Weather Events

http://climateprogress.org/2010/10/27/strongest-storm-ever-recorded-in-the-midwest/

A very interesting situation, if this hit the UK, we would be in serious trouble!

Combining forage maize

Roy Prouse Contractors combining Ixxes forage maize at Launceston, at about 53% MC and 3.5t/ac on the combine, far from ideal, but the field needed clearing for the following winter wheat crop that was being drilled right behind.

What happens when you combine maize when it isn't ready, blocked seives! Because of the variability in ripening, some grain was fit, other still milky resulting in this lovely porridge mix at the back end of the machine. Cleaning this will be a nightmare!

Combining Lorado at Bude

Never let it be said that Lorado is a short variety!



Lovely cornish autumn afternoon.

It's all happening!!!

Maize foraging is in progress, most of it is off, although a lot I think has been cut before it was fully fit, but the weather has been kind and the general feeling has been 'get it while you can'.

Lorado, the only early grain variety out there surprised us all by being ready as early as the 11th of October in some fields, the bulk being ready by the end of the week of the 16th, yields have been very promising, (even though the population was slightly higher than it should have been) at around an average of 5ton/ac at 32% moisture content. Very satisfactory.

Here are some pictures and video of the crop coming in.

World Food Situation.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/8019004/Global-food-risk-from-China-Russia-pincer.html

I know it's in the press at the moment, but this article poses some very interesting questions for british farmers, particularly livestock farmers feeding concentrates and bought in forages.

Having now had rain late so most farmers in the southwest have ample third cut silage, but little good quality first and second cuts left (there are exceptions of course), what do you do now going into winter with the burden of higher input costs in feed terms?

Do you feed for maintenance and low productivity in order to reduce imported feed costs by utilising what you've got on farm (praying that it will be enough to see you through till April in case we have another winter like last year), or do you de-stock to reduce the overall demand, or both, or do you take the risk of buying in expensive forage in the hope that end prices (and margins) will rise on the back of commodity price rises this autumn, with the associated cramping of cashflow?

Given the economic situation, will demand for meat and meat related products reduce if these prices rise substantially going forward? Reading between the lines of this article, it's looking like intervention to prevent price spikes may not be so forthcoming given what followed last time round in 2007/2008.

North Devon Wheat Demo

For the first time in many years, we have a 14 varieties in the ground as of today at Holsworthy!

I think it is important in this day and age that we trial varieties outside of mainstream areas, really push and pull them from a disease pressure point of view, challenge them in heavy wet ground in a high rainfall environment. North Devon is not renowned as being part of the great grain belt of the UK, however it is an important livestock area and these animals need feeding. There is a lot of wheat grown in this area and there are many traditional methods being employed to grow it, along with very robust spraying programs that are becoming ever more costly. So the challenge is to try doing it slightly differently, utilise more organic forms of nutrition, utilise biogass as much as possible for Nitrogen requirements and see what varieties fare the best in this environment under a treated and untreated regime.

Thanks to David Prouse of Roy Prouse Contractors for allowing me to use one of his fields to do this demo and thanks to Steve Cleave who did the driving and drilling. Hopefully all will be revealed in not too distant future and we will have an open day to show farmers what we have achieved.

Beethoven maize at Bude - video guide

Here's some footage of a standing crop of Beethoven forage maize near Bude, been the pick of all the crops in the area again this year as previous posts show. I shot this short clip today so you can gain some perspective of just how big this crop is, given I am 6ft6" tall!



This the first attempt to forage the crop, the crop isn't quite ready yet, we estimated it was at 30%DM, but the Smartlab kit on the forager reckoned it was only just over 26%, so we wait a week or so to let it increase to 30% DM. Machine said the crop was yielding 26ton/ac and this is the shortest part of the field!