In this issue... Those in the know page 8 Robotic route page 64 Ideas for changing times from Cereals 14 pages of next-gen tech Remedies for rapeseed page 20 Sugar beet disease page 100 Opinion 4 Talking Tilth - A word from the editor. Volume 21 Number 7 6 Smith’s Soapbox - Views and opinions from an Essex peasant….. July 2019 92 Future View - A look at farming’s horizon. 107 Last Word - A view from the field from CPM’s technical editor. Technical 8 Cereals 2019 - Nuggets of gold amongst the mud Those who braved the mud found plenty of food for thought. 16 Fit for the Future - Energy with less effort One high performing Group 4 wheat that seems to look after itself. 20 OSR planning - Rethinking OSR? It’s been a torrid season for oilseed rape but can it be managed better? 29 Theory to Field - The erucic acid problem Finding a solution to a problem is hard when the cause is unknown. 32 OSR intentions survey - OSR nears its pivotal point A recent survey flags up tactics to help ensure success with the crop. 36 Tech Talk - The future lies in layers Genetics are coming to the fore in oilseed rape breeding. Editor Tom Allen-Stevens 40 Better buying, better selling - Lessons learned are hard won Openfield has applied its resources to pull out the positives of OSR. Technical editor Lucy de la Pasture 45 Seed treatments - Biological works uniquely A new option, Integral Pro, will be available this autumn. Writers Tom Allen-Stevens Rob Jones 48 Cereal establishment survey - Start with the seed Olivia Cooper Lucy de la Pasture What can growers do to ensure every single plant is given the best start to life? Charlotte Cunninghan Martin Rickatson 54 Partners in performance - Blackgrass under pressure Melanie Jenkins A strategy in Cambs to keep blackgrass in check. 58 Grassweed control - Grassweed control starts in July Grassweed heads present an opportunity to get to improve targeting. Design and production Brooks Design 60 Spring peas - A barometer on crop potential Peas are difficult to grow, but can shine a light on limitations. Advertisement co-ordinator Peter Walker Publisher Machinery Angus McKirdy Business development manager 64 Cereals report - Gazing into a robotic future Robotics in agriculture will bring about seismic change in mechanisation. Charlotte Alexander 72 Cultivators and ploughs - Top tips for tines and discs To claim two crop protection BASIS points, send an email to There’s a massive variety of tine and disc designs to choose from. [email protected], quoting reference CP/67207/1819/g. 75 Storage and drying - More to the grain store To claim two NRoSO CPD points, please send your name, For those storing their own grain, the story doesn’t end with the combine. NRoSO member number, date of birth and postcode to 78 Forage and balers - Bring in the biomass [email protected] The technology for gathering in forage has moved on. *the claim ‘best read specialist arable journal’ is based 82 On Farm Opinion - Telematics proves its worth on independent reader research conducted by The use of telemetry for wireless two-way instant transfer of data is on the rise. Research Engine (Mar 2018) 86 Digital Direction - Mind out for 4IR Editorial & advertising sales Will farming embrace the fourth industrial revolution or sit behind the curve? PO Box 4856, Shrewsbury, Shropshire SY1 9NX Tel: (01743) 861122 E-mail: [email protected] Innovation Reader registration hotline 01743 861122 Advertising copy 93 Grow the best wheat - The science of selection Increasingly genetics put confidence into plant-breeding decisions. Brooks Design, 24 Claremont Hill, Shrewsbury, Shropshire SY1 1RD 96 Research Briefing - A pellet for all weathers Tel: (01743) 244403 E-mail: [email protected] Decades of research into ferric phosphate makes this the world’s market leader. CPM Volume 21 No 7. Editorial, advertising and sales offices are at PO Box 4856, Shrewsbury, SY1 9NX England. Tel: (01743) 861122. CPM is published eleven times a year by Roots CPM Ltd and is available free of charge to qualifying farmers and farm managers in the United Kingdom. 100 Sugar beet fungicides - Attention turns to disease The focus turns to disease control. In no way does CPM Ltd endorse, notarise or concur with any of the advice, recommendations or prescriptions reported in the magazine. 