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One of the first farmers to join YEN, Mark Means is running a number of on-farm trials focused on building a resilient crop that enhances yield at the end of the season. CPM visits to discuss this new approach. The trials are a step on and ask the next questions. By Tom Allen-Stevens Several dozen spray containers have been arranged neatly into groups and marked up as ‘jobs’. It’s a sign that, like everything else at The Laurels on Terrington Marsh in Norfolk, the spray season’s keen to get underway. Wheats are waking up as warmth gradually builds in the sodden Fen soils, although they still sit dank and heavy after the long, wet winter. The late start to spring has meant a few last-minute changes to the T0 battle lines – Mark Means adjusts the recommendation sheets and puts an extra litre of Tempo (trinexapac-ethyl) into every job group. “One thing I’m really conscious of is lodging,” he says. Conscious that lodging may be a problem in a late spring, Mark Means has applied “We haven’t had the root growth we’d usually expect over the winter, and there’s probably been a bit of root-pruning as a result of…
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060 "Tomorrow isn't a Given"

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Tonight I'm delighted to be travelling down to Wimborne in Dorset, in the south West of England, to talk to sheep farmer Gemma Harding @meandeweblog

We talk about the perception of sheep farming as cool at the moment, and how the reality can be very different, before hearing about her early life growing up on the family farm and how her initial love of sheep developed.

We discuss her time at University studying photography, and how she combined it with farming, before hearing about how a night out at an MTV party in Birmingham led ultimately to a job offer and an eventual role interviewing musicians and celebrities around the World.

We then hear in depth about the accident that happened to her in 2008, when she was knocked off her bike by a lorry in central London, and the horrendous injuries she sustained. She tells us about the operations she went through, and how through sheer determination she was out of hospital in just 5 weeks, and how her collie puppy and horse helped her through the long nights suffering with PTSD.

We hear about how she left London life and went back to the family business, before her Father's diagnosis with stage 4 cancer, and death just 9 months later. We discuss the difficulties she faced afterwards, dealing with it emotionally, but also with the farm, and how she had to learn to do many of the...

Written by cpm

With few agronomists prepared to rely on fluazinam for tuber blight control this season, a major reshuffle of the blight programme is on the cards. CPM looks at the options. Longer spray intervals will be something new for growers to consider. By Lucy de la Pasture New fungicides are almost as rare as hen’s teeth these day so the approval of Zorvec Enicade (oxathiapiprolin) has come at a fortuitous time, enabling a shake-up of blight strategies to release substitutes for the much-relied upon, but now failing, fluazinam. Zorvec’s arrival has been keenly anticipated by the potato industry having stood out in blight trials for a number of years. It gives growers the option of a truly systemic product for the first time in nearly two decades. And this year is already stacking up to be more difficult than most, believes Dr Reuben Morris, Frontier Agriculture’s potato crop production specialist. “It’s a late planting season due to the wet ground conditions, which means there’s a strong possibility that the first blight warnings will occur much earlier in the crop’s development than normal,” he says. Hutchinsons’ national root crop technical manager Darryl Shailes agrees. “During early season pressure,…
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Badger cull policing cost £800,000 in one county

Written by Steven Morris

Opponents of cull say cost of £1,000 per animal killed means it is wasteful as well as cruel

The cost of policing the controversial badger cull in just one of the 21 zones last autumn approached the £1m mark – the equivalent of more than £1,000 for every animal killed there.

Objectors to the cull described the bill for Cheshire as a horrendous waste of public money and called for the policy to be scrapped on economic as well as animal cruelty grounds.

Related: Country diary: concrete threat to badger lifted for now

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… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your...

