Spring Drilling

[Grain Buyer]

Walking over some winter stubbles at the weekend just got me to thinking about spring planting intentions. With prices at current levels, will you still be happy to plant more barley/wht/osr or will many just leave it fallow?

 

[Andrew K]

Already have a bit of fallow, will increase it unless i can contract a deal at a sensible price.Not sure i want to grow any kind of OSR!

 

[Flintstone]

Spring rape has never been viable, so why anyone would grow it with these prices is beyond me.

The world and his wife have gone down the Spring barley route, either to help with greening, BG control, or to help spread workloads after laying off 'Bill'.

Spring wheat isn't looking very sexy, and isn't the best thing to put in front of 2017 OSR from a timing point of view.

Beans - bonkers.

Therefore, those who plant Spring crops in any decent percentage of overall cropping are either:

A) Market speculators / risk takers.
B) Unaware of their COP, or quite how bad it is out there.
C) Trying to maximise their contract fee in a contract farming arrangement.
D) completely unable to mentally justify (or see the benefits of) having large areas uncropped for a whole year.
E) have got their COP down suitably low.

I will publically eat my keyboard if we see cereal and oilseed prices recover by any more than 10% between now and next December. The only way it'll happen is if something goes spectacularly wrong in the world, and the BBC news find other things to do/talk about rather than compiling memorial programmes for 60-something pop stars who've suddenly died.

I'm growing 20% spring barley though. Why? Manly because of E above, and partly A, in the event of a major world food issue.

As always, I will also have 10% bare fallow. You can keep your expensive bags of cover crop seed that do bugger all for the soil, and just increase the summer workload to allow farmers to feel they can be fashionable.

That's my contribution for the day anyway.

 

[Oat]

what is wrong with spring beans, they obviously don't work for you, but why?

 

[Iben]

Spring rape has never been viable, so why anyone would grow it with these prices is beyond me.

The world and his wife have gone down the Spring barley route, either to help with greening, BG control, or to help spread workloads after laying off 'Bill'.

Spring wheat isn't looking very sexy, and isn't the best thing to put in front of 2017 OSR from a timing point of view.

Beans - bonkers.

Therefore, those who plant Spring crops in any decent percentage of overall cropping are either:

A) Market speculators / risk takers.
B) Unaware of their COP, or quite how bad it is out there.
C) Trying to maximise their contract fee in a contract farming arrangement.
D) completely unable to mentally justify (or see the benefits of) having large areas uncropped for a whole year.
E) have got their COP down suitably low.

I will publically eat my keyboard if we see cereal and oilseed prices recover by any more than 10% between now and next December. The only way it'll happen is if something goes spectacularly wrong in the world, and the BBC news find other things to do/talk about rather than compiling memorial programmes for 60-something pop stars who've suddenly died.

I'm growing 20% spring barley though. Why? Manly because of E above, and partly A, in the event of a major world food issue.

As always, I will also have 10% bare fallow. You can keep your expensive bags of cover crop seed that do bugger all for the soil, and just increase the summer workload to allow farmers to feel they can be fashionable.

That's my contribution for the day anyway.

I have bookmarked this as I have never seen anyone eat a keyboard!

 

[MrNoo]

80% of our area will be SB this coming year, cheap and cheerful, may bale straw to pep up the income a tad but more than likely chop. A couple of bad BG fields (heavy clay) will prob get a Vetch/oat mix and be classed as fallow. But I also hope on a rise of prices, who knows what's around the corner, after all you can't sell it if you haven't grown it.

 

[Flintstone]

One could argue that you shouldn't grow it unless you've sold it!!

 

[franklin]

All spring crops to go in are already sold.

I have 75ac which was down for either a speculative spring crop, of which 40ac will now be fallowed and the other 35 will be put down to grass.

 

[pine_guy]

I run a mixed farm. We grow predominantly spring crop as we get a lot of pig slurry and FYM from a dairy farm over the winter months and goes on the stubbles in the spring, which cuts the fert bills. I under sew 20acre SB with grass last year for EFA. That mixed with another 12 acre this year will bring my total acreage below the requirement of EFA/greening. I'm feeding last years grain to try and make a margin over the sale price. can't tell you how well that goes for about a year when the cattle are fat. So I don't do fallow, I just grow some grass and then let cows and sheep eat it. Winter tak sheep paid for the grass seed on the 20 acre I put down last year. and I grazed my own lambs on it before that.

The winter grain that I do grow, gives me some early access to grow some stubble turnips.

So this year. 12acre WB, 48acre SB and 12 acre SB under sown with grass.

I know I am small in the arable world, but would be interesting if you guys would indicate the kind of area you are farming rather than or as well as a percentage.

 

[shakerator]

Therefore, those who plant Spring crops in any decent percentage of overall cropping are either:

A) Market speculators / risk takers.
B) Unaware of their COP, or quite how bad it is out there.
C) Trying to maximise their contract fee in a contract farming arrangement.
D) completely unable to mentally justify (or see the benefits of) having large areas uncropped for a whole year.
E) have got their COP down suitably low.

A) not really all contracts easily linked to liffe/ matif
B) im aware how COP is inflated for getting winter crops viable, many of these costs do not apply to spring
C) n/a
D) definitely
E) Cutting too much back i feel will cost a lot more to restart when we get a "reset" in the grain market through new information

spring crops have a lot more history behind them than winters in the history of uk crop production.

in my limited experience, planned spring crops greatly outperform unplanned, however- i would agree the last 4 springs have been very favourable for spring planting (even 2012 some excellent spring wheat/ bean results). The last poor spring crop years i remember are 2009 and 2010

 

[Feldspar]

Gary Markham from Churchgate Accountants gave a good presentation on cropping choices in difficult periods. His message backed up by numerical illustrations is that the last thing that you want to do is to fallow large areas of land. You can't just get rid of your fixed costs just like that and you can't just unpay any rent you might have paid for the ground you've got. Even with today's prices you're going to expect to make money after variable costs and so to not crop simply means you concentrate your fixed costs across your existing planted acreage.

