February on the farm
After returning from Tanzania, Andrew Huxham has had a busy month at his farm in West Sussex. In his latest video diary, he covers:
A very wet February in West Sussex (160mm of rain) delaying spring drilling
Tyre damage spotted during fertiliser spreading and booked in for a proper sidewall repair
Oilseed rape looks well and prices have improved, with plans to sell more 2026 crop
SFI continuation is welcome, though concerns remain over caps penalising growth
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Transcript
Andrew Huxham, arable farmer and co-founder of Hectare Trading
I started this month with a little bit of a trip away, went to Tanzania and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, which was excellent. I actually took my father – who is 73 – and got him right to the top, so that was quite an achievement.
Since I’ve been back, the weather did improve, although we started off very wet. In fact, we had 160mm of rain in February in West Sussex. That was compared to about 60mm last February, so a huge amount of rain so far this month.
Fortunately, last week the weather improved and we did start applying some nitrogen and sulphur products. We’ve been out with the fertiliser spinner applying nitrogen and sulphur to oilseed rape, winter barley and second wheats. That’s all gone on really well.
Milling wheat continues to move out, that’s been going well. We’ve had a few deductions but not too bad, which we expected for protein, sub 13%.
And then, while we were applying the fertiliser, we noticed a bit of tyre damage. It’s quite a nasty split. So, next week’s job, we will be taking that tyre off and we’ll take it down to a tyre repair place where they heat it up, patch it and then put it in an oven and cook it. So it will be a proper repair to the sidewall because otherwise they start to leak.
So we’ve managed to get a bit of fieldwork done, but no cultivating yet for spring cropping. And of course now, as always, the weather has gone downhill – it is miserable, cold and wet – so there’s not much fieldwork going to be done for a little while.
Values have improved slightly, so I might extend the amount of oilseed rape we’ve sold. We’re about 20% sold for harvest 2026 now. I might increase that, with a bit more oilseed rape sales. We’re not far off £400 pounds a tonne as available at harvest movement without bonuses. So that’s where I want to be. The oilseed rape all looks good at the moment. Plenty of plant there, which is good.
I didn’t go to the NFU conference but followed that quite closely because the SFI income is quite important for us as a business. It’s really good to see that it’s all continuing. I don’t understand the logic of capping it because all you’re doing is penalising businesses that have worked hard to expand to gain economies of scale. So I’m not sure why the NFU seem to think that’s a success because, in my eyes, you’re disincentivising businesses to grow and become more efficient. So that's a bit of a stumbling block, but it’s good that it is going to continue – and I think it could have been a lot worse!
So, there’s a brief update: hopefully March will bring some better weather and we’ll get a lot more fieldwork done. We’ve got a lot of spring drilling to do, and I think we’ll look to put some nitrogen and sulphur on the first wheats next week, if the weather allows!
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