FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS

The year began with wheat prices moving sharply upwards. The world was running out of grain, demand was overwhelming supply, and optimism - at least in this part of the country - spread like listeria on soft cheese. By May the price of wheat touched £130 per tonne and it was clear that it could only move in one direction; upwards. The price of land - which, for some strange reason,  inevitably reflects the wheat price - sailed through the £3000 per acre barrier, and for the first time in almost two decades, there was a waiting list for certain tractors. Even the gloomiest arable farmer (and I have yet to meet one who does come into this category) had to admit that the future rarely seeme d brighter.

But the good news was not over yet. A weak sterling and a generous CAP combined to ensure that our subsidies were certainly no lower than they had been the year before - and in some cases were actually higher.

It is, however, worth remembering that not all farmers felt this way. Our livestock comrades - at least those who keep cattle - had absolutely nothing to cheer about. High grain prices mean high feed prices, so beef producers were unhappy even before BSE appeared out of a clear blue sky. Now  they are suicidal.

But as harvest approached it was hard - indeed impossible - not to be absurdly cheerful.

And then it all began to go wrong. At first it was so slow that nobody really noticed. The wheat price stopped rising and started to fall back. The experts announced that this was the normal temporary reaction to a good harvest and the further outlook remained excellent. But as August gave way to September it became clear that the falling wheat price was pi cking up speed like a runaway train without brakes. November wheat, which I had stupidly refused to sell when I was offered £120 just after the New Year, hovered briefly around £100 before plunging into double figures and continuing downward. Today, with only a couple of weeks left in the year, you would be lucky to get £90 per tonne. Which is why the experts are as pessimistic in December as they were optimistic in January.

So what went wrong? Nobody quite knows. Maybe the spec ulators drove the markets up. (All farmers love to blame ìthe speculatorsî). Maybe this yearís harvests in America, Australia and Europe were better than predicted. Maybe the grain-importing world was not quite as hungry as we had thought. But whatever the reason, the effect is all too clear. We have experienced the biggest slide in prices for the last fifty years and, as a result, there are a lot of unhappy farmers re-working their budgets. Modesty forbids me to describe in any detail how we survive d the debacle, but suffice it to say that 95% of our harvest was sold forward early in the year, which may explain the rather relaxed tone of this Annual Report.

WHEAT (Subsidy = £109/acre or £269/ha.)

An overall yield of slightly above 7.8 tonnes/hectare was a smidgen better than last year, but still nothing spectacular. Once again we had a long spring drought which did a lot of damage to the crops on our thinnest land - most of which happened to be second wheats and were thus pretty disappointing. But as harvest progressed and we moved onto first wheats on the better land, the yields became quite respectable. The success of the year was the milling wheat, Rialto, which did 10.5 tonnes/hectare on one large field, averaged 8.8 tonnes/hectare across the farm and still produced proteins of above 11%. The other quality wheat, Cadenza, did disastrously, managing 5.1 tonnes/hectare. It was, however, drilled very late after sugar beet and attracted a lot of hungry crows. Riband a gain did well at 7.8 tonnes/hectare and has proved itself the most reliable variety over the past five years. Consort and Brigadier were both respectable at 7.7 tonnes/hectare and Hunter, which was all second year,  struggled a bit at 7.4 tonnes/hectare. Next year we shall be growing most of the same varieties, with Hunter and Cadenza disappearing and Charger - which was drilled after sugar beet on December 4th - bringing up the rear. Always assuming it survives the winter and the crows.

I nstead of chopping all of our straw behind the combine, this year we sold 800 acres of straw to a contractor who came in with a vast Hesston baler which travelled quite as fast as the combine. The experiment worked well and with the money we made we took everyone (plus spouses) to Paris for lunch on the Eurostar. Next year we might sell a few more acres and  stay for supper.

OILSEED RAPE (Subsidy = £192/acre or £475/ha)

A disaster, which was particularly distressing since e very other farmer in Britain had the best oilseed rape year ever. What went wrong? Even with the 20-20 hindsight which most farmers enjoy after harvest, it is hard to fathom. Maybe the herbicide dose was too high. Maybe the seedbed was less than perfect. Maybe we were just unlucky. But whatever the cause the result was a pathetic yield of 2.1 tonnes/hectare, our lowest ever. And to add insult to injury, Zeneca did not want the crop for seed and so we lost our seed premium of £80 per tonne. Next yearís crop, again Apex grown for seed, looks today as good as last yearís looked bad.

PEAS  (Subsidy = £157/acre or £389/ha)

No spring-drilled crops will ever flourish in a spring drought, which is why once again our Baccara peas were plain disappointing, averaging 3 tonnes/hectare. However, thanks to the wonderful CAP, the effect is cushioned by a generous subsidy of £157 per acre simply for planting the crop. If we had to rely on the world price without subsidies we would not even consider growing peas. As it is we are growing Punch winter beans for our legume next year.

