July on the farm
“When I go into blocks of wheat and I'm celebrating eight tonnes a hectare, you know it’s a bad year.” Agronomist Jonny James from Chichester Crop Consultancy returns to work out why Andrew’s wheat yields have been so disappointing:
Harvest 2026 started with optimism, but winter wheat has yielded 6–7 t/ha against a potential of 10 t/ha
Rainfall is ruled out as a major factor, but mild winter conditions led to aphid pressure and some BYVD
Heat stress is identified as the main cause of loss, as the late-May heatwave coincided directly with wheat flowering
Grain quality remained high, while the hot weather eliminated drying costs and reduced logistical expenses
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Transcript
Andrew
Hello and welcome to my “July on the farm” update. I wouldn’t normally have the same person two months in a row but we’ve got Jonny James with us again, our agronomist.
It’s been a bizarre month. We started harvest on, I think it was, a quick look, we started harvest on 6th July. So we spent the majority of this month harvesting and, with the exception of spring beans, we finished on 24th July. So it’s been a very short, intense harvest.
I think, like the majority of people around the country, it’s been a very disappointing harvest on many fronts, and that’s why I wanted Jonny to come in. Because we’re sort of, everybody’s coming up with lots of different theories as to why we’ve had such a poor harvest – because it looked very good, didn’t it Jonny, coming into harvest?
Jonny
Yes, I don’t think I’ve ever known a year where we’ve had crops looking so full of potential and just being underwhelmingly disappointing, I think, across the board. Like you say, lots of reasons why and there will be multiple reasons for yield loss, but I think probably typically we’re looking at 20%-plus down on yield, really, if not more in some situations.
Andrew
So we’ve completed everything with the exception of spring beans and oilseed rape wasn’t a complete disaster, we’re not far off our average five-year yields – in fact, we might have a little bit more oilseed rape than we budgeted on.
Winter barley wasn’t a complete disaster, we didn’t have that much of it – obviously, it’s not worth very much, which doesn’t help.
But the biggest disappointment for us has been the winter wheat. We are down significantly on what we expected and, as Jonny said, you know, you’re looking at a crop and you think this has got 10 tonne a hectare potential and you end up with an average of 6 to 7 tonnes a hectare.
And some of the best ground we’ve got has performed the worst – the really high-quality brick earth on the Chichester Plain, I think that might be partly due to some BYDV down there as well.
Jonny
There’s definitely, you know, the stuff that was first planted on the heavy ground, I think, there’s a combination of, we had virtually no winter here, a lot of aphid pressure, there was quite a bit of virus out there. We did spray for it a couple of times but, you know, the damage was already done. And I think, in those situations, we’ve probably seen an additional 2 or 3 tonnes a hectare yield loss from those aphids that have obviously transmitted significant virus pressure.
Andrew
But, you know, when I go into blocks of wheat and I’m celebrating 8 tonnes a hectare, you know it’s a bad year. So just to put things into perspective, I think we are about 500 tonnes light on where we should be in wheat. So the stores are pretty empty, so you know that’s a significant shortfall in income or potential revenue in the future.
So, theories, everyone’s coming up with theories as to why this has been the best harvest we never had. I think it’s probably worse than 2012, although we’ve all got quality this year, I think, on the whole, which is good.
So come on, Jonny, the theories are obviously it’s got to be something to do with rainfall, temperature, BYDV. So, what do you think could be?
Jonny
Well I think, you know, we were just looking at rainfall data – we’ve actually had more rain this spring than we did last spring.
Andrew
So I’ve got some figures on that, that’s interesting, because I don’t know how accurate these are, but it comes from a weather station next to one of the farms. Between 1st March and 30th June, in 2025 we had 74 mil of rain on that farm. This year we had 141 mil. We’ve had double the amount of rain from 1st March to 30th June this year.
Jonny
And I think that’s evident in the crop, you know, crops never – yes they were definitely suffering a little bit but I think we had rain just at the end of May, early June, the right time for that rain, the rain came at the right time, and crops never really looked that short, they never looked that stressed, we didn’t have that leaf curling.
