Chris Bennett: Grass margins bring an extra cost

Grass margins are becoming as synonymous with the British countryside as our hedgerows have long been, but this year they seem to have contributed to the ergot problem many farmers have encountered.

Finding ergot in the combine tank has been the final nail in the coffin in a year that has been one to forget.

This pathogen, whilst being linked to the cold, wet flowering period that we encountered this year, is also associated with the early-flowering grasses found in our grass margins.

See also: Chris Bennett – new government should tweak SFI rules

About the author

Chris Bennett

Chris Bennett manages the arable and beef family farm he grew up on in Louth, Lincolnshire. He returned to the farm in 2022 after spending several years farming in the South Island of New Zealand.

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The cost of a rejection, or the use of a colour-sorter to clean the grain, is a cost borne by the farmer and is likely to far exceed any payment received for maintaining the grassy habitats that likely contributed to the problem.

I doubt many farmers considered this additional risk when they added grass margins into their environmental schemes.

It is not the only example of environmental options that can impact on farm productivity beyond their boundary.

The legume fallow option is popular. The payment creates a favourable gross margin within a cropping year, however the costs associated with the blackgrass infestation that commonly occurs in the following crop can outweigh the short-term financial gain.

Even our beautiful hedges have costs beyond their maintenance.

Additional field divisions decrease efficiency and increase the proportion of lower-yielding headland.

During my time in New Zealand, where farmers are very efficiency driven, they were still ripping out hedges to facilitate production.

While the payments we receive for these options are largely based on costs plus the income foregone on the land that is taken out of production, there is no additional payment covering the knock-on risk to production on the rest of the farm.

This is an argument, as if we needed another one, that payments should be set at a higher level than they are to allow for these impacts.

I am not trying to divert farmers away from environmental schemes, but simply highlighting there can be unintended consequences and additional costs that we neglect to consider when signing up.