Hard spring leaves arable farmers to weather it out

Changing seasons mean growers are in uncharted territory when it comes to timing of their crops

This has been a weird spring, as everyone knows, but we don’t know what a normal spring is any more as there doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the seasons.

Arable farmers were staring down the barrel of a gun until three weeks ago when the weather finally came good.

Whether it was too late, time will tell. The odd field sown late is not unusual, but with the majority of spring barley and oats being sown in the last week of April, we are in uncharted territory in terms of effects on yield potential, and there is no doubt farmers will be more reliant on the weather baling them out.

I expect cereals which were sown into good seedbeds will show negligible detrimental effects. However, some farmers, desperate to get seed in the ground, have planted in less than favourable conditions and these crops are more likely to suffer. Likewise, those sowing late into marginal and heavier soils are likely to be worst affected. The sort of things we would advise as a contingency to mitigate yield losses would be to increase seed rates for late sowing.

The later you sow, the less time the crop has got to tiller out and the less potential for optimum ear populations.

Another issue with late-sown malting barley this season is the potential for increased grain nitrogen. Even allowing for increased seed rate, there are likely to be fewer ears, and the short growing season means that nitrogen is likely to accumulate in the grain.

Agronomy advice for those who have sown malting barley into May would be to reduce applied nitrogen by 10 to 15kg/ha to hit the same grain nitrogen target.

We have a number of years’ experience in trialling the new high-yielding malting variety, Laureate, which many of our members have sown this year. In trials it has consistently out-yielded Concerto by 0.5 to 1 tonne/ha so we would hope this might balance out the yield detriment from late sowing.

Winter crops are not likely to produce record-breaking yields this year. Comparing the autumn of 2016 to 2017, sowing conditions in the autumn of 2016 were much better, which encouraged good root systems creating higher yield potential. The dry spring and wet summer meant potential was probably not reached in many crops with the exception of oilseed rape, which coped better through the drought thanks to its good root system.

This year, in contrast, rape is looking pretty poor in many areas, barely knee height and not yet flowering – and I have never seen such vermin damage as this year from pigeons, rabbits and deer. However, rape usually confounds us and yield predictions are often way out – usually in a good way! If the plants have a reasonable root system, rape probably has the best bounce-back ability of any crop.

As far as winter barley and winter

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This year, in contrast, rape is looking pretty poor in many areas, barely knee height and not yet flowering – and I have never seen such vermin damage

wheat are concerned, we are looking at cutting inputs wherever possible. If we are looking at 7t/ha yield potential and not 10 or 11, why feed it with fertiliser to a yield it has no chance of making? If a thin, gappy crop of winter cereals is forced with nitrogen then each plant, with less competition, will tiller profusely, become huge and be more prone to lodging. We would always suggest not to stress such crops any further by applying growth regulator but if the thin crops have had 200kg of nitrogen then it will need more growth regulator which is counter intuitive.

We are all hoping that the weather sorts itself out now as that is still the biggest influence on ultimate yields. On the upside, the markets for grain are looking positive and the UK supply and demand situation, including malting barley, looks fairly tight.

Picture: Wullie Marr. Andrew Gilchrist of Scottish Agronomy.