What % of winter crops not planted or destroyed

Two Tone · Oct 29, 2023

Renaultman said:
This could do with a care emoji, just keep reminding yourself you have done your best and you can't do better than that.

I do. Obviously there are events that just make us wonder WTF else can go wrong. But realising that many of us are in the same boat and that we really would do exactly the same again, given identical circumstances, helps.

I had a long chat with my youngest brother this evening and this really did reinforce those very facts.

Ruston3w · Oct 29, 2023

Nothing drilled. We waited as mostly light(ish) and DD , hoped to see blackgrass chit, now with likely shortage may still get drilling but how do you balance lower yield with better price, not to mention pre-em damage? Doesn't get any easier eh? If we get half a chance it will be at the expense of growing cover crops, then again much longer and they will have done quite a bit of good anyway.

john63 · Oct 30, 2023

Nothing drilled as yet. Some has been worked for a stale seedbed, some has been ploughed, some still as stubble. All heavy clay and all still too wet to do anything with. The only good thing is that we've still got the seed and haven't spent anything on pre-ems. I suspect that it might all be coming spring barley at this stage.

Spud · Oct 30, 2023

4% of spuds left to lift, and all the beet.
Wbarley looks good, but its on kind land.
Wheat after beans is in and ok, drilled fairly early
Some wheat after spuds in, some not. Of that, one field willl be spring oats, because the rest of the block is beans (not sown yet so likely be spring, field is a pond atm) which will make a decent block of wheat for 2025 (6 fields = all of 45acres!)
Some of the w beans left to plant may still happen, the rest will be spring beans if I can find the seed at reasonable money.
Some beet may get lifted early and sown with wheat, and the s barley planned for the beet fields sown after oats on very much wetter land.
One field planned for s barley as a third cereal after w barley may finish up being a third wheat yet, its on fairly kind if very wet land.

Its too early to pull the stop quite yet, in my opinion.

The most painful we have is 38ac of heavy land in three fields. Sown with WOSR last august. Decided in December it was crap, and the high risk grassweedy bits had no plants. No Kerb or Belkar applied to maximise options. Still wet in Feb and very frosty so waited. March & April very wet. Direct drilled with spring oats 20th April. Cut 10th September, straw very green. Spun straw out 27th Sept, baled 28th. Rain that night. Not dry enough to touch since. What a balls up. If I'd stuck to our normal rotation, it would of been sown with a cc last August instead of being half bare all winter, sprayed off and drilled into the mostly still green residue at the end of February. I now remember why we stopped growing the bloody stuff way back in 2010!

Wombat · Oct 31, 2023

Worse thing is we cannot get a dry nice 24hrs since babet that coupled with 60mm Sunday has really fooked things

redsloe · Oct 31, 2023

T Hectares said:
There will be certainly more Barley around, how much heavier land makes malting will be season specific
I’ve fixed what I think is a decent Malting premium on 20% of my expected SB tonnage this week to manage some of that risk

Will there be adequate seed available? It hasn’t been a wonderful season for S Barley?

snipe · Oct 31, 2023

I may be changing my vote. Some of the early drill crops that look good are developing some yellow patches that I think are only going to go one way and get bigger.

Fish · Oct 31, 2023

I think with this weeks forecasted rain, it will be game over here.
Osr- 100% fail
Rye - 100% ok
WB - all planed area drilled- looks ok at the moment, long time till spring.
WW - 80%, the remaining 20% no chance.
W Beans - still in the bag, will drill in spring.
The remaining ground will be a mix of S Oats, S Linseed. S Beans and cover crops.
or plan B,
put whole place into SFI, max out the options, strip out all the unnecessary costs, back heel red tractor/ nfu and all the rest of the dead hands,
Go fishing.
Plan B looks

T Hectares · Oct 31, 2023

redsloe said:
Will there be adequate seed available? It hasn’t been a wonderful season for S Barley?

Not sure, there was more malting than the trade initially thought, germs in Laureate held on better than expected but whether there’s enough Cert seed crops around I don’t know.
A good year to home save if you can !

Wombat · Oct 31, 2023

Fish said:
I think with this weeks forecasted rain, it will be game over here.
Osr- 100% fail
Rye - 100% ok
WB - all planed area drilled- looks ok at the moment, long time till spring.
WW - 80%, the remaining 20% no chance.
W Beans - still in the bag, will drill in spring.
The remaining ground will be a mix of S Oats, S Linseed. S Beans and cover crops.
or plan B,
put whole place into SFI, max out the options, strip out all the unnecessary costs, back heel red tractor/ nfu and all the rest of the dead hands,
Go fishing.
Plan B looks

We are upto 140mm in 13days here and with the rain to come I am really not sure what will be left. Another 5mm today. We could manage if we got a dry blowy sunny day but we haven’t had a dry 24hrs in that time

Devil's advocate · Oct 31, 2023

crops around here mostly look well, apart from mine which is not sown.

farmerm · Oct 31, 2023

Think I’m just going to write off the lot and start again next September

Devil's advocate · Oct 31, 2023

farmerm said:
Think I’m just going to write off the lot and start again next September

why not Feb or March

Wombat · Oct 31, 2023

Devil's advocate said:
why not Feb or March

Unless it’s a very dry spring, feb and March are rarely options on heavy soil here

yellow belly · Oct 31, 2023

T Hectares said:
Not sure, there was more malting than the trade initially thought, germs in Laureate held on better than expected but whether there’s enough Cert seed crops around I don’t know.
A good year to home save if you can !

seed sold out i hear

Humble Village Farmer · Oct 31, 2023

yellow belly said:
Looking at the poll
40% have more than 20%. Say average 30% of area
60% less than 20 % say 10% of area
rough average 18 %

the estimated area of wheat for 2024 was 1.75 million ha so 300 thousand acres less
so total wheat area 1.45 million ha
at average 8 TPer ha 11.6 million tonnes max
or 7 t per ha 10.15 million tonnes

with this years harvest likely to leave no carryover the uk will have a big import need
in 2020 we had a low harvest but 2019 was very big and still imported record amounts

Thanks for that. It's the kind of info a decent levy board would keep us informed with, but they seem to have preferred media that costs.

teslacoils · Oct 31, 2023

There will be a sizeable area with sub optimum weed control that will be binned in spring as well.

Humble Village Farmer · Oct 31, 2023

Reading this thread just about sums up this year for me. I've lost count of the number of disasters we've had. It's seriously depressing, when as @Two Tone says you have tried your hardest.

I sometimes remind myself that farming was all I ever wanted to do and I'm lucky enough to have found a way to do it - a problem so many people would give their right arm for.

But I notice wheat is down another £4 a tonne today so who cares if we haven't risked our whole life savings this year?

teslacoils · Oct 31, 2023

Its a long time to go until may for wheat prices. I do wonder what area of rye etc for AD didn't go in on heavy land in lincs.

Could easily be squeeky bum time for those forward sold for next year watching harvest 24 futures rise at the same rate as river levels.

T Hectares · Oct 31, 2023

yellow belly said:
seed sold out i hear

Some merchants have, my buying group still has seed but are worried about what else they may have to cover
I have plenty of Laureate in the shed !

What % of winter crops not planted or destroyed

What % of winter crops not planted or destroyed

Less than 2%

Between 2 and 5%

Between 5 and 10%

Between 10 and 20%

More then 20%

More than 35%

More than 50%

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0 %

Up to 25%

25-50%

50-75%

75-100%

100% I’ve had enough of farming!

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