THE remarkable spell of weather has to date made harvesting a lot easier but it has brought a few problems with it

A lot of early sown crops have ripened too quickly with the grain at the top of the ear, thin and shrivelled, leading to some reports of disappointing yields.

With OSR there has been the fairly unique situation whereby moisture content has been dropping down to as low at three per cent to four per cent in the heat of the day, and this is too dry for processors to extract the oil. As a consequence I have heard of combines working through the night in order to get some more moisture back in to the crop.

Nevertheles, taken all round harvest is going well in the UK and with winter barley and OSR finished, a start has been made on our wheat crop with early encouraging signs both on yield and quality.

In a reversal of roles, Europe has suffered this year from heavy storms and a big proportion of their crop will only be feed quality.

Many farmers depend on moving some corn straight off the combine due to lack of storage or a need for some cash flow.

The harvest trade is pretty miserable with wheat dropping now to £110 per tonne and barley £95 - £100.

OSR is nicely above £230 and beans around £180.

 

The NFU have produced an excellent special tribute to British farmers during the 1st World War, contrasting productivity then with today’s industry. Here are a few snippets of interest:-

• 170,000 farmers fought in the trenches and 98,000 women were drafted in to work in the Land Army back at home

• 500,000 farm horses were requisitioned to go to the front line.

• At the start of the War we were only 40 per cent self-sufficient in food and by 1918 2.5 million acres of land had been ploughed out to grow cereals (today we are 68 per cent self sufficient)

• Horse power was literally replaced with 6,000 tractors (today we have over 310,000).

• In 1914 we produced 1.7 million tonnes of wheat and this rose to 2.4 million tonnes in 1918.

This compares to today’s annual harvest of 12 million tonnes of wheat;

• At the start of the First World War it would take one hour to milk 10 cows by hand and today 100 cows can go through our parlours in the same time.

• A horse could plough one-acre a day, whereas modern 4 wheeled beasts turn over an acre every 15 minutes.

We are the luckiest of generations and we must never forget those who made it possible.

 

 

After a lot of rumour, the Co-op have announced they have agreed a sale of their farm business to the Wellcome Trust for £249 million.

It’s difficult to evaluate the deal but the bare facts are that the farming operations consist of the following:-

• 39,533 acres of freehold and third party owned land.

• 15 farms including 3 pack houses

• Over 100 residential properties

• 27 commercial properties.

Merely dividing the acres in to the price gives £6225 per acre but a lot of the land must be tenanted.

I know there will be many disappointed independent farmers who were hoping to add to their own businesses if the Co-op farms had been sold individually.

As it is the Wellcome Trust will probably take over where the Co-op left off, and they have a good record of investment in agriculture over the last 20 years.

 

From July, each Member State has been given 5 years in which to set up its own system for cattle electronic identification (EID). It seems a long way off but there will be host of consultations and stages to go through before D-Day.

One of the issues will be whether or not we opt to do away with the cattle passport and the pape record that we have at the minute.

 

The value of fully equipped farms has risen 6% over the past 12 months and for the first time has passed £10,000 per acre.

Don’t confuse this with bare land prices which are still averaging £7200 per acre but nevertheless th upward curve of the graph continues.

From my experience existing farmers within the industry are the dominant buyers but can be pushed by outside investment seeking the safe haven of farm land for tax planning reasons. There is plenty of demand and I know we have sold virtually everything on our books this summer.

 

Following cuts by Arla and Dairy Crest, it was the turn of Jim Paice to announce that First Milk would be dropping it’s farm gate price down to 29p per litre.

It’s disappointing for those who are hit but perhaps reflects the reality of the economic market place where there is more milk than consumers.

 

I noticed a little paragraph in the paper the other day where the number of employment tribunal cases have dropped by 75% since fees for claimants were introduced last summer!