Chopping or dropping

Mr Tree

Member
Location
Sth Yorkshire
Morning All,

Barley harvest getting close! Going to drop and sell the straw.

Wheat ? What value should it be to sell or is it better to chop ?

Who’s doing what and for what reasons?

cheers
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
Chopped barley straw is absolute filth. Especially if it gets rained on.

Wheat is fine. I will be trailing what is needed for a muck for straw swap, and then clearing the field. The rest will be chopped. Dad will chop all his including the spring barley.

Main reasons are putting something back into the soil, and the annoyance at waiting ages for fields to be cleared when we could be cracking on.
 

Mark C

Member
Location
Bedfordshire
Personally I think the extra fuel burnt and extra N required to break down the straw offsets the increase in P and K price.

The remainder is supply and demand driven

Lots and lots of untouched stacks in the east as yields of straw last year were high and people baled more off the back of the shortage in 2020.

Add in drop in demand due to a heck of a lot of people culling cows that perhaps they wouldn't have due to the cost of feeding them and the very strong cull price.

Snetterton power station is going to be offline until at least the spring due to a catastrophic failure, releasing lot of straw onto the market. I know of a couple of people able to fulfil 2022/23 contracts with 2021 straw and not having to take the baler out of the shed

It's going to need to be less money than last year but will be down to location. Not sure how some people can pay more for straw, pay more to bale it and shift it to get the same price per tonne as last year.
 

Jo28

Member
Location
East Yorks
Personally I think the extra fuel burnt and extra N required to break down the straw offsets the increase in P and K price.

The remainder is supply and demand driven

Lots and lots of untouched stacks in the east as yields of straw last year were high and people baled more off the back of the shortage in 2020.

Add in drop in demand due to a heck of a lot of people culling cows that perhaps they wouldn't have due to the cost of feeding them and the very strong cull price.

Snetterton power station is going to be offline until at least the spring due to a catastrophic failure, releasing lot of straw onto the market. I know of a couple of people able to fulfil 2022/23 contracts with 2021 straw and not having to take the baler out of the shed

It's going to need to be less money than last year but will be down to location. Not sure how some people can pay more for straw, pay more to bale it and shift it to get the same price per tonne as last year.
totally disagree with your first statement in a normal year never mind with the price of p and k at the moment. You have also missed the major positive of chopping that there is no paddling from balers or waiting and no spreading of blackgrass from balers.
 

AndrewM

Member
BASIS
Location
Devon
Wheat here only averaged £70 acre in last sale, down from 110 last year.
My calculations are it removes £20 acre of p+k at current prices. With diesel at £1.2+/l baling costs are going to be high. Surely a year to chop straw if your out east.
 

zero

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Yorkshire coast
Chop as much as you can. That way it doesn't matter if it starts raining before the compaction causing baler arrives and you don't have to worry about loader tractors and trailers on skinny tyres paddling ground.
 
Is P&K fertiliser going to be available and at what price?. If limited supplies are available it could be unaffordable at possibly £1000 a ton so I am told. A good crop of barley straw removed can take £125.00 hct. worth of potential nutrients off. This has to be replaced and so straw needs to be a minimum of £130.00 a hectare even taking into consideration the extra N needed to aid breakdown. We have been bid £100.00 a hectare but obviously turned it down. On the flip side of this I am mindful that the livestock producers are having a hard time at the moment and need constantly to examine their costs as we do and we all need an across the board price reset to give us some stability.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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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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