Who would have thought beans would be the saviour of harvest 2023?

After planting them extremely late, I had no big ambitions and pencilled in a predicted yield of 2.5t/h, and held on to the fact that it would be good for next year’s first wheat.

But as a pleasant surprise, they have done extremely well, with all but one field yielding more than 5t/ha.

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About the author

Richard Orr

Richard Orr farms cereals and potatoes in a reduced cultivation system in County Down, Northern Ireland, with his wife and two children. He is a cereals and oilseeds sector council member and focuses on soil and plant health. He also keeps a small number of cattle, pigs and sheep.

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The other field of light soil probably produced just enough beans to cover the seed.

Overall, I am extremely pleased. It was purely down to luck. While the dry spell hit early-sown crops, my late-sown beans had not podded and weathered the drought better.

I have just one field of spring wheat to cut. I’ve left it until after the beans to try and buff some of the grime off the inside of the combine.

Beans sure are good at clogging up the works. I emptied the clean grain elevator trap every time I unloaded the tank.

This week the Ulster Farmers’ Union had a breakfast meeting with the AHDB about the proposed levy increase for our cereals sector. The AHDB is one of those organisations I feel we take for granted.

If you lift a publication on anything related to fertiliser/fungicide or the recommended lists, the AHDB is where the information came from.

The AHDB monitor farm programme, for me personally and for farmers in general, has been a great success.

However, in other AHDB departments I feel farmers have been forgotten about and should be the top priority.

Therefore, it was great to hear that the new leadership team understands this and are wanting to drive change.

I, as a farmer, have no issue with the levy increase and, given how much everything around us has risen, it would be silly of us to expect an organisation of its importance to function effectively on a static budget.

But I want to see the levy paid by farmers spent on farmers’ needs.

Ending on a positive note, the family farm partnership we have been trapped in was dissolved with immediate effect in September, giving me and my family more certainty and control of our own path in life.

Now the hard work will begin in earnest to re-build.