THRIPLOW FARMS

 

2003

 

THE PRICE OF WHEAT DOUBLES (ALMOST)

 

It was a year full of extremes. Some nice, some nasty but all totally unexpected. First was the weather, which these days we can conveniently blame on global warming but I suspect was simply the result of random meteorological chance of the sort which must have happened many times over many millennia. When primitive man experienced a ludicrously cold winter or a stifling summer (as he surely did) he cursed the gods. Today we are somewhat sceptical about divine intervention in such matters but instead have global warming to blame.

 

The year began with widespread flooding which lasted through the spring and ensured that some fields lost up to 20% of the crop. Spring was roughly normal, but then came the hottest and driest summer of recent times. At 3pm on August 10^th the temperature in the shade reached 36.5 degrees Celsius. Harvest was simplicity itself. Most of the wheat came in at around 12% moisture but was often very hot indeed. On a couple of days the incoming grain temperatures (from an unshaded field) exceeded forty degrees Celsius. Of course, no drying was necessary. Indeed this was the year when we should have owned a wetting device which sprinkles water on the parched grains to bring them up to the 15% moisture which our contracts stipulate. The only time the combine ever stopped was when it broke down for a day. After nine harvests of faultless behaviour we can’t complain. Thank you Mr. Claas.

 

If harvest was the easiest on record, then the autumn was the most difficult – for precisely the same reason. The drought continued for a further three months. We planted the oilseed rape in somewhat cloddy seedbeds towards the end of August, and two months later the seeds had yet to germinate. Likewise the wheat was drilled in the last two weeks of September and then proceeded to sit in the Sahara-like soil doing nothing at all until the rains finally came in November. All of which explains why the farm at the time of writing in the second week of December looks as it normally does in the second week of October. What effect this will have on next harvest’s yields is impossible to predict, but it will have done nothing to increase yields.

 

If the weather came as a surprise it was nothing compared to what happened to prices. At harvest time the price of wheat was maybe £5 a tonne higher than it had been twelve months earlier. We sold a fair slug of wheat straight off the combine in the first week of August for £78 per tonne and the remainder was sold forward for November at the pretty good price of £80 per tonne. The milling wheat also went in November for £91 per tonne. I was a happy bunny, safe in the knowledge that I had once again been extraordinarily shrewd.

 

And then in September strange things started to happen. The causes were many and varied (supply, demand, politics etc.) but the effect was that the price of wheat today is £106 per tonne, some 90% higher than twelve months ago. I am not a happy bunny.

 

WHEAT (Subsidy = £250/ha.)

 

Considering the drought, our average yield of 8.1 tonnes per hectare on light Thriplow land was not too disastrous. Indeed it is only slightly below our long-term average. Far worse was the fact that, due to our radical overhaul of the crop rotation (almost no second wheats, no barley and no peas), we were growing ten percent less wheat than normal. Robigus, like all our wheats except Napier, was bred here in Thriplow, and was the only real success, averaging 9.6 tonnes/ha. Malacca loved the sunshine and produced wonderful milling quality but a fairly dismal 7.6 tonnes/ha. Access was disappointing at 8 tonnes/ha and Macro did only fractionally better. Poor old Napier never rally stood a chance as it was our second wheat and struggled to make 7.3 tonnes/ha.

 

Next year we shall continue with Robigus in a big way, keep Macro to get an early crop to sell in August, and persevere with Malacca to spread our risks. The one different variety we shall be growing is Einstein, which appeals to me as it is – by pure coincidence - my grandmother’s family name. Imagine how surprised a nice New York Jewish family back in 1850 would be to know that 150 years later there would be a wheat called by their name. Clearly Einstein will make superb matzos.

 

OILSEED RAPE (Subsidy £250/ha)

 

Not a great year with a disappointing yield of 3.2 tonnes per hectare, down by almost one tonne from 2002. Individual yields are impossible to assess because flooding affected some fields very badly indeed. The only consolation was that two thirds of the crop remain unsold, and even though the price has not skyrocketed like wheat, it is still around 20% higher than last year. This year the minimal tillage (scratching the surface of the soil) crops outyielded the direct-drilled (planting straight into the untouched stubble) ones. This result is in direct contrast to last year’s results, so we are more confused than ever. As far as varieties are concerned, next year we shall be harvesting Winner and Caracas.

 

BEANS (Subsidy = £287/ha.)

 

Last year I wrote that “beans were also a disappointment at 4.6 tonnes per hectare”. This year they yielded a mere 4.1 tonnes per hectare, so we are even more gloomy. Yet their long-term average over a decade makes them preferable to peas, which is why we have dropped the latter completely and will persevere with the former. Once again we have used our own farm-saved Punch seed which (Deo Gratias) still shows no signs of aschochyta or any of the other nasties which sometimes affect seed which has been grown many times.

