Late drilling aids harvest at organic farm

John, who farms 700ha of his own land, and 850ha under farm management contracts in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, has seen mixed, but generally average yields this harvest.

Harvest at Shimpling Park Farm started around two weeks early, on 14^th July, and is expecting to conclude early next week. 

Last year was the farm’s worst harvest on record, so John says “everything has been better than that”, but there have been highs and lows.

They’ve had record yields of spring oats, the wheat and barley are above average and oats generally are about average. A by-crop of wheat and beans, which is still being harvested, has been a very mixed bag, he added.

The quality is also good, with the oats looking to be a “really bright sample” and milling wheat varieties reaching the spec for milling quality, which John said they often struggle with.  

“I’m hoping it’s going to be an average plus harvest, which given the weather we had, I’m amazed that we’ve got anything in the barn.

“It’s looking promising, and because there’s generally a shortage of organic combinable crops in the UK, and I would say in Europe, our prices have held, which is good. I have to say I’m feeling relatively optimistic after last year where we had a disastrous harvest.”

The farm has finished harvesting some old varieties of wheat which go to Gail’s bakery, winter wheat which is used mainly for feeding organic animals and milling oats for White’s Oats in Northern Ireland.

Harvesting of organic malting barley, which mainly goes overseas, is nearly complete, and finally, some vetches are grown for seed for Church of Bures.

Very clean crops

A neighbouring farm started and finished harvest even earlier than Shimpling, but John believes soil health could be one of the reasons they are a bit later, and why their yields are reasonable.

“Over the last 25 years being organic, we’ve doubled our soil organic matter, so that must help water retention to a certain extent, but it’s still an early start.”

Late drilling is also thought to have helped with this year’s yields as the crops are looking very clean, apart from a weedy crop of wheat and beans which John was combining on 14^th August. 

While normally they would start drilling in the first week of October, the rain meant wheats and beans were drilled end of October/early November. 

“For us it was great because of course our crops are incredibly clean – we’d managed to deal with all the weeds before drilling, so in a funny kind of way that works in our favour,” John said.

“If it had been dry, I would have drilled earlier and we probably would have had weedier crops, which is probably another reason why we’re having a better harvest.”

The farm inter-row hoes weeds but John noted that they put pressure on crops before hoeing. This year he’s hoping to hold back on drilling if possible.

Another factor in this year’s more positive harvest is that they discovered a very shallow cap in the soil about 3-4 inches down, after last year’s very poor harvest.

“We did spend a lot of money in the autumn before it rained just dealing with that issue from the previous year, so that might have helped a little bit with letting water get away, rather than sitting there rotting the roots of the plants.”

Unsurprisingly, moisture levels at cutting have been very low this year with very little drying needed. Being organic there will be a little admixture in the crops so they generally get them in the grain store, blast air through them for a week, cool the grain, then monitor it during the season.

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Flower-rich margins struggling

Despite a positive year overall, the farm’s flower-rich margins are struggling and have required more management, costing the farm more. 

“That’s disappointing but it is what it is, we’re just having to do a lot of cutting and cut them sensitively now to make sure that the stuff that we want to get away, gets away,” John explained.

“It has involved a lot more management than usual because of the dry spring, but I still feel confident they’ll be what they need to be to deliver what the option requires us to deliver.”

The farm is heavily involved in the Sustainable Farming Incentive and Countryside Stewardship, and whilst supporting the schemes, there are lots of challenges on the admin side.

“We’re still spending time on it, but the amount of money that we get from the stuff that benefits our rotation outweighs that […]. Looking at the bigger picture, we just need to get as much money as we can out of those schemes while they’re around.

“I have to say I think they’re brilliant and the options they give us really do add something to soil health, but also biodiversity on our farms and so I’m a big fan of them.”

Fears for future of SFI

John said he would be very disappointed if the schemes were removed, both from a financial point of view, and in terms of their environmental benefit.

“My real fear for this whole thing is that we’re not the only people to have difficult harvests. Last harvest was the worst, and we had a serious financial impact on the farming bit of our business – and the harvest before that was not great either.

“My feeling is that if they do take away any kind of payment for a diversified income stream for farmers, I think you’re going to see a huge number of farmers going out of business.

“You can stick one bad harvest, you can probably stick two bad harvests, but it’s very difficult to stick three. I think a lot of people will start wondering what they’re doing, if the prices are low and you’re getting this real variability in yields because of difficult weather situations. A lot of people’s businesses are precarious.”

John added: “I will be very disappointed if they ditch [the schemes]. In the great scheme of things, the amount of money they’re putting into the environment is tiny compared to the other services in this country.

“If nature isn’t important, and if food isn’t important, then that’s not a great situation.”

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