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Few organisations worldwide have accrued as much knowledge as Fera on the living organisms in our environment. CPM visits its facility near York to find out how original thinking has been applied to cutting-edge R&D to enhance the services it offers growers. The potential to refine environmental risk assessments is huge. By Tom Allen-Stevens Just the name of this new structure suggests it is something of wonder. The E-Flows Mesocosm is taking shape in a clearing at the edge of the National Agri-Food Innovation Campus at Sand Hutton near York. It’s the latest development at the vast science facility that’s home to Fera. Here, around 350 of the country’s keenest minds in crop health and diagnostics are among those who analyse some 90,000 samples every year. Fera has a 100-year history as the government science agency for food, environment and agri-tech and is still 25% owned by Defra. In that time, it’s probably accrued more knowledge about the life in the nation’s soils, its crops and its food than any other UK entity. More recently, Fera’s quietly developed this into a range of diagnostic and analytical services that can offer UK growers a staggering insight into how their crop…
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There may be fewer exhibitors than last year, but the machinery lines at the UK’s largest arable event are set to impress. CPM rounds up the highlights. The three-model line features internals that represent a significant departure for the manufacturer’s European combine design. By Martin Rickatson Seven months after Agritechnica, Cereals 2018 provides the first opportunity for many to get up close to the glittering array of new product launches, tweaks and technological introductions manufacturers have brought on. The line-up of exhibitors may be reduced, but organisers argue the event remains the showcase for the UK arable industry, and from what they’re promising to present, there’s little doubt those manufacturers who’ll be there on the day will step up to the mark. Tractors Although it made its UK debut at LAMMA, the new 900 Vario MT tracked tractor range from AGCO’s Fendt division is likely to be among the biggest crowd-pullers at Cereals. While the larger 1100 MT models are, for now, simply reliveried versions of existing machines, the 900 Vario MT tractors are an all-new blend of Challenger tracklayer design and Fendt wheeled tractor technology, with models of 380, 405 and 431hp. A new cab is the…
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After a topsy-turvy spring that’s compromised some early fungicide timing, adequately protecting the flag leaf at T2 has never been more important. CPM canvasses some advice. There’s lots of septoria in crops, not surprising given how wet it’s been. By Lucy de la Pasture This spring has created a bit of a catch twenty-two situation. The cold, wet winter and a similar start to spring may have reduced some early disease pressure but it’s also made travel difficult in many areas, compromising early spray timings. Cutting back early sprays unnecessarily risks allowing disease to establish and could put later applied chemistry under extra pressure, says Hutchinsons’ technical development director, Dr David Ellerton. The difficulty in the field is that in many situations the T0 had to be abandoned because, at the correct timing, the sprayer wasn’t able to travel. It’s a position Herefords agronomist and AICC member David Lines found himself in, with only 16ha of his planned T0 sprays actually applied due to the tricky weather. In his region most winter wheat crops have achieved plenty of biomass, he says, with only some of the later-drillled fields looking less than well tillered. “Most of my wheat…
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UK farmers are spending too much on their farm machinery, says AHDB expert Harry Henderson.

Harry has been part of the team leading a Monitor Farm project to look at machinery and labour costs across the 21 farms of the scheme.

Although the reviews have found huge variation between farms, the key thing, says Harry, is that machinery costs are too high.

“There are growers using very high capacity machinery and not getting the return on expenditure in either reduced labour hours, costs or higher yields. Make no mistake; machinery is priced on the output it is capable of.

“The biggest cost element in growing a tonne of wheat is machinery, at between 25 and 30 per cent of the total spend. So it has the biggest potential for some serious pre-Brexit reviewing.”

Harry Henderson is AHDB’s Knowledge Exchange Manager for the East Midlands.

Annual machinery and labour costs ranged from £288 to £593/ha per hectare across the farms, which measured from 97 to 1,278 hectares.

Harry added: “Perhaps the surprising revelation is there is no correlation between farm sizes, meaning economies of scale are not being realised.”

Some of the smallest farm businesses also ran the lowest costs and a few of the larger units incurred the highest costs per hectare. This means the common idea that scale helps to spread costs does not always ring true.

“While wet springs and catchy...

Written by Jane

CPM readers got the chance to win a 12-year-old Dalmore Malt Whiskey in last month’s CPM Crops Cover by answering six short multiple-choice questions based on one of the articles from the April issue. We had some fantastic responses and the 12 lucky winners were; Marshall Wilson – Duns, Berwickshire Innes Jessiman – Bucksburn, Aberdeen Craig Peddie – Anstruther, Fife John Threlfell – Plumpton, Penrith Jim Carswell – Hutton, Near Driffield, East Yorkshire John Bennett – Prescot, Merseyside Phil Burrell – Louth, Lincolnshire Harvey Smith – Langtoft, Peterborough Donald Macaulay – Birch, Colchester, Essex David Lowe – Burscough, Lancs The correct answers from the competition are seen below; 1. Carfentrazon the active ingredient in Shark, is what type of herbicide? Answer B – PPO inhibitor 2. How quickly is Shark “rainfast” after application? Answer A – 1 hour 3. When mixed with glyphosate which key board leaved weed does Shark improve the activity on? Answer D – Annual Nettle 4. What is the maximum rate Shark can be used at? Answer C – 0.33 l/ha 5. When Shark is mixed with Glyphosate what ratio should be used to avoid any antagonism? Answer A – 1:50 6. When used alone what…
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