Relieved Norfolk and Suffolk farmers start wheat harvest

Contrary to expectations, it has been quite a good year - early indications across the region suggest average to above average yields in some cases. But farmers are expecting that with crop areas down overall, home-grown production will be lower.

Like other farmers across East Anglia, John - who runs a 3,000 acre arable operation from Gisleham, Lowestoft - has found the woeful weather conditions this season and financial uncertainties associated with modern-day farming draining.

John Collen starts his wheat harvest near Walberswick He is pictured with farm workers Rory Parker and Alex Powell (Image: Sonya Duncan)

This includes the loss of a linchpin farm subsidy - the Basic Payment Scheme (BPS) - which is in the final stages of being phased out and replaced with environmental options such as the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

From autumn of last year - the start of the farming season - fields have been flooded then repeatedly drenched. On light land, the extra rain is a blessing but on heavy clay farmers have faced a trying time in drilling the crops, seeing seedlings washed away and disease pressures due to the wet conditions.

"Like the rest of the industry I'm very tired. Everybody is worn out. We have had a hell of a battering this year from the weather and financially the loss of Basic Payment Scheme (BPS)," says John.

(Image: Sonya Duncan)

"There's a massive change to how the financial year works. BPS was very important to us from a production point of view.

"SFI hasn't replace BPS by any stretch of the imagination. There's no profit there and it's not supporting production. UK production this year is going to be as low as it has been for many, many years."

(Image: Sonya Duncan)

Wheat yields across his light land are coming in at a "very pleasing" 8.5t/ha. "The heavy land would normally do 10t/has but I suspect it will do 7t/ha because it's had such an amount of water," he says.

Next year "extensification" - the opposite of intensive farming - may be on the cards - but John feels uneasy about where this is taking UK food production.

"Offsetting our environmental footprint to somewhere else in the world is a difficult balance. I am not sure we have got it right at the moment. My personal feeling is the system currently is not delivering what the consumer will ultimately require."

(Image: Sonya Duncan)

Now a welcome dry spell has meant that farmers have been able to go at harvest full pelt.

They have their fingers crossed that their luck will hold and they can finish the season on a high.

Kit Papworth farms a total of nearly 1250ha of land near Aylsham in north Norfolk. His rape and winter barley is already in the barn and this week he was waiting for the wheat to ripen.

"We are a light land farm so wet years kind of work for us," he says.  But the hot, sunny days which help bring crops on have not materialised this season. Instead it has been a "fairly rubbish year" with a wet autumn and spring.

"Winter barley is just average which is a miracle really," he says. "Oilseed rape yields seem to be OK."

Wheat makes up almost half his combinable crops area. He's feeling optimistic and relieved given the terrible autumn and spring weather. But prices are "rubbish", he says. "Financially, it's all pretty dire at the moment. There really is very little that's doing well apart from sugar beet."

The price of wheat needs to come up £100/t "which is just not going to happen", he says.  "We are having to look at alternatives and give serious consideration to government schemes. We have to be really, really good and hugely lucky."

(Image: Sonya Duncan)

John Collen - who farms at Wortham, near Diss - has been bringing in his winter barley then his spring barley before starting in on the wheat.

On the barley, one or two fields were "disappointing" but the majority were yielding around 8.5t/9t/ha - "nothing amazing but far more respectable than we thought". He is reaping the rewards of grass weed control last autumn, he says.

His oilseed rape has also done better than he expected at 3.5t/ha compared to 2.5t/ha.

But the price of wheat as he turns his combines to that crop is an issue. It's around £180/t - covering the cost of his production but no more. From the £350/t highs of May/June 2023, it's a massive drop.

(Image: Sonya Duncan)

"Every day it goes down," he says. "We are just struggling as to why there's so much negativity in the market. The French are talking about a 30% reduction (in tonnage)."

In the UK, in a good year there would be a 14m tonne crop but a 10m tonne crop is being forecast, he says. But there's a lot of grain still in storage in the UK, he adds. 

At Walpole, near Halesworth, James Porter is still waiting for his wheat to ripen but hopes it will be ready to combine next week - about the time they would normally bring it in.

It has been a difficult year for crops with the wet weather, he admits.

"Last harvest was a wettish harvest to get it off in the first place. Drilling wasn't too bad then it rained and rained and rained and didn't stop," he says.

"Disease pressures have been high so we have had to spend more on fungicides so it's cost us more money to grow the crops.

"Considering the weather we have had it's looking respectable. I think we are going to be average or below average.

"I think it's going to be a field to field scale. Some are going to be above average and some below," he says.

"When we had that rain in the autumn I didn't think they would like like they do now. They have recovered remarkably well."

But last year while they were averaging £198t/ha for wheat they are now looking at lower returns against a backdrop of higher costs, he says.

So far their top oilseed rape fields have yielded 3.5t/ha but the overall average was £3t/ha, he adds.

"I don't think it'll be a complete disaster," he says of the wheat harvest to come. "Pricing is down which is a bit worrying with all the inputs up but hopefully that can swing the other way."