Back at the end of April I was feeling very pessimistic about harvest 21. Our farm has a tendency to drought out and we were desperate for rain! I am pleased to report that since then we have had over 100mm of rain and despite some difficult establishment conditions last autumn the crops look very promising.

Harvest preparations are well underway with stores being cleaned and machinery serviced. We have not grown any winter barley this year and so our combine stands ready with the oilseed rape header on, but unlikely to be called into action for another 10 days yet. In our area of the Norfolk/Suffolk borders, very little combining has been done as yet, with most of my neighbours forecasting starting in the barley early next week.

 As always harvest progress is governed by the weather. Recent localised rain and hailstorms in some parts of the country sound horrendous for those impacted. At the moment I am just hoping I can get to my lodged spring barley before the pigeons manage to eat it all!

 As many will have seen on the news horrible weather events have hit Europe hard – especially parts of France, Belgium and Germany. The quality of crops across that region will have been impacted which will drive marketing premiums for quality milling wheat and malting barley. Now is the time, in my view, to use the harvest capability of Camgrain to help our members fill our stores with top quality product which the market will demand in the year ahead.

 Running into this busy time of year health and safety must be everyone’s top priority. This week is Farm Safety week with the Yellow Wellies farm safety foundation running a campaign to encourage the whole food and farming industry to follow best practice in all that we do. We all need to take collective responsibility for making sure everyone in our team goes home safe every day.

 Within our own business we have recently been completing all of our machinery safety checks, replenishing and improving our first aid kits, checking fire extinguishers, ordering more high viz clothing and figuring out the What Three Words positions for key locations on the farm to enable emergency services to get to our location if the worst were to happen.

 We have started planning for harvest 22 already with our cropping plans. Looking around the farm wheat variety choice has had a big bearing on disease levels and spray costs this year. It is disappointing to see some of our historic barn filling varieties as well as some of the newer varieties come under strong disease pressure this season. While we will wait until we have the yield data it looks likely that we will be buying seed for several new varieties this autumn to improve our disease resilience. I know that gathering in this year’s harvest and dealing with all of the covid related challenges will be a huge task for the Camgrain team as well as our farming members. I would like to thank you all for the efforts so far getting the stores ready for what looks like a big harvest and hope that all runs smoothly and safely in the months to come. 

Safe and speedy harvest to all,

John