvested fields in great condition and my roadways in one piece there is no reason to complain.

We had our annual Red Tractor inspection at Hill Farm recently. All the usual reports, risk assessments and other relevant documentation had been compiled in triplicate and, with enough bytes of computer data to down a space shuttle, all seemed in order, even the grain store bait box tethers were approved.

But where were our Mass Balance (MB) figures came the request? As I stuttered, blustered and looked around like a Mastermind contestant one year short on the date of the battle of Senlac Hill my wife handed over the relevant table .I will let you guess my view of what MB stood for, with the first part being massive.