This Week in Farming: Regen debate, milk prices and harvest

Welcome to this week’s round-up of the best content from the Farmers Weekly team in the past seven days.

Here are five of the most eye-catching topics you might have missed.

Harvest progress

The temperature may have retreated from last week’s record-breaking highs, but across much of the country the weather has remained dry and warm allowing this year’s early harvest to progress unhindered.

Leicestershire farmer Leigh Donger is typical of many who have got into the wheat well ahead of schedule, with first wheat yields at 9t/ha and second wheats at 8t/ha.

Further east, deputy arable editor David Jones was in the field with Cambridgeshire farmer Robert Todd and his son Charlie.

They put the whole farm down to spring barley this season and have seen the dry weather cause crop yields to dip slightly, but hold on to malting spec.

And up in Scotland, Farmer Focus writer David Fuller is also well into his earliest ever harvest, with all the winter barley now in the shed.

Milk price round-up

There’s been the usual end-of-the-month flurry of milk price changes this week, with Arla revealing its August price has broken through the symbolic 50p/litre mark.

Elsewhere, Muller producers who are part of the Sainsbury’s Dairy Development group have gone up by a penny to 47p/litre, but analysts have warned that the liquid price is still not high enough to tempt many to increase production.

Acting deputy livestock editor Charlotte Cunningham tuned in to a Mole Valley webinar to hear the latest advice on improving dairy margins with head of agriculture James Hague. Read her report here.

Contractor chatter

Would you sell your car to fund a new business? Durham farmer and retired contractor Peter Moss didn’t part with his own – but he did sell his wife’s Mini!

Mr Moss, 72, welcomed machinery editor Oliver Mark for the latest edition of What’s in Your Shed, revealing his worst-ever purchase, what he couldn’t do without in the workshop, and how many digits he lost in a farm accident.

The full archive of this popular and long-running series can be found here.

Regen debate

Charlie Flindt ventured on to Twitter this week to debate which regen agriculture claims can survive scrutiny and reports back here in the latest edition of Flindt on Friday.

It’s fair to say he and our veteran opinion columnist David Richardson aren’t fully signed up Groundswell attendees yet, and it’s a timely debate as many farmers are examining their input costs with renewed vigour amid soaring cost inflation.

Want to weigh in? Send a letter either to me, or our opinion editor Philip.clarke@markallengroup.com

Is this the UK’s smallest wheat harvest?

The countryside is thronged with town-dwellers visiting the country at this time of year, but allotment grower Jacob Shooter has brought the countryside to town with his 100 sq m crop of milling wheat destined for pizza bases.

His dedication to locking in a good yield can’t be faulted – he’s even done his spraying certificates.

News reporter Ed Henderson went along to see the crop being harvested with the help of a humble garden strimmer.

Listen to the FW Podcast

For even more of the latest news, market prices and farming debate, listen to the Farmers Weekly podcast here or bring us with you in the cab by downloading it from your usual podcast platform.