Incorporation of spring varieties into rotations can enhance farm business resilience, especially in the face of increased input costs or weed burdens. When selecting the best variety for your farm business, end market, agronomic packages and consistency of performance are the most important factors to consider.
Autumn 2024 was a tough planting year, prolonged rainfall and waterlogged land in many areas led to delayed or even missed drilling. This spring brings the opportunity to sow fallow ground with spring cereals or pulses either as a cash crop or as feed. Or if you have opted for an overwintered cover crop such as SAM2/SW6, following with a spring cereal crop in the rotation can improve soil structure and nutrient retention.
For north Somerset milk producer Jon Bult, growing a very early maturing variety of maize allows him to maximise his use of overwinter cover crops which deliver soil health benefits and an Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) payment.
The importance of upholding soil health and sustaining its productivity for the future is essential. Cover crops can prove an effective means of contributing to soil health and quality when incorporated into a rotation.
Selecting a variety for autumn sowing begins with evaluating your current variety within your specific farming system. Additionally, it's important to consider any new varieties available on the market, including a few new options this autumn.
Wet conditions this past winter lead to heightened risks of soil and slurry contamination in first-cut grass silage, because of increased wheel ruts in fields and delayed slurry applications. Farmers will require extra vigilance with silage-making this season.
In his second year of growing maize in tandem with beans, Jonathan Evans of Berry Hill Farm in Pembrokeshire has learned some valuable lessons, particularly in terms of crop establishment, variety selection and the importance of weed control.
Seen firstly as a good alternative break crop to oilseed rape – which has become harder to establish due to the difficulties in controlling flea beetle – maize is now a valuable forage for their beef finishing enterprise as well as an additional cash crop sold to neighbouring dairy and goat farms.
The importance of upholding soil health and sustaining its productivity for the future is essential. No matter what the enterprise, we are reliant on soil for all production, either to produce our crops or forage to feed livestock. Therefore, measures must be taken to conserve soil, which is more vulnerable to erosion and the leaching of essential nutrients over the winter months, especially after the harvest of maize crops.
Autumn 2023 was a difficult one for many, with the only real drilling window way back in September we have seen a deluge of rain since which seems to have no end in sight, with forecasts predicting wet weather into the new year. This has meant only a handful of opportunities to get on the land to cultivate and then sow autumn crops.
As we start to look to what 2024 will bring, it’s a natural instinct to turn to spring cereals for any land that didn’t get planted in the autumn - deliberately or otherwise! However, with shortages of spring cereals it’s now more important than ever to remember that autumn cereals can be sown successfully into the new year. So, here are my top tips for late sowing winter wheat!
Quantifying the level of mycotoxin contamination in your feeds is always difficult, as there are >400 different species of mycotoxins, all with varying levels of toxicity, and they may not be in every part of the silage clamp or TMR that we sample! Generally speaking, any plant with a flowering head (such as maize or wheat) could have developed fungi in the field, under stress conditions such as drought or wet weather, which produce the ‘in field’ mycotoxins on the plant. When harvested, the mycotoxins remain in the silage, and in some cases, further mould/fungi growth in the clamp can lead to more ‘storage’ mycotoxin production.
