Exfarmer
Member
- Location
- Bury St Edmunds
I have seen two tracked machines on the front of a bulker being towed across a field, but at least they are being grown for human consumption
Is It Time To Ban Maize
- Thread starter Lazy Sod
- Start date
- Location
- Sedgefield
Why not ban all food production in the UK
Let all the land go to scrub and thistles
Take the environmental payments
Import all the food
Every farmer has a veg patch, house cow or goat and a few hens and a pig or two
We could then feed ourselves and our families when the imported food became scarce or too expensive to import
Let all the land go to scrub and thistles
Take the environmental payments
Import all the food
Every farmer has a veg patch, house cow or goat and a few hens and a pig or two
We could then feed ourselves and our families when the imported food became scarce or too expensive to import
wanton dwarf
Member
I was thinking the same thing.
Why is it some people haven't realised the %age of food supply we farmers create keeps going down.
Stop allowing others to use Divide & Conquer tactics .. unite and disrupt their lives at every opportunity you can .. return the favour, get friends and family to help.
Literally we are all in it together, don't let them pick us off .. support Livestock farmers, in fact support ALL farmers.
The crop isn't the problem as such. The harvesting date & aftermath are. Make it compulsory to at least rough cultivate the field with a chisel plough, but also make it compulsory to try & establish a cover crop e.g. wheat afterwards. Of course in extremis the grower is not unreasonably going to say "I couldn't get the contractor in time" or "it has rained every day since." As above, much of the soil erosion is on the steepest slopes - perhaps a ban on sowing on steep gradients without extensive measures taken to minimise run off? Early maturing varieties might sacrifice a bit of yield but losing tonnes of your best topsoil will cost you more, especially if it jeopardises any payments you might get.
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holywell farmer
Member
- Location
- holywell, north wales
Ad plants would go bust
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
We grew it from around 1985 until last year and only made a mess twice. We are in the dry South East though and always used early varieties. For many years we harvested it ourselves with a drag chopper behind a JD2140 into 8 ton trailers.
Now it's area has exploded to serve AD units around here who grow 10,000 acres plus per year and use the biggest kit going. No wonder they are always finishing it off in bad weather and leaving fields looking loke the Somme.
Now it's area has exploded to serve AD units around here who grow 10,000 acres plus per year and use the biggest kit going. No wonder they are always finishing it off in bad weather and leaving fields looking loke the Somme.
Wilberforce
Member
- Location
- North Shropshire
Many round here don't use any maize at all.
- Location
- Glen Clova, Angus, DD8 4RD
No, they'd just be forced to downsize to that required to cope with the waste feed stream available, a good thing imho.
Lazy Sod
Member
- Location
- Warminster Wiltshire
I really don't want to depress you chaps, I just posed the question because I think that some people need to think about what they are doing.
I had a 150 cow dairy herd up to when I went out of milk in 1984. Although some maize was being grown in the locality, I never fancied it because of the prospect of a late harvest. As I grew up and joined my father on the farm in 1961, the only arable crops grown here abouts were cereals. My first experience of an awfully wet harvest was in 1965, when we finished on October the 5th, after that the latest cereal date was September the 13th. I only cut later when I dabbled with linseed and beans and those were towards the end of September, when we should have been drilling. As you can see I have an aversion to late harvesting.
We all know that our greatest asset on our farms is the soil. We do ourselves no favours if we trash it, and are seen to be doing it.
I had a 150 cow dairy herd up to when I went out of milk in 1984. Although some maize was being grown in the locality, I never fancied it because of the prospect of a late harvest. As I grew up and joined my father on the farm in 1961, the only arable crops grown here abouts were cereals. My first experience of an awfully wet harvest was in 1965, when we finished on October the 5th, after that the latest cereal date was September the 13th. I only cut later when I dabbled with linseed and beans and those were towards the end of September, when we should have been drilling. As you can see I have an aversion to late harvesting.
We all know that our greatest asset on our farms is the soil. We do ourselves no favours if we trash it, and are seen to be doing it.
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ollie989898
Member
It doesn't work and the grass won't grow for fudge under a maize crop. It won't represent a real grass crop anyway come October so it will have fudge all bearing in protecting the soil or stopping run off etc by that point unfortunately.
I think more emphasis should be put on wholecrop, rye and the like for AD in all honesty.
who said grass ?
ollie989898
Member
What else then? Maize won't stick the competition and underneath that canopy in a hot July is not a very nice place for other plants to be.
ollie989898
Member
Your second photo illustrates my point exactly- what exactly does that scattering of grass achieve? That level of biomass is not going to intercept heavy rainfall.
- Location
- Ceredigion
What then
It's still a lot better than bare earth & will help knit the topsoil together.
Devon James
Member
- Location
- Devon
In the age of GPS why the need to cultivate the whole area of the field increasing the risk of erosion from an April thunder storm or a late harvest, when cultivation could be retricted to the row width, be that 75 or 50 cm?
- Location
- Shropshire
Early maize varieties can easily avoid that window. Only a few percent yield penalty too