Farmer Focus: Harvest set to drag on with sunflowers and maize
© Tim Scrivener We have been very lucky around here that, on the whole, harvest has been relatively easy, with few wet days and everything harvested dry.
A small consolation for the amount of ergot in samples and mostly below average yields.
Yet again Extase has failed to impress, with Dawsum and Champion both easily outyielding it with a fairly equal input spend.
The only winner from Extase is that some of it has hit milling spec, which will at least cover the cost of cleaning the ergot out of it.
See also: How to companion crop successfully in winter wheat
About the author
There doesn’t seem to be any logic to which fields or varieties have suffered from ergot more than others, high blackgrass populations are always high risk, but even clean fields have had a lot in samples.
With the dry weather we have been lucky to have over harvest, there is now a lack of soil moisture to get volunteers and blackgrass to germinate, but remedial subsoiling and mole ploughing have been carried out in good conditions.
Rain forecast in the next week should help final seed-bed preparations and get cover crops going. As long as it knows when to stop.
Sustainable Farming Incentive plots and mid-tier work have added some diversity into the summer workload, along with some challenges.
I’m sure something that is hugely underestimated when looking at the return these schemes will bring is the setting out of plots and margins, ensuring they are the correct width and overall size, as well as then communicating this with operators so that everyone understands what is where.
It takes an incredible amount of time to measure these areas, and also ensure everyone knows what they are, and without confusion.
Simplicity is certainly the key, especially when different options have things like different cutting dates later on.
I think there is a very nervous feeling about the weather and how autumn is going to pan out.
There is at present very little positivity around in the industry, and with input prices low, the concern over big claims for ergot, harvest struggles elsewhere in the country, and memories of last autumn still fresh in people’s minds, it is unsurprising.
Harvest here will drag on for a few months yet with a trial plot of sunflowers and the grain maize still to do – so while we haven’t used the dryer yet, it will still see plenty of use this year.
