Top Scots growers beat expectations

Scotland’s top cereals growers have excelled in the UK’s 2021 Yield Enhancement Network (YEN) competition by going above and beyond expert predictions of their top possible yields.

Aberdeenshire grower and agronomist Iain Learmonth won the network’s overall gold award for the best percentage of potential yield in the UK with a crop of Skyscraper wheat which yielded an exceptional 107% of 12.1t/hectare.

Highland Grain chairman Mark McCallum from Ross-shire was close behind with 107% of 11.3t/ hectare, also for a field of Skyscraper.

Meanwhile, Peter Chapman from Strichen took gold for the best percentage of potential yield in the spring barley competition for his crop of Sienna, with 82% of 9.7t/ hectare.

And in Fife, Craig Peddie from Cornceres won silver for the country’s secondbest spring barley yield of 12.9t/ha and also silver for the best potential in spring barley, with 78% of 16.7 t/ha.

Iain Learmonth was repeating his stunning success in 2020, albeit with a slightly lower yield but higher percentage of potential, but like all the other competitors he said the crop had performed exceptionally well in a season of difficult weather.

And he attributed his success to attention to detail.

“High biomass and getting nutrition right early on is key for high yields and much more important than we used to think it was,” he said.

“The fungicide regime, drilling conditions, trace

elements and making sure you can minimise the limitations to achieving good yields – they’re all important.”

Mark McCallum, of John McCallum & Partners, won a bronze award in 2018 in the same category as this year, and Peter Chapman from South Redbog won a gold and two bronzes in 2020.

He said: “Ours was a tremendous crop early on but I didn’t think it would do well because it was so dry early in the summer which meant the potential came down.”

It was a first YEN award

for Craig Peddie, an AgriScot Arable Farm of the Year finalist in 2019, but he was unable to attend the ceremony because he had Covid.

His winner was a field of Belmont winter wheat, a hybrid variety from Syngenta, which will be sold for feed.

The gold, silver and bronze awards for the overall top cereal yields in the UK were won by Lincolnshire farmer Tim Lamyman who achieved a top of 15.2t/ha for a crop of wheat as well as a world record yield of 14.2t/ha for winter barley.

GOLD PERFORMANCE: Scots cereal growers have been pleased with yields, despite a season of difficult weather.

Peter Chapman, Craig Peddie, Iain Learmonth and Mark McCallum all won awards.