Here at AWT Farm Services we finished harvest at 10:00pm on Tuesday 5^th September having started on 7^th July.

It has been quite a protracted affair this year as we finished on 23^rd August last year which was a much drier affair! We are doing 2,000Ha (5,000 acres) with one combine having moved away from running two machines a couple of years ago.

We grow a mixture of crops including wheat (milling and ‘cleaned wheat’ varieties), barley (both feed and malting), spring milling oats and Oil Seed Rape. This year we will have harvested just under 14,000 tonnes and, apart from some seed retained on farm, this will have all moved into Camgrain.

Strategically, Camgrain is at the heart of how we run our six family run farms that utilize AWT. We operate a ‘Share Farming Agreement’ which means all six farms share the input costs to include the Fixed Costs (labour and machinery) and the Variable Costs (seed, fertilizer and sprays) and in return we get to share the returns from our crops in store at Camgrain depending on the % of land we contribute into AWT. It feels a bit like ‘The Six Musketeers’ in we are ‘All for one and one for all’!!

Our membership of Camgrain means we can maximise the efficiency of the operation by only growing one crop on each of the farms (there are 9 land parcels). We manage with the minimum of equipment and labour and can cover large acreages with our machinery as we are not moving from farm to farm too much.

At harvest time we have very little holding capacity for grain and therefore rely on the swift uptake of crop and into store by Camgrain and it is the fantastic service we get from you all at Camgrain that makes our business of AWT work so well and efficiently. So yet again, a big thank you to you all for making it happen so well.



One aspect of harvest which slowed us down was some flat oats on our headlands where the fertilizer overlaps. With a combine with a 13m header this can cause harvesting rates to drop very considerably!