Growing OSR every other year

[MikeNeaverson]

Evening all. I mentioned this on another thread but I wonder whether it deserves further thought.

This year I have written off 85% of the OSR I look after due to a combination of flea beetle and poor establishment. I’m not alone in this area and for the first time in 30 years, I don’t think we will bother to drill OSR this summer having tried just about every cultural and chemical approach we can think of over the past few years with no reliable positive outcome.

What we really need to do in my opinion is break the pest cycle and one way to do this would be to only grow OSR as a country or region every other year.

Do you think there would be an appetite for this amongst growers? I for one would rather grow a larger area of reliable crop every second year than waste my time annually persevering with a poor crop of the bloody stuff.

Would farmers be prepared to co-operate in this way?

 

[SilliamWhale]

I think you'd run down a dead end pretty quickly

 

[Brisel]

I think you'd run down a dead end pretty quickly

Sadly, I agree with this. Farmers won't even work together for market power & have jumped ship for a couple of pence more. History bears the tales of most sectors where this has been tried and failed.

 

[Gong Farmer]

Good idea but it would need legislation to make it happen.

 

[David.]

The fear of missing out; if nobody is growing any, I will double up...

 

[Hampton]

I am not going to drop it, but I am not going to grow it in the farm rotation, more individual field rotation.
The fields were it is currently on average just under 1.5t/ac. These will do about 0.75t/ac this year.
One of the fields it is due to go on next year averages over 2t/ac. I will risk it on that one, but not others.

 

[yellow belly]

we stopped growing it in the mid 90s due to low prices and fleabeetle
we had grown wheat rape since the late 80s

now not growing any as it fails too often

will go back to it when I see none for 10 miles

farmers will never get together to do this
but a good plan would be to split the country into 4 regions and grow rape in only 1 each year

farmers who have big blocks 500 acres or more have some rape in some fields round here but those with smaller 100 acres or less blocks have none

 

[DanniAgro]

The last two years OSR has mostly failed on my farm, partly due to the beetle but also, especially this year, seems to have failed to emerge altogether. I was looking at photos of one field that was planted 20 years ago and had marvellous emergence, probably too thick, but this year has whole areas empty of plants.
The crop seems to be much more tender now, with no strength, despite all the hybrids supposedly haveing this wonderful vigour that sees it thrusting out of the ground in the autumn.
In the past yields of 1 1/2 t per acre were regularly grown, but now it seems to be all over the place, with possibly the lack of emergence being the final straw.
The only trouble is there is no alternative on heavy ground.

 

[MikeNeaverson]

Fundamentally we’re not really competing with our neighbours growing OSR; we’re a small fish in a large global commodity market.

I agree that it wouldn’t work if it was a voluntary approach, but why not make it compulsory? The OSR area must have dropped by 90% in this area, substituted by other significantly less profitable break crops. Surely there’s interest as an industry to make something like this work?

 

[teslacoils]

Have made a lot of money from osr. But started going down the bog when fortrol went. Then treflan. Last year was the icing on the cake when a lovely, even block yielded 0.8t an acre. Now a waste of time for me. Won't grow it again.