Farmer Focus: The worst winter wheat harvest in 11 years

This has been the worst winter wheat harvest in 11 years at Downpatrick, and what a summer we have had.

Wheat crops initially showed a lot of potential, but unfortunately this didn’t play through to harvest as we had limited sun and too much rain.

Heavy rainstorms battered down our best-looking crops, leaving them flat in the field like a roller had been over them for the past month.

See also: NFU harvest survey aims to assess impact of difficult season

About the author

Richard Orr

Richard Orr farms 160ha in Downpatrick, Northern Ireland, with his wife and parents. He is an AHDB Monitor Farmer. Crops include wheat, oats, barley, potatoes and vegetables. The business also has a farm shop and beef cattle

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This meant the crop struggled to fill its grain and, combined with pigeon damage, areas were just impossible to get lifted with the combine.

The final result meant these three flat fields averaged a mere 5t/ha – very disappointing given they were the best-performing fields before the rain battered them.

Thankfully, the remaining wheat crop averaged 9.63t/ha, which I was satisfied with, but the overall average is below that. Given our 10-year average is 10.56t/ha, it’s not been a satisfying harvest to date.

A nice advantage of minimum tillage is that the fields are as level as a book, and lovely and firm.

Having cut a few ploughed fields and seen how the unevenness restricted the ability to lift flat spots, the difference is clear.

Given how wet and soft the ground is this year, the min-tilled fields haven’t even been marked, but the ploughed fields sunk considerably, which will cause compaction issues in the autumn.

Spring wheat is about a week off and beans will be ready during the end of September.

Before we get started on the beans, there will be lots to do, including scratching fields to get germination in the wheat still in the ground and trying to scratch out the vast amounts of slugs that are roaming about.

Slugs could be a major problem in potato crops this autumn as well.

Here’s hoping for a dry month to finish harvest and get autumn crops established in good conditions.