 

SUGAR BEET (No acreage subsidy but a quota of 2400 tonnes at a fixed price of about £30 per tonne)

 

Sugar beet hates drought so I was bracing myself for a pretty unpleasant year. As usual, I was wrong. Yields have been as good as ever at around 62 tonnes/hectare. The reason for this is that although the root weight has been relatively low the sugar content has been higher than ever before at just under 20%. This means that yet again we shall produce a lot more than our quota of 3400 tonnes. This surplus will be worth peanuts. At the time of writing we still have 20 hectares still in the ground and about 600 tonnes to reach our quota. The question is whether or not we lift the beet before Christmas and then store them in a clamp, or whether we leave them in the ground and lift them in late January. Either course of action is fraught with danger. The beet can easily heat and go mouldy in the clamp or freeze and go black in the field. This is the sort of question which makes farming interesting.

 

SETASIDE (Subsidy = £232/hectare)

 

To begin with Brussels yet again instructed us to set aside at least ten percent of the farm as our entry ticket into the subsidy game. Then came this year’s poor harvest across Europe and the experts decided that next year the EU will need a bit more cereals. Thus it now seems likely that setaside will be reduced to 5%.

 

FALLOW (Subsidy = £525/hectare)

 

Not to be confused with setaside. We are members of the Arable Stewardship Scheme which rewards us for being environmentally benign. As a result we are paid £525/hectare for leaving six metre grass strips round the outside of some fields, £600/hectare for beetle banks between fields and £12/hectare for not applying insecticides to some headlands. We are also paid £525/hectare for leaving a field fallow for a year in an attempt to attract some of the traditional birds such as grey-legged partridges and stone curlews which once were common on the south Cambridgeshire chalks. Experts are using the skylark population as the benchmark of success. No news yet from the experts who will one day tell us if the scheme has in fact succeeded. The good news is that this year the experts have decided that the bird population in the British countryside has stopped falling and is now stable. Part of the cause must be the Arable Stewardship Scheme, so maybe we’ve made a small contribution.

 

MACHINERY

 

Once again we have bought no machinery whatsoever. However, we have made up for this uncharacteristic restraint by ordering a new combine which will cost roughly £250,000 and will be delivered in time for next harvest. The Claas Lexion 580 will have a 512 horsepower engine, a thirty foot header and will run on rubber tracks rather than wheels. The reason for this is that now we plough less and use what is known as minimal cultivations; the less heavy weights we put on the soil the better condition is the following seedbed.

 

THE FUTURE

 

There is only one question on every farmer’s mind today. Is the massive rise in grain prices merely a temporary blip or is it the beginning of a sustained upward trend? You can cite statistics to support either of these possibilities, which is why even the canniest grain trader has not the slightest idea. Besides, the greatest single factor is the size of next year’s world harvest, and that will remain unknown for over six months.

 

For no valid reason I am moderately optimistic. The price of commodities such as wheat usually go in cycles – albeit highly irregular ones – and it would seem likely that last year’s price of £55 per tonne was the lowest point in the deepest trough. Thus I reckon the direction now will be upwards, though not necessarily at the speed we have seen the last six months. In the meanwhile we have sold a couple of hundred tonnes of next harvest’s wheat at £94/tonne for the first week of August 2004. As far as the rest of the crop is concerned, I’m sitting tight.

 

The main concern today is the so-called Mid-Term Review of the CAP. It is certain that from 2005 onwards the link between subsidy and production will be cut (or de-coupled to use the official jargon). This is clearly good news and sensible because it connects us farmers directly to the marketplace rather than simply growing crops which will attract the highest subsidies. The question which is now occupying the brains (?) of the experts is whether to give us a subsidy based on what we have received in the past or whether to spread the subsidy evenly across the acres in a particular region. We at Thriplow would prefer the former but some farmers (like vegetable producers) who traditionally received no subsidies, are hoping for the latter system. Watch this space.

 

Twenty nine years ago I wrote the first of what have since become these Annual Reports. The original edition was not for public consumption but was for members of the staff, who at that time numbered twenty five (compared to three today). We were living in a different age on a different planet in a different solar system. This is what it said:-

 

1974

 

Prices have remained high this year and yields of wheat have been very good. Barley yields, due largely to the poor performance of Proctor and Berac, have been below average and for this reason we shall not be growing any Proctor next year. This marks the end of a 21 year period during which Proctor was the mainstay of this and many other East Anglian farms. We have also decided to cut down on Berac which is being outclassed by some of the newer varieties. Instead we shall concentrate on Otter, Mazurka and Mink with the two new varieties being Maris Trojan and Aramir, a high yielding feed barley. As far as the wheat is concerned we shall be growing MarisHuntsman and the two new semi-dwarf varieties, Maris Hobbit and Maris Fundin.