Andrew
There’s no shortage of straw, is there?
Jonny
No. The spring crops, yes they did suffer a little bit, you can see that on the lower leaves, but certainly the winter crops never looked drought-stressed locally.
Andrew
So I don’t think it’s a lack of rainfall, I’m coming to that conclusion, and so the next thing is obviously temperatures. If I look at that weather station, for that period, in 25, the maximum temperature was 28.3 degrees – this year it’s over 35 degrees. And I don’t think it’s just about the peak temperatures, it’s about when we’ve had these heatwaves. Would you agree?
Jonny
Definitely and, you know, there’s been loads of work done and obviously, with the changing climate that we’re seeing globally, I think that this is going to be a really key part.
And we had 35-degree heat in that end-of-May period, 24th, 25th, 26th May, just when crops were coming into flower and also wheat crops specifically coming into flower. And that, I think, has done a lot of the damage. And you can find endless papers there, you know, talking about different yield damages.
So what we’ve essentially seen is a loss of grain sites, spikelets, which is why we’ve got quality, specific weights are fairly decent across the board, high 70s, low 80s, but actually we just haven’t got the quantity there.
Andrew
You know, hindsight is a wonderful thing, but knowing what we know today, even with those temperatures at that time, we couldn’t have then gone, “right, we’re going to be looking at 20% less yield, let’s cut back on fertiliser” – it’s already gone on, hasn’t it?
Jonny
It has, I mean, other than the Nufol that we topped up on later. Interestingly, there’s a paper that I was looking at from Australia and they talk about the critical temperature being 28 degrees and, for every hour above that 28 degrees, you get 281 grain sites per metre squared lost.
Andrew
This is very scientific.
Jonny
It’s quite scientific, actually, when you start to tally that up, assuming you’re roughly on a, you know, 460 ears per metre squared, you’d be looking at 22,000-ish ears. If you’re losing, over that period of time, we had about 20 hours roughly above 28 degrees, you’ve lost nearly 4,000 to 5,000 grain sites, which nearly tallies up to 2 to 2.5 tonnes. So the science kind of supports that data.
Andrew
So that’s where it’s gone? So we’ve done nothing wrong.
Jonny
Well, as you know, crops looked good coming to harvest.
Andrew
Interestingly, if we had the ability or the finances to irrigate milling wheat in this country, would that have helped with those temperatures?
Jonny
I don’t know. I mean, you would have cooled the crop slightly, there are farms locally on the lighter sand that did irrigate, and the yields were certainly no better.
Andrew
No, so that wouldn’t have helped.
Jonny
So I don’t think it would have been – I think last year, definitely, there was an element of drought stress, no doubt. I think this year, it’s heat stress that’s done most of the damage. Yes, there will have been areas that have droughted out on lighter ground, but on most of your soil type it’s, you know, fairly moisture-retentive soil or on chalk, it does tend to hold on fairly well. So I think what we’ve seen predominantly is heat stress, and I think that’s going to have to come from genetics. You know, heat stress built into – that or early flowering and I think we’ve definitely seen a change on varieties. So Bamford’s had a quite good year this year, Arnie’s had quite a good year and they’re slightly earlier flowering varieties.
Andrew
Actually the people around here that are talking of reasonable yields are often on Bamford and stuff like that.
Jonny
And I think it’s those varieties that just flowered slightly earlier, so you’ve got most of the flowers completed probably by the time.
Andrew
I do find it interesting because, I think, a lot of farmers are fairly honest about their harvest and I’ve noticed that there are farmers throughout the country that are saying it looks like it should be doing 10 tonne, we’ve only got 6 or 7 coming in the tank.
But I have met farmers at a local cooperative who have had the best harvest ever and, when I look at the weighbridge tickets after they’ve left the office, they’ve still got over 15% protein on group 1 milling wheat. Well, you don’t get that with a decent yield, so there is still this pub talk.
