Sugar beet price 2020

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
Not really unless you've got a big area of spring combinables. For most growers it's only a small % of the farm anyway. For me the biggest pain was washing SUs out of the sprayer before going onto beet. Oh, and the soil destruction when lifting late & wet then having to do remedial subsoiling after a mediocre late sown wheat crop. Am I selling it well enough here? :D
Spraying a fifth of my farm every week certainly does clash with my cereal spraying and fert workload. Probably an opportunity to spray less and use more expensive beet herbicides but the virus yellows situation isn’t going to help reduce sprayer passes.
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
It was later than that last year IIRC. BS want to leave it until after the window for sowing osr instead has passed as that's the main threat to their beet area for margin, then they are only competing with oats, beans & other spring breaks. :cautious:

Given how many of us are dropping osr, then that plan may not work. They just sit in the bs office, smiling and saying "remember Peterborough" when growers and nfu essentially rid them of half the growers and left only the hyper efficient and those who's "grandad first grew it in 1930" brigade who are happy farming just for the fun.

£17 a ton? That's funny. Just all stop. It will cost bs more to lay off the staff and cleanup the factories than paying you a few £ more.
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
Given how many of us are dropping osr, then that plan may not work. They just sit in the bs office, smiling and saying "remember Peterborough" when growers and nfu essentially rid them of half the growers and left only the hyper efficient and those who's "grandad first grew it in 1930" brigade who are happy farming just for the fun.

£17 a ton? That's funny. Just all stop. It will cost bs more to lay off the staff and cleanup the factories than paying you a few £ more.
Like you have said before it’s hard to stop something when you have rent to pay. Luckily most of us will have a good proportion on the 3 year 22.50 deal. But again as you say it would cost BS to stop as well.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Spraying a fifth of my farm every week certainly does clash with my cereal spraying and fert workload. Probably an opportunity to spray less and use more expensive beet herbicides but the virus yellows situation isn’t going to help reduce sprayer passes.

Fair enough. So, if you didn't grow beet at £17, what else would you do that made money and didn't affect your workload as much? More of your other crops/break crops?
 

teslacoils

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lincolnshire
For those who have contracts at £22.5o, can you sell those back to British sugar for a fiver a ton now, or have another grower sell you their c beet for £18 a ton and take a profit now?
 

farmerfred86

Member
BASIS
Location
Suffolk
The price is one thing. The loss of neo-nics is serious though and means it’s unlikley to be viable below £20.
Look at OSR - it’s taken growers a few years but this year has been the last straw for a huge majority. Feels like beet could go the same way.
It’s actually the global sugar issue that is dictating this... not domestic.
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
upload_2019-5-6_18-18-38.png

https://www.macrotrends.net/2537/sugar-prices-historical-chart-data
 

Brisel

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Midlands
Whatever you like. Perhaps I shouldn't be promoting any kind of sympathy for BS!

Only that world sugar prices are down even adjusting for the weaker £
upload_2019-5-7_10-27-36.png
 

alomy75

Member
The price won’t be known internally yet. Usually just before Cereals. If the surplus price is 15 I can’t see the actual price being 17
 

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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