104 Potato agronomy - Metabolites cause mayhem If you are unsure about which recommendations to follow, please consult Crops treated with maleic hydrazide can’t be fed to livestock. a professional agronomist. Always read the label. Use pesticides safely. CPM Ltd is not responsible for loss or damage to any unsolicited material, including photographs. crop production magazine july 2019 3 Environment Plan. interests of UK Farming and of derogation to allow this It’s probably the those people you represent research to continue, unfettered remarkable resilience of first. How you choose to by GMO regulations. This the sector that masks demonstrate this is up to you, should be followed with an the considerable but I would suggest arable urgent review of the regulations challenges it currently farmers will be judging you, the themselves. faces and that you Government and MPs on your Finally, we must see have been tasked with actions over the coming months evidence that Defra is truly alleviating. But be in no as the harvest comes in. committed to shaping an doubt about the pressure Why? Because in living agricultural policy that will allow No Goodwill farmers are under as you memory, there has never been the arable sector to flourish. to show? continue to remove tools from a harvest of such uncertainty in Progress towards the agrochemical armoury. We so many ways. We will look for Environmental Land don’t want to use chemicals to strong leadership to show us Management contracts has Dear Mr Goodwill produce food any more than we it’s a harvest that matters, that it stalled, and that’s deeply The fact that you failed to have to, but these are the tools represents the bounty of a worrying. You have indicated turn up to represent the we use to do our job. If you take country that takes pride in its what you won’t support, but you Government at the recent these away from us, you have to world-leading standards of food are sitting on 200 applications Cereals event was not just help us access technologies production. We want to be for the Tests and Trials and “disappointing”, as the NFU that will allow us to do our job sure we have political leaders haven’t indicated to those who has put it. It smacks of the better. who are not afraid in trade applied what you will support. loathsome display of self The problem is, you’re not negotiations to stand firmly But this is not a plea for interest that currently even allowing that, and this is behind those standards and subsidy, minister, it’s a demand consumes Westminster, and reflected in the Government’s question leaders of other for direction. The arable sector particularly Conservative MPs. current policy, inherited from nations on how they maintain is aware that the chemical era You chose to support party the EU, on new plant-breeding theirs. We don’t have that is coming to an end, that we’re politics over the industry that’s technologies. It is deeply confidence at the moment, but in the plant-breeding era and pushing Government for clarity worrying that you view the you and your colleagues can that on the horizon lies digital. and certainty, and the industry voice of Greenpeace and of earn it over the coming months. We’re already crippled as we’re you’ve been appointed to Friends of the Earth on such You must also act to give our being forced out of the first with represent, without even sending subjects with as much value talented plant scientists the no tools to enter the second, a replacement. That’s not just a as the view of scientists, as confidence they need to and that puts us behind the desertion of office, it’s a woeful you indicated recently at continue their research, curve on the third. Act now, betrayal of the knowledge, Groundswell. This has to particularly in the area of lead us, and you’ll find we have talent and experience this change. gene-editing in which they are the inherent talent to catch up. country has in its industry, and If it doesn’t, minister, have currently world-leaders. This particularly within the arable you actually considered research is at a point that it is sector. Arable farmers are whether it’s possible for us to critical it comes into the field to rapidly losing confidence in produce food to the standards be tested. It is simply ludicrous Tom Allen-Stevens has a your ability, in that of other you seem to expect at the price that we have in our labs and 170ha arable farm in Oxon, ministers and in MPs in the consumer is willing to pay? our greenhouses world-leading and will not be completing general, in shaping the Have you actually considered plant-science innovations that Defra’s June survey until Agriculture Bill currently going the consequence if UK arable we’re restricted from testing in Government shows some through Parliament, and in farmers make a rational the field –– no other country reason why there’s any putting in place a system that decision to stop producing food outside Europe faces those point in doing so.