Oilseed Rape Winter Wheat Major Threat from Water Controlling Weeds with Framework Directive a Limited Spray Armoury Profitable Crops Through Better Management
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Crop Production Magazine August 2009 Page 20 Page 6 Oilseed rape Winter wheat Major threat from Water Controlling weeds with Framework Directive a limited spray armoury Profitable crops through better management Volume 11 Number 7 August 2009 30 Cover picture © Rory McKirdy Features Publishing Editor Angus McKirdy Features Sub Editor Charlotte Lord Writers Charles Abel 4 Smith’s Soapbox 48 Cashing in on poultry Rob Jones Jo Palmer Views and opinions from an Essex manure Martin Rickatson peasant….. With base fertiliser prices still sky Mick Roberts high, one West Midlands egg producer Design and Production Brooks Design is capitalising by selling muck to 14 Giving OSR the neighbouring farms. Advertisement Sales Angus McKirdy upper-hand Advertisement Co-ordinator Peter Walker What lessons can OSR growers learn from last year’s disastrous autumn CPM Crop Production Magazine establishment programme? CPM Editorial & Advertising Sales provides some answers. 6 Fighting the age-old White House Barn, Hanwood, Shrewsbury, enemy Shropshire. SY5 8LP 30 Evolving markets to Winter wheat growers were fortunate Tel: (01743) 861122 shape variety choice? to achieve good levels of blackgrass E-mail: [email protected] Winter wheat growers need to be aware control last year, say the experts. Reader Registration Hotline of some new market opportunities –– So with a late wet harvest, what 01728 622521 notably in the bioethanol sector –– if can be done to limit the pressure on Atlantis. Advertising Copy they’re to maximise their returns from Brooks Design, the crop next season. Scotts Mansion, 24 Claremont Hill, 20 Shrewsbury, Shropshire. SY1 1RD Severe threat to 36 Specialist grower OSR viability Tel: (01743) 244403 leaves nothing to Fax: (01743) 244365 Farmers are being encouraged to E-mail: [email protected] chance make an extra effort to safeguard the Spring barley may not be flavour of future of several key OSR pesticides the month on many farms at present this autumn –– without which the crop with malting barley prices on the floor. would be impossible to grow. But one light land farmer is still keen on growing the crop. 42 Barley’s popularity to wane? 24 Integrated control Which crop will find more favour next ‘a must’ season –– barley or second wheat? If metaldehyde’s future is to be secured, arable farmers need to carefully CPM Volume 11 No 7. Editorial, advertising and sales offices are at re-assess their slug control tactics White House Barn, Hanwood, Shrewsbury SY5 8LP. Tel: (01743) 861122. CPM is published nine times a year by this autumn. CPM Ltd and is available free of charge to qualifying farmers and farm managers in the United Kingdom. In no way does CPM Ltd endorse, notarise or concur with any of the advice, recommendations or prescriptions reported in the magazine. If you are unsure about which recommendations to follow, please consult a professional agronomist. Always read the 36 label. Use pesticides safely. CPM Ltd is not responsible for loss or 54 Yellow rust –– warning. damage to any unsolicited material, including photographs. Crop Production Magazine –– August 2009 3 the RPA that I need to make them more ‘50s into 100ha fields has since been obvious on the ground by using 75cm repatriated to its hundreds of owners. diameter white-topped stakes, or large Here, as far as I could see, there were SMITH’S stones, as boundary markers. I did no visible markers –– and the farm wonder if the RPA realised what a large co-ops openly admit that they aren’t stone or stake could do to a combine quite sure where the actual boundaries concave but on contemplation, I thought lie. They just divvy things up as best they better of it and duly put them in. can where the historic claimant wants to Yet it strikes me that, if this is an issue re-occupy the land. in England, on the Continent things must One has to seriously wonder how the be a thousand times worse. Over vast English mapping system was found to be swathes of arable land in western unacceptable by the European court of Europe, it’s common to have featureless, auditors on the grounds that it could 10ha fields under multiple ownership potentially facilitate fraud. Answers on and farmed in 20m strips. The custom a postcard please. in places such as France and Germany SOAPBOX is to mark the boundaries with small stones at either side of the field. Quite how an inspector will sort that lot out is beyond me. The situation becomes even more challenging in Eastern Europe where Email your comments and ideas to Good fences make land that had