profitable long term rotation

[willy]

after 5 years of ww, osr rotation and thinking that it was invincible, it has well and truly come and bit me on the arse. for 1 we had verticilium wilt in the osr and 2 slug pressure has decimated much of the winter wheat,3 blackgrass was becoming a real test. but it has taught me a bloody good lesson.

Ater doing budgets based on a 5rop rotation i.e ww,s wheat,sbeans,ww, osr. i was actually suprised that profitability wasnt that bad. and we have higher than average overheads,as we bought the farm 3 years ago. admitadly we only average 3-3.5 tonnes wheat and so for me the short term loss in gross margin is made up by other potentential long term savings, and hopefully increased yields else where.

what im trying to say is that i feel dd helps to be able to spring crop otherwise non spring cropping land and this year is actually turning into a big learning curve but with potentially positive long term efffects. well thats the plan :roll:

does any one else agree or disagree or want to share any findings

 

[Feldspar]

One small comment on this. I went to one of the PGRO roadshows the other week and Ron Stobart from NIAB TAG gave a talk on rotations including beans.

He compared a WW/OSR rotation with a WW/WOSR/WW/Spring Beans rotation and concluded that there was no difference between the two. He included the decline in rape yields when grown in close rotation, the increase in yield of WW after beans compared to OSR and the difference in variable costs.

I was quite impressed by the rigour of his analysis and it certainly was more than a back of a fag packet calculation. The key thing he didn't price though was the value of having an overwinter period in which to grow cover crops. Depending on your viewpoint this could strongly tip the balance in favour of the longer rotation. Also add to this the spread in workload allowing for a reduction in machinery and I think it's not a stupid idea at all (I know you were talking about spring wheat as well).

The question about spring beans and osr being affected by the same strain of sclerotinia was raised but the PGRO people said that they had never had a problem with sclerotinia in spring beans.

I think this is rotation that I would favour for the moment. Hopefully in a favourable year there could be a cover in between WOSR and WW.