How the year is flying by so fast, we are at Easter weekend already! It seems an age sine we drilled our Spring Barley with dust around the drill at the end of February. Since then we have had low temperatures averaging <7 degrees and 110mm of rain! We do not normally get our Spring Barley in the ground until late March, upon reflection it was lucky we did put it in with the weather we’ve had in March. Those farmers around who have not drilled their spring crops yet will be flying about this weekend planting and applying some very expensive fertilizer and sprays. Many farmers may show some good profits for last year with high value grain sales but next years will probably be ghastly unless they were clever or lucky! High in put costs , fertilizer in particular up 134% and now falling grain prices mean prospects do not look good particularly with a further fall in farmers area payments. We still have to plant our Maize later this month for a local AD plant producing gas into the gas main.

Arable farming is becoming a riskier business with so much volatility in the market and I hope it does not drive too many farmers to consider less risky options as are becoming available under schemes the government have introduced recently. These schemes will replace the area payments farmers receive by 2027

We are growing oilseed rape after 3 years break and it has not been plan sailing but I have to say our crop is looking really good currently and is about to come into flower. We have plenty of buds appearing and this recent cold weather has meant another problem often as this growth stage is beetles in the flower but they seem to have disappeared. With the current fall in Oilseed values I’m not sure I will plant again next season unless values increase soon which is rather concerning.