Harvest has been stop and start for our eastern and western barometer farmers, but wheat crops are not in peril yet. Philip Case reports

Edd Banks Swaffham Bulbeck, Cambridgeshire

A new combine and better efficiency through using an RTK GPS system has allowed Edd Banks to maximise his cutting during a tricky period of harvest.

The new Case 9120 Axial Flow combine with 35ft cut has performed well, he said, especially in the stop-start harvest, characterised by sudden heavy rainfall.

An average travelling speed between 6 and 8kph and cutting exactly 35ft, has upped capacity to up to 70t/hour, with field averages between 50t/hour and 60t/hour.

This is a big improvement on the 45t/hour he was getting from the Case 8010.

The increase in accuracy and efficiency has been “fantastic”, he said. “The RTK GPS ensures the header is always full and we don’t end up driving up the field to cut small strips of crop,” he explained.

“It gives us our best output possible for the short periods of time we can get on.”

On Saturday (21 August), a rare dry spell enabled him to cut 54ha of Alchemy from the afternoon onwards.

An additional 43ha of Alchemy was cut the following day after drying from the previous night’s rain, only for work to be stopped at 11.30pm by more rain. Moisture content started from 17.5% and dropped just below 15% until it rained.

However, the downpour overnight and into the morning left the crops too wet to harvest on Monday (23 August).

This allowed Mr Banks to catch up on his paperwork while his team tackled the backlog of straw stacking and machinery servicing, ready for action in the next dry spell.

The entire storage quota at Camgrain has been used so all crops harvested now were being kept in grain stores on the main farm site.

Mr Banks has not had a long enough period of time to be able to calibrate his yield meter, but he estimated that his yields appeared to be slightly better than last year’s figures, although perhaps not as high as he had hoped.

About 60% of all crops have been harvested, leaving mainly feed wheats, which he planned to harvest as soon as it was dry. His spring bean crop of Fuego was still to be cut.

Mr Banks has taken advantage of the recent increase in wheat prices, securing £145/t.

He also minimised his risk by selling at different times during the season.

Peter Sands Brewood, Staffordshire

Staffordshire grower Peter Sands said three days of rain has resulted in a “snatch-and-grab” harvest.

Persistent rainfall from Thursday night (19 August) until Sunday morning brought his two combines to a standstill.

“It’s been a frustrating harvest as we’ve been getting lots of rain during the night and the odd shower during the day,” he said.

“If you’re unlucky to get that shower you cannot cut anything, whereas you can be a mile down the road, get nothing and combine all day.”

When the combines have been out working in the fields, the three-year-old Claas Lexion 570, bought for this harvest, and the Lexion 600 Terra Trac have been performing well.

“The combining has been good and the output has been better this year. That may be because we have got much less straw going through and the crops are thinner.”

A dry Sunday (22 August) at Ivy Dene, Brewood, enabled 40ha of Humber wheat to be combined. Moisture was 20-21% and the yield averaged at 8.5t/ha.

Drier conditions earlier last week allowed him to cut 80ha of first wheats – Grafton and Oakley have each yielded about 8.5t/ha.

He has forward-sold about 40% of his wheat at prices ranging from £100/t to £130/t, lower than the recent highs seen. The rest has still to be sold.

Most of the wheat and barley is supplied to Lloyds, in Wrexham, and Wrekin Grain in Telford, Shropshire.

Mr Sands has endured wet harvests for the past two years. “We never finish before September, so we’re probably about where we normally are at this stage,” he said.

About 485 of the 1620ha, including 32ha of spring rape, 40ha of winter beans and the rest of wheat, were still to be harvested. But thankfully, there were no signs of lodging or sprouting.

Last Monday (16 August), about 60ha of Hendon naked oats yielded 6.5t/ha. The oats were sold at a premium above wheat prices to GB Seeds, based in Bury Sty Edmunds.

The last of the oilseed rape, about 16ha of Marcant, was combined two weeks ago at about 11% moisture, yielding 3.5t/ha.

Like the wheat, nearly half the oilseed rape was forward-sold, this time to United Oilseeds, but he missed out on the recent price increase. The remainder was still to be sold.