Arable Farmer Focus FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Trying a three-way winter wheat blendHarvest has finally been completed; it’s been a relatively smooth one, but has dragged on longer than it should have. Results on the whole have been a little disappointing, with… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Damp harvest sees return of straw rakingWith the changing weather fortunes we ended up harvesting the driest wheat at only a slightly higher moisture than the wettest oilseed rape. Hagbergs were great, specific weights decent, but… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Pain ahead with drought and falling pricesIt seems that when the pendulum swings out to one extreme, it doesn’t return to the centre, but takes a wide arc out the other side. From record-high product prices… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Winter wheat down 1t/ha, but quality goodAfter receiving 110mm of rain in July, we then had 102mm in August. We managed two proper days of combining, starting before 10am and finishing at about midnight. The rest… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: The worst winter wheat harvest in 11 yearsThis has been the worst winter wheat harvest in 11 years at Downpatrick, and what a summer we have had. Wheat crops initially showed a lot of potential, but unfortunately… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Direct-drilling impossible after straw choppingThey say music can alter moods, and the way August has followed a wet July, I’ve needed every upbeat song in my playlist. It has been a testing season in… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Looking for answer to cost-effective farm kitWe have finished harvest and are now drilling grass seed and cover crops into what is an unsurprisingly moist seed-bed. Harvest was relatively painless despite the rain, and our old… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Variety change ahead for clubroot-infected OSRDespite mother nature’s best attempts to disrupt harvest, we are progressing well. Winter barley was safely gathered in by 21 July, with a good proportion of the straw baled before… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Losing uncle leads to thoughts of successionWhen I was a kid at school, that bell used to take forever to ring. School holidays were spent wrestling four-inch augers and looking for fit fields of wheat to… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Climate change or weather, the stakes are highThe dry summers of the past two years have focused debate on how farmers cope with parched landscapes, only for this season to throw up the challenge of washouts. Wherever… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: June drought blamed for poor wheat yieldsThis is the year that just keeps giving. If the weather pattern for the previous growing season wasn’t bad enough, we now find ourselves in a snatch-and-grab harvest, with wheat… FARMER FOCUSFarmer Focus: Spring cereal yields are disappointingIn my previous article for this revered magazine I urged you to look at my forthcoming August submission when I would be complaining about the terrible wet weather that we… More articles
