April on the farm
“You never quite know what’s around the corner.” It’s been a case of “expect the unexpected” at Andrew Huxham’s arable farm in West Sussex. Take a look at April’s video diary:
All spring crops established and currently looking healthy, after a heavy schedule of applying fertiliser and spraying
Emergency as a crop sprayer catches fire, creating operational challenges during a critical period
Dry conditions remain a concern but crops are coping, although forecast rain would improve prospects
The recent market uplift gives rise to cautious optimism alongside ongoing uncertainty
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Transcript
Andrew Huxham had to deal with a sprayer fire at his arable farm this month
Hello and welcome to our April 2026 “on the farm” update with me, Andrew Huxham.
As you can see, the sun is shining, it’s a glorious day, and we’ve got some wonderful oilseed rape behind us that’s all out in flower.
This month on the farm we’ve mainly been applying lots and lots of inputs, so, the fertiliser spinner has been very, very busy, the sprayer has been out a lot and fortunately now all the spring crops are up and away, they’re all looking good.
We haven’t had a lot of rain, we’ve had about 8mm spread over several days, so that’s a little bit of an issue but there’s between 5mm to 10mm forecasted for this weekend, so fingers crossed we get that, that’ll make all the difference for the spring cropping.
At the moment, nothing’s looking too stressed, it’s all coping with the lack of rainfall quite well, but hopefully we’ll get the rain this weekend.
We have had a few major events. I had a phone call last week from the sprayer operator to say it was on fire. So we rushed down there and, by the time I got there, the whole machine was engulfed in flames. So, unfortunately, probably at the busiest time of the year, we have found ourselves without a crop sprayer which is presenting some challenges.
At the moment, we’re relatively up together but, in seven to ten days’ time, that machine would have been going out every day where the weather’s good.
So I’ve spent the last few days trying to work out what we’re going to do. Fortunately, it was quite well insured. It’s not underinsured, which is the important thing. Loss adjusters are coming out tomorrow to hopefully work out: A, what they’re going to pay, and B, how they’re going to clear it because it’s not on the field.
The poor young guy that was driving it, he heard a bang, got down the steps. By the time his feet touched the ground, there were flames above and below the engine. We’re not sure what caused it, but no one was injured. It wasn’t on the road, fortunately, and the poor lad didn’t even have time to get his sandwiches out!
So that’s not great and it’s causing some challenges. There’s a couple of contractors around us at the same width, 36 metres. There’s about four neighbouring farmers that might be able to dip in and help us with some work. And I’m hopefully going to have a long-term hire/demo of a machine to get us through the next month. And then hopefully I’ll find a suitable replacement to purchase ourselves.
So that’s taken up quite a lot of my time and quite a lot stress, which I wasn’t expecting. You never quite know what’s around the corner. And while all that’s going on, you know, just when you thought things couldn’t get any more difficult, that happens.
But I have to say, at this point in time, momentarily, things are looking better. Not hugely, but the price of fuel has gone from, the price of red diesel down here has gone from £1.20 a litre down to just shy of £1.00 a litre. That makes a big difference.
The price of fertiliser is falling a bit. We were looking at Nitram at £530 not long ago. I’ve had an offer in the last couple of days at below £500: £495 for immediate delivery, which we would carry through to next year. I’m not going to do anything. That might prove to be a mistake. But as they say, the trend is your friend and at the moment it’s going down. And to buy fertiliser at that still heavily inflated value and not apply it for maybe another 10 months, there’s a massive financial cost, or the cost to finance that is huge.
But fertiliser has fallen a bit, fuel’s fallen a bit. Certainly, over the last few days, we’ve seen a bit of a rally in the markets, £5 to £10, which is good. So for once, everything’s moving in our direction. It hasn’t moved enough in our direction, but we’re feeling slightly happier about things.
And when you start looking at crops like this, what we could do with is 10mm of rain this weekend and some better than average yields this harvest and everything continuing to move in our direction.
So, a busy month with the sprayer and the fertiliser spinner. Crops are looking OK and hopefully we get a drop of rain and I find a replacement sprayer fairly soon. Thank you very much. Speak to you next month.
This article is for general information only and does not constitute advice. While we make every effort to ensure the accuracy of the content at the time of publication, Hectare Trading makes no guarantee regarding the data provided.