Preliminary results from the NFU’s 2011 harvest survey put the English wheat crop at 13.636m tonnes. While this beats the 13.5m tonnes produced in 2010 and is just 1.5% below the five year average, yields dropped overall.

At 1.82m ha, the crop area this year was about 3% higher than in 2010 and looks like producing an average yield of 7.5t/ha against a five-year average of 7.8t/ha.

This is a vast improvement on earlier estimates. At this year’s Cereals event the union feared that the wheat crop could be as much as 2m tonnes or 15% down on the five-year average after it surveyed members between May and early June about the impact of one of the driest springs on record.

“Survey responses have pointed to a large variability in yields often linked to soil type and capacity to hold water where a fortunate few benefited from showers of rain this spring,” said combinable crops chairman Ian Backhouse. “Where sufficient rain fell in June and July onto later maturing crops, yields have been exceptional.

“However, towards the latter part of harvest there was more variability in quality with summer rains preventing many farmers keeping up with ripening crops. Fortunately, much of the quality milling crop was already harvested and dried before exposure to prolonged rainfall.”

The lack of timely rainfall in the eastern regions highlighted the value of the single farm payment in shielding farmers from the extremes of climate and market volatility, said Mr Backhouse.

Full UK yield results for wheat, barley and oilseed rape crops are still being gathered by the union’s economics team until late September. Contribute your harvest results to Farmers Weekly‘s Yield Watch and to the NFU survey