Farmer Focus: Recent sugar beet yields do not make pleasant reading
© Frontier Agriculture I write my first Farmer Focus article after a challenging January. Even planting new hedges has not been straightforward, with the frozen ground.
Norfolk has experienced its second serious cold snap this season, finishing off what was left of our cover crops and the aphids – which we were worrying about in December, having gone insecticide-free.
See also: Tips to control a heavier grassweed burden in wheat this season
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January can seem a long month when it is cold and you have a lot of lambs to fatten. Most have coped well, with weights on target to be finished by the end of February so we can get land ready for spring.
The cold has caused some unease getting our sugar beet out of the ground. Nose-to-tail lifting with harvester and haulier will, hopefully, get the last of the crop into the factory.
With some sugars down at 12-13% and frost damage, our recent adjusted yields haven’t made for pleasant reading.
Thankfully, some handsomely priced futures-based sugar beet eased the pain.
I use my spare time in January to project our March year-end figures and find a starting point for our cash forecasts for the 12 months ahead.
This is not an easy task for a complex contracting business with livestock and haylage enterprises.
Fuel escalators have also needed adjusting down for some customers, with diesel prices easing back.
Our next job will be applying glyphosate to cover crops. Last season when direct-drilling, I sprayed off very late, intentionally leaving ground protected for as long as possible to keep our sandy soils friable.
Our Avatar drill performs best in these conditions.
Frustratingly, my yield maps didn’t reflect this theory and suggest the fields I sprayed off first performed best. I now intend to apply glyphosate earlier and to drill “on the brown”. I will keep you posted on how our drills perform.
