- Location
- Owaka, New Zealand
I'm not really a big fan of it to be honest, too much yield to be good for the land and it's natural carrying capacity down here.
Animals need to have space in my opinion, and some of the damage is just criminal really.
Hard to double crop beet and then get structure back with steel, that's for sure!! it is certainly falling out of favour and people are returning in their droves to HT brassica varieties for outwintering. I have about 80ha of brassica to drill this year around the place.
They had issues with the HT swedes killing cows but seem to have got past that now.
Clubroot and wild turnip are problems but not so much with the cleancrop HT varieties. That was the main swinger to beet for most farmers.
And the massive yields, but unfortunately if you have a 450kg beast allowed 2 square metres per day... she's only going to go one way when it gets wet!
Funny how farming goes in cycles.
But to answer your question, haven't heard of violet disease, but it definitely fouls the ground. Takes years in grass and much work (and N) to get it properly producing again. The beet ground I'm ripping up is properly fudged.
Animals need to have space in my opinion, and some of the damage is just criminal really.
Hard to double crop beet and then get structure back with steel, that's for sure!! it is certainly falling out of favour and people are returning in their droves to HT brassica varieties for outwintering. I have about 80ha of brassica to drill this year around the place.
They had issues with the HT swedes killing cows but seem to have got past that now.
Clubroot and wild turnip are problems but not so much with the cleancrop HT varieties. That was the main swinger to beet for most farmers.
And the massive yields, but unfortunately if you have a 450kg beast allowed 2 square metres per day... she's only going to go one way when it gets wet!
Funny how farming goes in cycles.
But to answer your question, haven't heard of violet disease, but it definitely fouls the ground. Takes years in grass and much work (and N) to get it properly producing again. The beet ground I'm ripping up is properly fudged.