Early harvest

db9go

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Buckinghamshire
ears out and dying off in big patches now - if this keeps up we will harvest wheat in June

no hope of averaging 1t/ac now - it’s buggered

in some cases the next big management decision will be what to bother combining
Hello Clive is it that bad is it winter or spring crops do you have any photos of the bad patches
Is it light ground
Please
 

thorpe

Member
we are in unheard if territories already - my father says it’s worse than 76 was here already on many ways
i dont think we are yet but soon could be. 76 was awful will always remember neighbor took 5 lorry loads of store cattle to grass keep came home on 3 loads.
 

7610 super q

Never Forgotten
Honorary Member
Still quite wet up till mid June in 1976 according to my late father.

Anyhoo, what would folks charge per acre for standing whole crop wheat / barley ?
 

Chickcatcher

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
SG9
Ok memory here North Herts south side of the Chilterns.
1974 had a very wet autumn with the wet carrying through here to the 2nd of June when it snowed from then on we had very little rain until September 76. 75 harvest although very dry had water till June and the root system needed it after the wet winter. 76 winter crop had the benefit of being dry all the way through from seeding so what roots there went deep Spring crops 76 a different kettle of fish.
 

DeeGee

Member
Location
North East Wales
I well remember feeding small hay bales to dairy cows on completely bare grassland in the summer of 76. This followed on from another dry year in 1975.

In the autumn of 76 when home from college, I was delivering 56lb (25kg) bags of home grown spuds in my Mini van to customers in our village for £5 a bag, or £200 a ton in those days.

So multiply that by about ten? times, and you get an idea of how expensive spuds were in 1975 and 76. I was at Harper Adams in those days, and almost every farm in Shropshire was buying new tractors and combines etc. so hence a plethora of ‘R’ and ‘S’ regd. machines such as Massey 590s and Ford 5000s etc in the mid seventies.

Potatoes made an absolute fortune for many many farmers in the those years. Even here in the Vale of Clwyd many were so awash with cash that they honestly did not know on what to spend it.
We only grew two acres so it wasn’t a problem for us, but I think I bought some brand new remoulds for the van.

Don’t think those days will ever return, irrigation systems have largely seen to that.

I don’t remember how dry it was in the spring of 76, but the summer was probably the driest on record.
 

David.

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
J11 M40
I wonder if matters are made worse than '76 by the amount of up front spending to be recovered from crops today.
All my Gramp would have been in for in '76 would have been some uncleaned fss, 2cwt/ac of 0.24.24 down the spout,. 2cwt/ac of Nitro Chalk and a squirt of Cornox in Spring. Gate shut.
No machinery finance, FBT rent, job done.
Money went further it seems to me.
 
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Jo28

Member
Location
East Yorks
crops are absolutely knackered here. we had around 650mm in 5 months until the beginning of march. since the 7th march we have had around 10mm in the odd 1mm burst. some of the little amount of crops we have will not make it to harvest, some were written off in 3 weeks ago. reckon we will harvest 10% of the area of wheat we had last year. next year is going to be a real struggle.
 

E_B

Member
Location
Norfolk
20200526_182818.jpg
 
if you got 23mm of rain in june of 76 and it was wet up until then it couldnt have been as bad as this year, ive only 2mm of rain forecast for june and grounds bone dry just now, crops looking well just now but as the hot forecast june progresses they will start to suffer quickly, every field got a hammering of muck so that may be their only saving time will tell i wouldnt bet on it
 

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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