What place cash crop diversity in an SFI world?

[Roger Vickers]

Lesser grown crops such as peas, beans, other pulses, linseed borage, and others ( dare I now say Oilseed rape ?) are all flowering crops with a valuable place in the crop rotation. A crop rotation, which in general needs to be widened in order to create a more ecologically diverse, soil enriching sustainable cropping system.
At the same time we are told that for the purposes of food security, we need to produce as much food as possible from what used to be referred to as a system of 'sustainable intensification' (although I don't hear much of that terminology these days). The challenge therefore - to balance the two ( it is always about balance).
Most farmers I hear from are keen to produce a crop and to do it to the best of their ability, but obviously need their crops to be financially viable - for any rotation not only to be diverse and ecologically sound, but economically beneficial. The supply chain supporting UK farmers needs continuity of grown product to sustain itself, invest and expand.

The NCS project is striving to help reduce the UK farmer carbon footprint by driving down nitrogen fertiliser use through investment in increased pulse crop production and the subsequent displacement of imported Soya.

My question is whether the current SFI options are likely to lead to downward pressure on the lesser grown crops, in favour of non-crop options supported by government payment schemes, thereby reducing variety and volume in production. If so, is this likely to create a farming industry more reliant on the continuity of government payments and less resilient in its own right, and to reduce investment and commitment by the supply chain in UK agriculture?

What do you think? Will the current suite of SFI options result in more or less pulse crop production on your farm? Will you achieve more or less cash crop diversification? Or will you simply use the SFI options to take out lesser productive ground and maximise the crop on the remained with a solid, diverse crop rotation ?

 

[DrWazzock]

I can’t speak for others but OSR and beans will be replaced by SFI CNUM3 here due to a couple of disastrous years due to loss of neonic seed dressings in OSR and important actives for weed control and fungi control in beans.
If my experience is reflected nationally we will see a collapse in homegrown oilseed and protein production. I predicted this from the start.
Why on Earth there isn’t a subsidy for homegrown oilseeds and protein crops, I’ll never know. Such a subsidy would help with the risk and level the playing field that make us uncompetitive with the imports that still use those same actives banned here.
Fairly obvious isn’t it?
Of course there’ll be heroes who tell us their OSR is fine and yielding 2t per acre. Well so does ours some years but this year we got 2t off 25 acres due to insect damage. That’s a risk that’s no longer worth taking. We need a stable sustainable lower risk breakcrop and that’s now CHUM3. legume fallow.

 

[DrWazzock]

PS Last crop of spring beans we grew was harvested summer 23 and yielded 1 t per acre due to drought. Didn’t cover costs. Without something like the old protein payment we just can’t take the risk anymore. It’s all very well starting out with optimism and talking these crops up but when I’ve left high and dry two years in row, I really do start to lose interest. DEFRA needs to take note or we soon won’t have a homegrown oilseeds or protein industry at all.

 

[Roger Vickers]

I can’t speak for others but OSR and beans will be replaced by SFI CNUM3 here due to a couple of disastrous years due to loss of neonic seed dressings in OSR and important actives for weed control and fungi control in beans.
If my experience is reflected nationally we will see a collapse in homegrown oilseed and protein production. I predicted this from the start.
Why on Earth there isn’t a subsidy for homegrown oilseeds and protein crops, I’ll never know. Such a subsidy would help with the risk and level the playing field that make us uncompetitive with the imports that still use those same actives banned here.
Fairly obvious isn’t it?
Of course there’ll be heroes who tell us their OSR is fine and yielding 2t per acre. Well so does ours some years but this year we got 2t off 25 acres due to insect damage. That’s a risk that’s no longer worth taking. We need a stable sustainable lower risk breakcrop and that’s now CHUM3. legume fallow.

What level of support would persuade you that your perceived risk were satisfied and how would you go about setting that level?

 

[DrWazzock]

What level of support would persuade you that your perceived risk were satisfied and how would you go about setting that level?

BPS at £80 an acre over the whole arable area worked quite well. We felt we could risk beans at that level of support. It was a value arrived at by evolution rather than setting a level. When we had £80 an acre over the whole farm you felt you could afford a few higher risk Cinderella crops in mix for the benefits they brought to the rotation.
Treating the crop as standalone entity it’s difficult to say what level of support would encourage me to grow them again. Maybe 50% of variable costs to help level the playing field with non assured imports that aren’t grown to our standards, with actives banned here and at less cost. At the end of the day we are running businesses that need to make a profit. We can’t just carry on regardiess without support in the face of cheaper non assured imports. That’s just commercial suicide.