Steve Heard: Yields not set to break records

It is far too early to comment on yields, but so far we don’t look set to break any records. However, there is much to be positive about.

For the first time in three years our rape swather has completed its task and driven itself back into the shed on all four wheels. At last the investment in new hydraulic wheel motors is starting to earn a return.

Combining so far has gone without a hitch. Operating two older machines, it’s always reassuring to have a few days running to confirm all the winter servicing was thoroughly completed.

Soil conditions are perfect, the dry, deeper soils allowing us to drop the subsoil legs to a penetrating depth with great effect, while shallower, moist soils work to a finer tilth.

Arid spring conditions after a chilly winter mean that cultivations post-OSR this season are void of an early application of slug pellets.

Having revised my crop budgets downwards during the growing season, they have now been thrown a lifeline.

As commodity prices bounce so violently, it will surely only be a matter of pure greed on my part if I miss my target £1,000/ha (£404/acre) output.

But bullish news within the grain markets is so fickle that perhaps we must all try, for once, to be coy with our claimed yields. It may not have any effect, but what do we really have to lose?

Farming is a funny old game. It now seems the years we produce less are to be our most profitable.

My ability as a grower of crops has little reflection on the profits of my farming business. The things I do in the field, now have the least effect on my returns, instead it’s like the roll of a dice.

Gambling on when to buy fuel or fertiliser, combined with my luck as a commodities trader are now far more important to my bank manager, and then the tax man.

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