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Over the Farm Gate is kindly supplied by Robert Dennis - Farmer Director
Writing my first ‘Over the Farm Gate’ I don’t want to fall into the cliché of a moaning farmer, so I will
start with the good…
Winter crops look very good with a lot of potential. Wheats have had their T0 spray and will be
approaching T1 one timing within the next couple of weeks. There is a lot of septoria in the wheats
and we will using a ‘robust’ (aka expensive!) fungicide programme. However, with strong yield
potential the investment should be worth it.
Early fertiliser looks to have got into the winter crops really well and we will be going with our
second liquid (and third overall) on wheats very soon. Winter barley fertiliser is all finished so that’s
one less job to worry about.
Sugar beet has gone in slightly later than we’d prefer but the seedbeds are good and there is plenty
of moisture to help them get away well (very different to a year ago when we hadn’t had any April
rain by this point). Sugar beet is grown on contract for British Sugar and the contract price has been
significantly increased this year (£27/t - £40/t). Sugar beet suits us as a good break crop for cleaning
up blackgrass and the margin is currently looking to be in line with a first wheat. However, my
positivity may have diminished when I’m sat looking at wet rutted fields in mid-November!
Now on to the not so good…
Oilseed rape has really struggled in our region, and we have had to abandon some crops. Out of
100ha drilled we are left with approximately half that will make it to harvest. This is due to an
infestation of cabbage stem flea beetle larvae and cabbage stem weevil larvae throughout the
winter and early spring. We have found that crops haven’t got going this spring as we would usually
expect. Previous experience of such scenarios is that, if there is still green leaf once the days get
longer and milder, the crop is able to overcome the larvae and grow away. However, the poor areas
have continued to suffer and plant loss is still occurring. Late drilling due to last summer’s drought is
a significant reason why the plants aren’t strong enough to cope with the larvae burden.
We have re-drilled some of the failed fields with spring barley which, although going in quite late,
should produce a small margin rather than the loss we were looking at with the poor OSR fields. On
another block we have drilled some ryegrass. This is more of an experiment than anything but the
plan is to get some haylage made then continue with our rotation of first wheat after OSR. If there’s
time, we’ll put some sheep on it in before drilling to provide some free fertiliser.
Robbie