And interestingly, we’re looking at yield maps now, aren’t we, and there is huge variation across fields. I can find fields where we’re doing over 10 tonnes, points in fields where we’re doing over 10 tonne a hectare, but the average is telling the whole story.
Jonny
And the problem is, those pockets that are doing over 10 tonnes, they look like they should have been doing 12, 13 tonnes.
Andrew
They would have been historically.
Jonny
I think that what we’ve seen is the farms and the fields that have done 10 tonnes look like they should have been doing 12, 13 so we’re still that 20%, 25% down on where we hoped we would be.
Andrew
So we have spent, we’ve had a very, very busy time harvesting this month. We would normally love hot, dry weather during harvest but actually it’s created a bit of an issue this year. A lot of the wheat has been harvested at 11% to 12% – there will be an element of yield loss there, won’t there?
Jonny
Definitely as a percentage.
Andrew
And the reason we’ve done so much in such a short time is because I’ve been driving the combine from about four in the morning in oilseed rape, then someone else takes over at sort of 10 o’clock in the morning, carries on harvesting rape as long as they can or switches on to wheat. We did that for about a week this year and it’s amazing how much more capacity you get out of a combine when it’s running for that length of time.
So fortunately, we’ll take some positives from this. It wasn’t anything we did, I think.
Jonny
I don’t think so, crops looked full of potential.
Andrew
Quality is good, straw sales will be OK, logistics are cheaper than normal, no drying costs. And I think also, just to touch on it, as a farming business, the reason we can put up with years like this – because we do get it, don’t we, hopefully not too regularly – the reason is because historically we’ve had BPS, now we’ve got SFI, and that helps us weather the peaks and troughs. And, you know, I hope people are realising that the SFI does quite a good job and we need it to continue.
Unfortunately this cap is disincentivising big farms from getting bigger and I think we’re going to have to see farm businesses get smaller, because 100K is not enough for most farm businesses to weather these troughs, is it?
Jonny
No, and I think it’s a shame really because it’s a land-based payment that should be spread across the land, and obviously, you know, things like cover crops, summer catch crops before spring barley, it’s all adding value to, you know, recycling nutrients and beneficial to insects and everything like that. So if that incentive disappears, then unfortunately there’s going to be an environmental impact.
Andrew
Spring barley’s been a mixed bag for us, hasn’t it? We’ve had some good, some on budget, some poor. I think the challenge we’ve got now is the poor yielding spring barley is quite high nitrogen, so we’re actually cleaning it to try and remove the smaller grains in the hope that that will lower the nitrogen levels. So we’ll see – samples are going off at the moment.
Jonny
I think spring barley probably is more moisture-related rather than heat-related but you could see, certainly early on, on the lighter ground, we were losing those lower leaves and they were quite thin, they didn’t tiller as well. So I think the spring crops, I’m sure, were moisture-related.
Andrew
So we don’t think it’s my fault, we don’t think it’s your fault, but we need to work out a way to combat this ever-changing climate and, you know, accelerating and better plant breeding. I know there’s a lot going on with that, but that’s what we need, isn’t it?
Jonny
Yes and, you know, it’s so tricky when so much of your cost is up front, you know, you were spending hundreds of pounds a hectare before that heatwave came in.
Andrew
It’s a high-risk game now, isn’t it?
Jonny
You’d put 240 kilos of nitrogen on before that point, you’d had the full fungicide program by the ear spray.
Andrew
We’ll take another positive from this. Well, I’ve gained a month in my year, haven’t I? I will actually see the kids during their summer holidays. I don’t know if that’s good, I think that’s good.
So right, thank you very much Jonny, very interesting looking at the data and the weather and trying to work out what’s happened. Be useful if it was something we could have more of an impact on.
Jonny
Definitely, but it’s certainly the first time I think we’ve ever seen, you know, 35 degrees in May, isn’t it?
Andrew
It’s bizarre.
Jonny
Been a bit of a lesson for us.
Andrew
Thank you very much, Jonny.
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.