AB7: Wholecrop Cereals - herbicide restrictions

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
We're in a CS agreement this year forward. One of the options I reluctantly agreed to was the wholecrop option. It didn't seem that difficult to comply really but I didn't fully investigate the rules. There are only 5 active ingredients allowed with AB7. The fields we've put in as AB7 fields are spring barley.

Only one of these actives are what I would be liable to use as the other four seem to be grassweed sprays. Amidosulfuron is the only broadleaf active and looking at the Squire Ultra label it's only for grassland.

WTAF?!?
 
i use eagle for low imput cereals which is the same chemical protocol

i would have looked at whole crop cereal but you have to forage it
cannot combine and bale the straw acording to a writen answer from the rpa

if you whole crop the cereal it may be foraged early enough to to take all the weeds that eagle does not do well
 

Huno

Member
Arable Farmer
Eagle doesnt work very well but it all you have got!! Natural England quango invented CS to force everyone to BIO....
 

Huno

Member
Arable Farmer
That euro speak for organic which is a oxymoron stolen word from soil at 10% SOM... so last year darling🥰
 

glasshouse

Member
Location
lothians
We're in a CS agreement this year forward. One of the options I reluctantly agreed to was the wholecrop option. It didn't seem that difficult to comply really but I didn't fully investigate the rules. There are only 5 active ingredients allowed with AB7. The fields we've put in as AB7 fields are spring barley.

Only one of these actives are what I would be liable to use as the other four seem to be grassweed sprays. Amidosulfuron is the only broadleaf active and looking at the Squire Ultra label it's only for grassland.

WTAF?!?
Why do rpa encourage wholecrop
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
We're in a CS agreement this year forward. One of the options I reluctantly agreed to was the wholecrop option. It didn't seem that difficult to comply really but I didn't fully investigate the rules. There are only 5 active ingredients allowed with AB7. The fields we've put in as AB7 fields are spring barley.

Only one of these actives are what I would be liable to use as the other four seem to be grassweed sprays. Amidosulfuron is the only broadleaf active and looking at the Squire Ultra label it's only for grassland.

WTAF?!?
WTAF didn't you read what you signed up to? No such thing as a free lunch!
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Since when is any crop, particularly wholecrop, considered very low input? I had people growing wholecrop that would rival any wheat crop locally for bulk and grain yield, only it went up a forager and not a combine.
Because this is spring down for starters. And they have given the options for controlling the "worst" weeds IE cleavers and wild oats. In return you get a wodge of money.
 
Because this is spring down for starters. And they have given the options for controlling the "worst" weeds IE cleavers and wild oats. In return you get a wodge of money.

Anyone who takes the view that wholecrop is a very low input crop isn't really on the same page as me. Grown well, wholecrop cleans up the land and produces a crop that is comparable to maize. The idea of people planting some cuckoo corn, calling it wholecrop and harvesting 15t/acre in July is absurd to me. If all I had was some pishing eagle to spray on it it wouldn't be worth growing around here.
 
Hmm. We grow big crops of spring barley with little to no herbicide.

You are on land that has seen successive arable crops for decades and on which has had stacks of residual chemistry or atlantis or both to the tune of kilo after kilo of active ingredient. Come down here and I'll show you land that has been reclaimed from rushes, sedges, gorse, marestail, buttercup as high as your waist etc.

I'm surprised arable farmers have any weeds left.
 

DaveGrohl

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cumbria
Anyone who takes the view that wholecrop is a very low input crop isn't really on the same page as me. Grown well, wholecrop cleans up the land and produces a crop that is comparable to maize. The idea of people planting some cuckoo corn, calling it wholecrop and harvesting 15t/acre in July is absurd to me. If all I had was some pishing eagle to spray on it it wouldn't be worth growing around here.
You can get away with a lower spray cost (certainly 1 less fungicide) but everything else is the same. Cost of harvest is higher than combining though so it depends what is meant by "low input". If it’s g of active ingredient then yes, but if it’s burning of fossil fuels then the opposite is true currently. Hence my flippant question above about what exactly the RPA think they "want to encourage". They’re clearly not encouraging the reduction of climate change for example. But then again, I’d be making the wholecrop regardless……
 
You can get away with a lower spray cost (certainly 1 less fungicide) but everything else is the same. Cost of harvest is higher than combining though so it depends what is meant by "low input". If it’s g of active ingredient then yes, but if it’s burning of fossil fuels then the opposite is true currently. Hence my flippant question above about what exactly the RPA think they "want to encourage". They’re clearly not encouraging the reduction of climate change for example. But then again, I’d be making the wholecrop regardless……

I'm not sure how they are determining it is low input. However, I would normally grow wholecrop with zero P and K (comes from animals instead), ploughing and combi drilling (but not always), maybe some pre-em herbicide, it would depend, about 50 units of nitrogen and probably 2,3 or 4 passes with the sprayer depending on the crop. Spring barley probably a 2 pass wonder but it would not just be a little bit of eagle which would be as much use as a bucket of pish in a housefire on much of the land around here. We used to use wholecrop as a pioneer crop a lot and use it to sort land out before putting it back into decent grass leys.
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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