 

Yields this year were:

 

Proctor 27 cwt (3.3 t/ha).         Berac 28.5 cwt (3.5 t/ha).          Freeman 45cwt (5.6 t/ha)

Mink 39cwt (4.8 t/ha)

 

Otter 32 cwt (3.95 t/ha).        Mazurka 33 cw (4 t/ha)t            Huntsman 55cwt (6.8 t/ha)

 

SUGAR BEET

 

The one black spot in the farm’s performance. A dry spring caused poor germination of the plant and no germination of the weeds (hence the failure of the sprays). A very severe attack of virus yellows held back growth and, ~-as if this were not enough, we have had the wettest autumn on record. It is estimated that the yield will average less than 8 tons per acre (19.75 t/ha) compared to our normal of over 11 tons (27 t/ha).

 

MUSTARD

 

Prices were reasonably good at £120 per cwt but yields were disappointing at under 8 cwt. per acre. Next year the price looks like being worse because of a surplus in the world so we shall not be growing so much.

 

HERBAGE SEED

 

Good prices (£23 per cwt) and some heroic work on the combines in difficult conditions resulted in a successful crop. The yield of clean dry seed was 6 cwt. per acre and we managed to avoid the drying problems we have had in previous years. Prices next year will be down and so we shall have to hope for increased yields to make up the difference

 

CROP DRIER

 

After all the uncertainties due to fuel costs rocketing by almost 200%, we can claim that the first year of operation was success. Not only did we manage to produce around 700 tons in 1000 hours, but the fodder shortage has meant that the price has been higher than anticipated. But next year it will probably fall to a more realistic (at least for the livestock farmers in the west) level of £50 per ton. We are aiming at 1000 tons in 1500 hours.

 

MAIZE

 

The wet autumn has meant that this crop cannot be counted as a success this year.

 

HAY AND SILAGE

 

A year in which hay costs 50% more than barley will never come again. Thus we were lucky to have lost only 25 acres of hay to the weather and to have stacked the rest of the crop properly. The silage in the tower seems to be excellent but that in the clamp was severely damaged by the wet weather over the Whitsun weekend. There is no doubt that in the future we shall have to take silage making more seriously. However, with an outside clamp it is impossible to eliminate the weather completely.

 

LIVESTOCK

 

The dairy can be proud of the fact that our mastitis problem seems to be under control for the first time in some years, which is no small achievement. Calf rearing continues to be very satisfactory although there have been some problems with first calvings. For this reason an Angus bull has been bought which should produce easier calves. Milk yields still have room for improvement. One bright spot is the grassland management of the paddocks which has resulted in efficient use of available grazing even in a dry spring like this year.

 

The beef unit continues to expand rapidly and was fortunate to avoid selling animals during the period of very low prices this year. We shall, however, have to sell a lot of cattle next spring when the price will be, hopefully, higher.

 

MACHINERY

 

The following new equipment was purchased this year:- 1 Claas Apollo Mobile Crop Drier, 2 Taarup Forage Harvesters, 1 Colman forage box, 1 Fyson elevator, 1 Bentall rolling mill, 1 Parmiter post driver, 1 John Deere 6 furrow plough, 1 Massey Ferguson 5 furrow plough, 1 Massey Ferguson 1200 tractor, 1 Ford 8600 tractor, 1 Ford 3000 tractor and 2 Ford 5000 tractors due later this year.

 

WEATHER

 

We have broken three records so far this year. May was the driest on record and September and November were the wettest. The first five months saw 5 inches of rain and the last five months saw 17.5 inches. Up to the end of November we have had just over 25 inches this year compared with our normal for a year of just under 20 inches.

 

THE FUTURE

 

After two good years the outlook is not very encouraging unless corn prices continue to rise rapidly in step with other costs, and this does not seem likely. To give some idea of the problem, it now costs £25 per acre for sugar beet fertiliser excluding the nitrogen. A new Ford 5000 costs £3,500. Thus we have to assume that next year will not be a comfortable one. However, for this reason we have been investing considerable sums to ensure that the farm is both well-equipped and has good buildings for the years ahead. Next year we shall be moving the Duxford and Foxton grainstores to Thriplow and will be erecting a large shed which will house the dried grass and most of the machinery. But there are many other needed improvements which can only be brought about if the farm continues to prosper.