Insight Focus
- It’s rained continually in the past 65 days.
- The mild weather has benefitted crops like oilseed rape.
- However, the sugar beet harvest is proceeding very slowly due to the wet weather.
What’s Happening on The Farm?
As the rain keeps coming heading towards Christmas, I decided I would get a Bible out and catch-up on the Old Testament, ready for the New version which, obviously, starts Christmas Day (if you are Christian). It was not long before I got to Noah. He had advance warning of 40 days’ rain. Long enough to build a boat (don’t suppose he had the paperwork), find many animals and batten down the hatches. We have had, as I write, 65 days of rain and no advance warning. As for the paperwork, well…
As not much has been happening, we’ve lifted beet but I’ll get to that later. I’ve spent my time filling in the government’s new paperwork system which is affectionately called “SFI” or the Sustainable Farming Incentive. I doubt it will be “sustainable”, got nothing to do with “farming” and if this is an “incentive” then I’m a dutchman (both my parents are English). If this is how the government thinks it’s going to fund English agriculture in the future, as the “Sun” newspaper once said: – “Could the last person out please turn the lights off”. Much to my delight, the Environment Agency (a government department) recently said that agriculture was responsible for all known pollution but as it was going bankrupt there was no-way the industry could do anything about this and unless the government spent the funds that were available, things would only get worse.
Cecelia still hunts with enthusiasm, even in the gloom of paperwork.
At What Stage Is Your Crop?
Oilseed rape, over the hedge, continues to look very well if it got established. The, generally, mild autumn has suited those that are growing this crop.
Winter wheat, so I’m told, looks well south of London. But where I am and North its horrid. We are about 60% planted with a cut-off date around 15th January (vernalisation becomes an issue). The replacement crop is likely to be spring barley, but there is a seed availability issue so this is not a given. Could always grow more sugar beet I suppose but see below.
And finally, sugar beet harvest is very slow due to the continuing rain and the high number of factory break-downs this year. Sugars are low, by modern standards, at around a factory average of 15.8% sugar content and the typical dirt tare is 8.5%. Both these numbers reflect how miserable conditions are for the majority of British Sugar’s grower base. There is also the knock-on effect for the following crop which, to this point, would have been mainly wheat. Wheat yields in a large part of this key area in England for growing this crop, are going to be down for harvest ’24. Although mild, I doubt the sugar yield is increasing in the way the academics argue it should be. We have avoided the first hard frost, which we had this time last year and did a lot of damage to the crop.
What Big Concerns Do You Have at The Moment?
British Sugar and the NFU (the growers’ representative) are still not friends. I have been to a grower meeting, I’ll write my view after it is all over. See the grey hair. But whatever the outcome, I argue that the area for sugar beet in the UK will decline going forward. This is not just for price reasons but also the grower risk exposure that is becoming more evident, which include environmental issues (many) and the 48 hour Working Time Directive, which makes farming really quite hard, sorry, not possible as we are currently structured.
As alluded above, winter crop yields are likely to be bad for harvest ’24. Eeyore, from Winnie-the-Pooh, might have gloomily mentioned, as the Pooh Sticks got washed away from the bridge in the 100 Aker Wood, it’s always an average. So we should look forward to a drought, soon. This will kill seedlings, shrivel grains next spring and, everything I read says, the price of wheat is going down. This is with two proper wars going on and who knows who plans to start another war next year.
I sat in on an online seminar, recently, where a paper was presented that suggested that farming in England was going to get very much harder due to the increased risk of lack of soil moisture.
And on that happy note, if you celebrate Christmas, “Merry Christmas & Happy New Year”. If you don’t, please enjoy the remainder of this year and may all good things come to you when we start again in ’24.
