Flea Beetle 2019

[Two Tone]

Very little. The perks of osr and winter barley are consistency and early harvest. But awful insect damage, inconsistent BG control and bobbins barley price have knocked those.

Once you loose osr, you run the risk of serious cutting delays, and very limited stale seedbed times if they are a thing for you.

I've just about got grass breaks to pay. And by pay i mean make a return after rent and work.

A winter barley / winter linseed could work and pay. Harvest done by end July.

I use hybrid Winter Barley as a huge part of my Blackgrass control. The trouble is that so much Spring barley will now be planted this spring that its sale price will come under pressure.

However, there is a limit as to how far below the wheat price it can drop before it becomes viable for the feed millers to replace wheat with barley. Especially in a year where there is bugger all wheat planted for them to buy anyway.

 

[lloyd]

I use hybrid Winter Barley as a huge part of my Blackgrass control. The trouble is that so much Spring barley will now be planted this spring that its sale price will come under pressure.

However, there is a limit as to how far below the wheat price it can drop before it becomes viable for the feed millers to replace wheat with barley. Especially in a year where there is bugger all wheat planted for them to buy anyway.

It all depends on the ability for the feed millers to import cheap wheat.
At the moment this season's harvest is far enough away for them not
to panic but as harvest gets closer and if there are problems abroad
then you would think we'd see a 2 in front of the feed wheat price again.
In the case of the 2012 harvest when the big grain traders started importing ship loads
the price sunk quite dramatically.

 

[Two Tone]

It all depends on the ability for the feed millers to import cheap wheat.
At the moment this season's harvest is far enough away for them not
to panic but as harvest gets closer and if there are problems abroad
then you would think we'd see a 2 in front of the feed wheat price again.
In the case of the 2012 harvest when the big grain traders started importing ship loads
the price sunk quite dramatically.

The crazy thing is that even though the 2012 harvest was so crap, Frontier and their likes were actually exporting UK wheat from it up to Christmas, only to have to re-import far more back again to supply the mills through the first 8 months in 2013!

Why?
Because they saw a profit in being able to do so.

 

[lloyd]

Yes and they got far too good at it.
That is why we need prices to rise globally
as to dampen any enthusiasm for a repeat.