Increases in prices show no sign of letting up, and although grain prices in the arable sector remain strong, they will not fully cover the increased costs that will be incurred in growing next year’s crop.  

I feel for those in the intensive livestock sector, having to pay for expensive feed and energy with only marginal increases in sale prices.

See also: Video: Cornish potato grower battles rising costs and tricky planting

About the author

Robert Drysdale

Arable Farmer Focus writer

Robert Drysdale is farm manager at Monymusk Estate, growing winter and spring barley, wheat and oilseed rape across 1600ha on 4 contract farming agreements to the south of Inverurie in Aberdeenshire. The farm also has 130 beef cows running on land that is less suitable for crop production with the majority of calves being finished on the farm.

Read more articles by Robert Drysdale

The lack of support or long-term thinking from the retail sector is shocking, and I was astounded to hear this week that supermarkets were going to further reduce the price of eggs in order to help their customers. 

It would seem that warnings about the viability of egg production fell on deaf ears, unless of course the retailers are going to fund this from their own pockets.

I can’t help but feel there is going to be further significant disruption in food supply chains in the coming months and hope that retailers wake up to the value of domestic supply before it is too late.

Back on the farm, spring barley drilling got off to a great start in late March, with warm, sunny weather allowing the first 200ha to be drilled into good seed-beds.

A forecast of a couple of wet days turned into the wettest two weeks for some time. We had more than 80mm of rain and sleet, which turned good seed-beds cold and wet. Not ideal for fast emergence. 

Despite this, the early drilled barley has now emerged reasonably well, although there are a few bare patches where waterlogging caused the seeds to rot. 

We have now been drilling again for a week and I hope that we will be finished by the time you read this. 

We replaced our rollers this season with a 15m set to fit in with our 30m tramlines, in order to minimise wheelings.

The extra width is also speeding the job up significantly, but the downside is that it is further to carry the many stones back to the stone fork on the tractor. 

It is a sign of how equipment has got bigger during my career that we now roll at a wider width than the first sprayer I operated.