Time to get heads down and charge into autumn
Harvest is now upon us and will gain momentum over the next few weeks.
It's a time of year I always enjoy for its simplicity of purpose.
There can be little or no time for distractions – just get your head down and charge towards the autumn.
Growing conditions have been good for most of the year and yields look promising but, as in most years, something comes along to "put a fly in the ointment".
This year looks like a bad year for take-all in second wheats and most wheat crops have rather too many "white heads".
I am no expert but I suspect it could be a symptom of the foul weather last summer placing too much disease pressure on the seed crops.
I hope I am wrong but it could take the shine off the quality as well as the tonnage.
The main topic of conversation at the moment seems to be sugar beet with contracts sitting on everybody's desk and the price of input commodities chasing each other upwards alarmingly.
Despite the claims by British Sugar that we have got the best price in Europe that seems scant compensation for what is now a very poor break crop when viewed within the rotation for most growers.
The NFU beet committee tries its best to fight for our just desserts and have scored many important concessions such as the British Sugar climb down over the price premiums offered for early contract return.
All growers should look long and hard at their beet performance over the years to see if it can still justify its existence then at the very least make British Sugar sweat it out for a couple more weeks before returning the contract.
I hope you all have good weather for harvest and I'll catch you on the other side.
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Weather for Spalding
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 11 C to 21 C
Wind Speed: 26 mph
Wind direction: East
