Grain Maize at Bude, Cornwall.

Bude is one of the few places in Cornwall and Devon that grain maize can be grown without the excessive cost of using plastic to force the crop. It is not a favourable area in the NIAB/MGA sense at all though, so site choice is crucial as wind is a major factor in any site being considered for growing grain maize.

Below photo's of Lorado 2 weeks off combining, or when combining should have been done! Photo taken 7th October.

Two growers tried it in 2009, one had much better results than the other, one was being grown as a concentrate source in preference to Spring Wheat, the other as a cash crop. The concentrate crop was to be crimped and clamped, whilst the other was to be dried and sold at 15%MC.

One of the risks of combining maize is being able to harvest the crop early enough before the onset of the wet weather in November. Both growers crops were ready to combine in October, however for various reasons this didn't happen. Sure enough on Saturday the 7th of November the first winter storm blew in, deluging 3 inches of rain with 45mph winds in 4 hours between 6 and 10pm that night, with the results seen below.

Photo's below taken 9th November.

Even after this setback with the weather, the concentrate crop still averaged over 4.5t/ac, even though 4 ac were lost and not cut. It was telling that the crop was actually too dry when it was being crimped as water had to be added to aid the crimping process. However, the result worked in the farmers favour with 330 tonnes being crimped at a cost of £70/ton in the clamp, still a lot cheaper than bought in wheat and a far better feed. The actual advantage has turned the enterprise around with grian maize now being grown instead of forage maize as the one thing it does provide is a very stable diet platform for the cows.