We've got about 1/3 of the farm to go into spring cropping. Not intending to leave anything fallow unless conditions are terrible.

 

[farmer phil]

I have bookmarked this as I have never seen anyone eat a keyboard!

Can't think it would have a very high nutritional value.

 

[richard hammond]

Gary Markham from Churchgate Accountants gave a good presentation on cropping choices in difficult periods. His message backed up by numerical illustrations is that the last thing that you want to do is to fallow large areas of land. You can't just get rid of your fixed costs just like that and you can't just unpay any rent you might have paid for the ground you've got. Even with today's prices you're going to expect to make money after variable costs and so to not crop simply means you concentrate your fixed costs across your existing planted acreage.

We've got about 1/3 of the farm to go into spring cropping. Not intending to leave anything fallow unless conditions are terrible.

You are talking nothing but sense for most situations but one size does not fit all, there is the odd person who it may be better for them not to crop a given area.
I am happy this is best for them as it will be less crops grown so hopefully lessening the pressure on price for those that want to grow a spring crop!!

 

[phil the cat]

Spring rape has never been viable, so why anyone would grow it with these prices is beyond me.

The world and his wife have gone down the Spring barley route, either to help with greening, BG control, or to help spread workloads after laying off 'Bill'.

Spring wheat isn't looking very sexy, and isn't the best thing to put in front of 2017 OSR from a timing point of view.

Beans - bonkers.

Therefore, those who plant Spring crops in any decent percentage of overall cropping are either:

A) Market speculators / risk takers.
B) Unaware of their COP, or quite how bad it is out there.
C) Trying to maximise their contract fee in a contract farming arrangement.
D) completely unable to mentally justify (or see the benefits of) having large areas uncropped for a whole year.
E) have got their COP down suitably low.

I will publically eat my keyboard if we see cereal and oilseed prices recover by any more than 10% between now and next December. The only way it'll happen is if something goes spectacularly wrong in the world, and the BBC news find other things to do/talk about rather than compiling memorial programmes for 60-something pop stars who've suddenly died.

I'm growing 20% spring barley though. Why? Manly because of E above, and partly A, in the event of a major world food issue.

As always, I will also have 10% bare fallow. You can keep your expensive bags of cover crop seed that do bugger all for the soil, and just increase the summer workload to allow farmers to feel they can be fashionable.

That's my contribution for the day anyway.

Good post to get people talking!
We're aiming all our spring cropping at to a local bio digester due to open shortly. Wasn't a done deal until winter crops were in so going 90 acres maize, 40 Spring rye. Suppose this puts us in section a)? Grown maize for a few years and spreads the workload nicely (saves us having to take on 'bill' from you?) never grown Spring rye but hoping it will give us some early establishment options for osr or stubble turnips for sheep tack. Other option is miscanthus or willow i suppose but we had a bit of a rough time with that so won't be growing again!

 

[Shutesy]

You can keep your expensive bags of cover crop seed that do bugger all for the soil, and just increase the summer workload to allow farmers to feel they can be fashionable.

Why do you feel that cover crops do nothing for the soil?

 

[Iben]

Cut spring barley area in half, replaced with more spring oats and renting out more land for veg.

Maltsters are brimming full with barley set against falling sales for malt.

 

[richard hammond]

Cut spring barley area in half, replaced with more spring oats and renting out more land for veg.

Maltsters are brimming full with barley set against falling sales for malt.

Chinese and Japanese whisky market is failing , so this is not helping at all!
They cannot afford what they would like to buy!

 

[Hindsight]

Can't think it would have a very high nutritional value.

Played havoc with the dentures as well.

 

[Flintstone]

Shutesy, people seem to have become obsessed with cover crops at a time of year when they would be financially better off focusing on establishing their mainline crops. I know so many people who seemed to spend days trying to drill weird bunny-hugger mixes to help their worms, and then they drilled their rape on 12th Sept, and, quite frankly, it looks royally shoite.

Great, they've got plenty of happy on-tack sheep, and vetch up to their nipples, as well as being able to attend TAG days telling everyone how good they are at growing soil-improvers, but while the prices are where they are, I'll be bu66ered if I'm going to spend £100/ha on a crop that's going to create a wetter-than-normal Spring soil, and require me to buy slug pellets in April for the first time ever.

Sorry, but while a combination of COP, efficiency, and yield are what we should be concentrating on as a fraternity, the rainbow happy clappy mixes can stay on the shelf as far as I'm concerned.

If people want to guarantee to help their soil in these tricky times, they'd be better off getting pally with a chicken/pig farmer and whack some proper oomph back into it. Leave the experimenting with over-priced cover crop seed until wheat is back at £150, IMHO.

Perhaps I need to stop being so blunt, but there isn't half some kind of lemming-like uptake of fads these days, in lots of industries.

I'm in the job to grow food and make money, not to be some self-righteous fashion farmer. There are hundreds of ways to improve soil structure, but the farming media seem to have gone all dewy-eyed over cover crops as if they're some kind of silver bullet answer to all our problems.

They're not. Of that I am quite confident.

 

[RTK Farmer]

None taken.