Arable News

Wheat growers are being urged to manage risk by taking on board the lessons of the challenging 2023/24 season when making this autumn’s drilling and variety decisions. 

Harvest 2024 was undeniably an interesting but also challenging time for UK farmers. For some of them, like Cambridgeshire farmer Stephen Briggs, harvest had to be put on hold due to equipment theft, but others call the season very “straightforward”. 

As harvest is well underway, there are several lessons starting to emerge to explain the variability in wheat yields, said Hutchinsons technical support manager. 

Martin Lishman provides five key areas to focus on, to improve your post-harvest practices.

With some colour sorters struggling to identify modern grass ergot, it’s time for everyone to find a solution to this problem.

Despite a high-pressure weed year, a Warwickshire grower has been able to keep crops fairly clean by optimising chemistry with an adjuvant.

The weather upset many cropping plans in 2023/24, with growers understandably keen to get back on track this autumn. However, as farm support shifts further towards crop-specific measures within the SFI, now is an ideal time to review rotation planning, Hutchinsons experts advise.

While drones have been used for crop monitoring for quite a while, there’s some new and exciting potential for other uses. Rachel Hicks reports.

Origin Fertilisers and the Port of Tyne have announced a £7.5 million combined investment in a new fertiliser facility. 

Crop production and grain marketing business Frontier Agriculture has acquired the assets of Fengrain Ltd. following a five-year relationship. 

Warm and dry weather has supported harvest progress over the past fortnight and helped the progression of wheat, spring barley and spring oat crops towards harvest, the latest harvest progress report for 2024 confirms. 

As this year’s sugar beet harvest approaches, British Sugar has just shared details of the campaign start dates for each of its four factories.