Farmer Focus

Many farmers have been surprised at their yields this year, the starting point must have been a kind autumn and winter, but it appears that sunlight in June contributes more to yield than we thought and rainfall to the beginning of harvest (6months), was 207mm, could be of less importance. Like the Monty Python Four […]

Harvest 2022 arrived fast and was completed without a pause. The wheats yielded 8.8t/ha, with only applied155kg/ha bagged N applied, which was 16% less than 14yraverage. 85% of this was direct drilled and we are seeing soil structure continue to improve. The oilseed rape yielded3.3t/ha, with the highest yielding field consisting of a 3-waycompanion crop

From Drought to Deluge I am sitting here today (May 24th) listening to Thunderstorms outside. In the last 6 days we have had around 50ml of rain which has been very appreciated. This time last week it was 26 degrees, and the crops were wilting and looking very drought stressed, amazing the difference a week

It’s an interesting time to be farming and, as readers of Direct Driller will appreciate, we all have important decisions to make about how we want to take our farms forward. The war currently raging in one of the world’s key breadbaskets is focussing a lot of minds on how agricultural policies should be reframed

Staying sane in a crazy world! Every time I sit down to write my contribution to Direct Driller the world seems to be in a more crazy place. Who would have thought a year ago that we would be selling new crop wheat at over £300/ton and paying virtually double for fertiliser and fuel? It’s

Direct drilling into heavy clays is a battle still to be won Eight years of trials with cover crops and direct drilling has prompted more questions than answers. The soil advisers at Agrii like to remind me that there is more to direct drilling than simply placing the seed into uncultivated ground. “You have to

Since my last submission to Direct Driller Farmer Focus was September, I owe you a report on what we have stuck in the ground for harvest 2022 and how it’s looking at the time of writing. Buoyed up by my harvest 2021 organic oilseed rape crop, I planted a further crop in August but was

Following directly on from my January ramblings , I was lucky enough to have a couple of frosty nights in early Feb which allowed me to roll 30 Ha of cover crops with our 10 m roll on the controlled traffic wheelings. I got pretty well 100% kill on everything rolled in the early hours