March on the farm
Spring work is in full swing at Andrew Huxham’s arable farm in West Sussex. In his latest video diary, he covers:
Spring barley drilling complete and emerging well; over halfway through drilling beans
Fertiliser applications cut back due to Iran-related supply concerns
Increased new crop sales – close to 50% sold on OSR and approaching that for wheat
High diesel prices biting – now looking to the next purchase window in late spring
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Transcript
Andrew Huxham, arable farmer and co-founder of Hectare Trading
Hello and welcome to my March farm update. The sun is shining and I am delighted to be walking around quite a nice field of spring barley which we’ve sown.
We’ve had a very busy month on the farm – it’s been good. Lots and lots of spring drilling has been done, so we’ve finished all of our spring barley and a lot of it is coming up now. We are over halfway through drilling spring beans, so hopefully we will finish that next week. I think we’ve got a bit of rain coming tomorrow, Friday. So the drilling has been going well, nice conditions, everything’s been getting rolled and we’ve also been busy applying fertiliser.
Obviously the Iran conflict is a bit of a concern so we’ve cut back the amount of fertiliser we’ve applied to oilseed rape quite a lot and we’ve worked out what we think we need to get us through to this harvest. And then we’ve been looking at whether or not we can hold some back and carry it through to next year because, if this conflict continues, it’s not going to be very good for new season prices when they come out in the coming months.
So it’s been a very, very busy month on the farm with fieldwork. I have also increased the amount of sales on new crop both for oilseed rape and for wheat. We end up, we need to move about a third of the wheat we grow in August and September. There’s a real pinch point in our cash flow, sort of September, October time. So I’ve increased my sales there. We’re probably approaching 50% sold on new crop on oilseed rape and nearly there on wheat now. Values are better than they have been, still not great, but it’s an improvement.
So, not a bad month on the farm. We could do with seeing diesel prices coming down. We paid a fortune for the last load but that will be enough to see us probably through until maybe May or June. That’s when we’ll need to order more so hopefully the conflict will be over by then and we will see fuel prices returning to normality. So there’s a bit of an update – a nice field of Laureate spring barley coming up. Speak to you soon.
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.