been collectivised in the [email protected] good neighbours I gather that I’m not alone in having my market picks up to over £120/t, I can farm re-drawn by the Rural Payments Whither malting see very little point in growing malting Agency in their latest mapping exercise barley? barley. The trouble is, if I’m thinking but, nonetheless, I’ll happily bore you like that, then maybe everyone else is As autumn beckons, thoughts again with the details. as well? turn to next year’s cropping plans. But First, I was given my neighbour’s Are we all in a mood to over-react but with prices where they are right now, reservoir, which was a lovely gesture by in the opposite way to how we did last it’s a bit of a head-scratcher to decide the RPA because I’ve always coveted year to the point where so little will be which crops will generate the best that bit of water –– but I doubt my grown, it’ll be in short supply –– once gross margins –– and we seem to be neighbour and his solicitors will feel again causing a bull-run on the price? back to the old syndrome of wondering as free-and-easy with the property as So is the counter-intuitive decision whether we’d be much worse-off the RPA does. the one to take –– sticking with the growing nothing at all. Then having failed to pick up the crop in the hope that you’re not This assumes, of course, that we fenced road that delineated my field moving with the herd. But then again, could instantly rid ourselves of all our from the aforementioned neighbour’s maybe I’m not the only one thinking fixed costs as well as the variables, reservoir, the RPA then managed to like this..... and therein lies the rub. sub-divide a field by identifying an Having had a bit of a renaissance electric fence as a permanent boundary over the past five years, malting barley –– despite the fact that we’ve always looks like it could be heading back to submitted it as one single block. Cinderella status in gross margin terms. To cap it all, there was an old It certainly seems as if the wet back-end counter-wall drawn in out on the marsh last year, together with high fertiliser that hasn’t been there since the war. prices, pushed too many of us into So if, as they claim, the RPA have malting barley –– and consequently, used aerial photos to assemble these the job was over-cooked. new maps, one wonders if they were It hardly seems possible that the reconnaissance pictures taken by price has fallen from £170/t in June ‘08 the Luftwaffe? to £80/t in July ‘09. It’s anyone’s guess But despite all of my angst, I resisted where it might end up come next July. the Victor Meldrew tendencies within At the moment, there seem to be no me and duly corrected the mistakes and buyers out there for next year’s harvest sent them back –– but there remains and the best guess appears to be about some further work to do. It’s anyone’s guess where barley might the £100/t mark. For me, unless the A few of my field boundaries apparently end up come July 2010. aren’t substantial enough and I’m told by 4 Crop Production Magazine –– August 2009 WeedWeed controlcontrol Fighting the age-old enemy well controlled by the delayed With a depleted arsenal of herbicides and post-emergence sprays. ever-increasing resistance, growers must work A repeat of those circumstances is unlikely. “Conditions have been far harder to exploit cultural controls and optimise more favourable for weed seed ripening this summer,” says independent crop the use of existing chemistry. consultant, Peter Taylor of Essex-based Samco. “Weeds will be jumping out of By Charles Abel and Angus McKirdy the ground with the wheat, so growers really need to target bad blackgrass fields first and get in with their pre-em sprays as early as they can.” ifficult conditions for weed control ‘Atlantis is a very precious product last autumn may not have resulted High jump which needs to be protected.’ D in fields riddled with grassweeds But simply relying on herbicides is not this summer. But there are good reasons the whole picture, says James Clarke of why this has been the result, and with ADAS Boxworth. “Far from it. It’s a bit fewer herbicide options and resistance like a high jump competition with the levels rising, growers need to deploy bar rising each and every year, with every asset available to them as they resistance making it progressively wage war on weeds this autumn, harder to get high levels of control consultants advise. from herbicides alone.” What looked like a disaster for weed Cultural control needs exploiting to control last autumn –– with many pre-em ease the pressure on the remaining sprays being omitted and most post-ems herbicide options –– particularly those being applied in early spring –– has most vulnerable to herbicide resistance.