SUGAR BEET (No acreage subsidy but a quota and a fixed price of about £36 per tonne)

The finest sugar beet year we are ever likely to experience in a lifetime - or maybe two lifetimes. The crop was drilled into a good seedbed at the right time of year (mid March) by our new sugar beet drill. But the summer was cool and dry, not the sort of weather to make a sugar beet happy. The August rains did, it is true, swell the roots a bit, and the fact that we had used the seedborne insecticide, Gaucho, might have helped. We certainly had no sign of the virus yellows which are often a problem. The sugar percentage on this farm usually starts off at around 18% when we begin lifting in late September, and by the time we stop at the end of the year it has fallen to nearer 15%. Our overall average in a normal year hovers around 16.5%. This year, with 86 loads delivered into the Bury St. Edmunds factory, we are averaging 19.9%. One of our loads actually contained 22.4% sugar, which is probably about as much as there is in a chocolate bar. What has made the position even happier is the fact that the actual root weights are very good too and - as if that were not enough - we planted 25% more acres than usual because we feared we would not produce enough to maintain our quota. The result is that we will have the biggest crop we have produced for decades. But this is not unalloyed jo y since we will easily exceed our quota and the 3000 tonnes of C (surplus) beet will fetch the very poor world market price.

SETASIDE (Subsidy = £138/acre or £341/ha)

Setaside originally started at 15% of our acreage and last year was reduced to 10%. This enabled us to leave our poorest fields in permanent setaside and to have only one field  as rotational. The partridges and other birds love it because we delay our mowing until the last possible moment to give them time t o hatch their young. Next year - as a result of the aforementioned optimism - Brussels has once again reduced setaside to 5% which means that we now only have two fields and a few little patches in the scheme. However, because of the aforementioned pessimism, it looks probable that Setaside may once again rise to 10% in an attempt to reduce grain production.

MACHINERY

For the first time in twenty years red tractors have appeared at Thriplow in the shape of two Massey Ferguson 6140s. These replaced two John Deere 2850s and are used mainly on the trailed 4000 litre Berthoud sprayers. We also bought was a 12 row Kleine sugar beet drill which replaced an ancient Stanhay. It is clear that the technology of beet drilling has moved on a lot in the last twenty years. Next time we wonít wait so long to buy a new drill. The only other piece of machinery which appeared was a second hand six-wheeled diesel-powered ATV which had been used as a dog mess vacuum-cleaner on Hampstead Heath. We hope to alter its purpose a bit and use it to take soil samples from all over the farm as our first step towards Precision Farming.

Our Claas Lexion 480, which last year had been new and rather disappointing, spent the winter being modified, and being fitted with a bigger engine. The effect was magical. Instead of struggling to achieve 28 tonnes/hour, it comfortably managed 40 tonnes/hour. It still prefers slightly damp conditions but it is more than happy when the sun comes out. As a result we are now extremely happy Claas customers and can recommend the machine to anyone who wants to replace two big combines with one giant one. The only disappointment is that the computerised yield-mapping using GPS satellites is still not working properly.

After endless discussions, we did not replace our 13 year old Moreau sugar beet harvester and have, as a result, found a contractor to lift our sugar beet. What should have been a straightforward management decision turned out to be oddly traumatic. Nev er before have we had to rely on an outsider to harvest our sugar beet and it seems strange to see a foreign machine at work on the farm.

THE FUTURE

Farming, like life itself, has its cycles. Some are slow and gentle while others are fast and dramatic. It rather looks as if we are entering the latter type. The next few years will see radical changes on every front. These will be fascinating to watch but possibly a bit confusing to cope with. The first of these has already started; the extr eme volatility of the market. As a result it will no longer be sufficient simply to be a good farmer; it will also be necessary to be a good marketer. You can grow the highest yields with the lowest costs but if you sell at the bottom of the market your skills will have been wasted.

Life will get tougher, not simply because of falling prices, but also because at long last the CAP subsidies will come down too. Much of this is due to the new strong sterling (a weak pound is good news for farmers), but Brussels has noticed that there has been a very slight imbalance to correct. All of which must make life less than fun for some tenant farmers whose new rents have just been raised by around 30% on the back of high wheat prices. Since then, of course, the prices have come down but the rents are locked in for the next three years.

As the cost and size of machinery increases (and who could ever have imagined that we would use a 30 foot header on a combine?) we will change our habits pretty d rastically. Already this year we have stopped lifting our own sugar beet and baling our own straw - both things which would have seemed inconceivable to my father in 1991. Will we store our own grain in the future or, like so many other parts of the world, use large grainstores built for a cooperative or a district?

Then there is the prospect of Precision Farming, which today is little more than a buzz-word but very soon will become a reality. The Global Positioning System (GPS) will eventually revolutionise farming quite as much as the internal combustion engine did a hundred years ago. This may sound like hyperbole, but if a combine harvester can tell where it is to within three feet, why will it need a driver? Likewise a ploughing tractor could be started in a field and left to its own devices until it has finished. None of this is science-fiction; the technology is already available today on an experimental basis and in less than ten years will be sufficiently reliable for the rough and dirty world of farming.

The effect of GPS will not simply be felt by the men who operate machines. It is already possible to make yield maps and soil maps of individual fields. When these have been collected for a few years and then overlaid to detect any patterns, it will be possible to adjust the rates of fertiliser and agrochemicals so that they are only used on the parts of the field where they are actually needed. This is good news because it will reduce both costs and pollution. The one w ill help the overdraft and the other the environment. Caring about the former will enable us to prosper. Caring about the latter will mean that we deserve to.
 

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