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2008 A harvest from heaven; a
harvest from hell. A year to remember and
a year to forget. I have never known anything like it since I started farming
thirty six years ago. We produced more wheat than we
have ever grown before, and we sold it at a higher price than we have ever
done before. So it stands to reason that it was a wonderful year. But it was
not. Never have I known a
year in which rampant optimism turned to cringing pessimism within the space
of three months. In May every British arable farmer was feeling more cheerful
than he had been for a generation. By September suicide seemed to be a
sensible option for many. The weather throughout
the growing season was as near perfect as it could possibly have been. From
early September when the first oilseed rape germinated until late June when
the wheat started to turn from green to gold, all the crops on this farm
looked magnificent. Indeed they looked damned well perfect. This was because
for once in a lifetime we had precisely the right amount of rain at precisely
the right moments throughout the year. But it was not simply that the fields
looked so wonderful which made me a happy bunny this
spring. (And talking of bunnies, we have been overrun by the little pests to
such an extent that we lost 12 acres of oilseed rape and had to spend a lot
of money on rabbit fencing and a devilish machine called a Rodenator
which explodes underground burrows). The other cause of this farmerÕs
happiness was economic rather than meteorological.
The prices of every crop were higher than they had ever been. On March 6th I actually sold one single and solitary load (29
tonnes) of wheat for £200 per tonne. The contract is today framed on the wall
of the farm office. Bear in mind that two years ago wheat was worth around £70
per tonne. With prices like that who needs drugs? Or alcohol? Or pornography? And then in May it all
began to go wrong. The first sign was that the price of wheat continued fall.
It had, admittedly, done so for some weeks but I reassured myself that this
was just a momentary blip, a temporary adjustment. Yet each day a tonne of
wheat was worth maybe 50p less than the day before – and sometimes a
lot less than that. But by then I had already sold forward what I assumed
would be 80% of our harvest, so I was not unduly worried. And at least the
growing crops still looked magnificent. Harvest was late this
year, starting on July 17th. The oilseed rape yields were only average
but we were eagerly looking forward to the wheats. I had announced with great
gravitas and pomposity that since the price of diesel fuel was now over 60p
per litre we were definitely not going to use the drier. Instead we would let
God (and the sun) do the work. We started cutting wheat at the end of July in
order to fulfill a contract. The crop was not totally ripe so my good
intentions about the drier were immediately forgotten. The yields were,
however, gob-smacking and it soon became clear that
we would be facing a very big harvest indeed. The yields were so big, in
fact, that we could barely store 75% of the wheat. Which meant that we were
forced to sell around a thousand tonnes into a still falling market. But, as
it happened, this was no hardship because, thanks to the almost continuous
rain, there emerged what the old corn merchants used to call a Òweather
marketÓ. For a period of maybe ten days in early August the price of wheat
rose sharply as mills scratched round for supplies which
had been delayed by the rain. It was during this period I managed to
sell the remaining 20% of our harvest. Seven weeks later, on
September 16th, we finished harvest – some two
weeks later than normal. The reason for this delay was that throughout August and early September it
rained almost every day. We were thus forced to dry every single tonne of
wheat we cut. Morale hit rock bottom when one trailer full of wheat
registered 27.1% moisture (wheat must be dried to at least 15% before it is
sold). Our 25 year old Law-Denis grain drier was the
single most important piece of equipment on the farm. Amidst the encircling
gloom there was, however, one moment when the sun came out. Well, not a sun but a granddaughter, Lilah, who appeared just after
midnight on August 11th Although our harvest
was by far the most difficult in recent history, I should remind myself that
compared to the west and the north of Britain, at Thriplow we at had it easy.
I should also remind myself that not only did we produce 550 tonnes more
wheat than we have ever done before, but we also sold the entire crop forward
at the highest price, averaging £136, we have ever received. For this reason
I am happy (and even a bit proud) to admit that 2008 has been the most
profitable year this farm has ever known. All of which explains why this
yearÕs harvest was from both heaven and hell. But I must stress that
anybody reading this report should bear in mind that our results at Thriplow
are not, repeat not, remotely typical of British agriculture in 2008. We were
lucky. Many – maybe most - of my fellow farmers were not. WHEAT An average yield of
10.4 tonnes per hectare across the farm was second only to the 10.7 tonnes we
achieved in 1999. However, since there was no setaside this year, our total
production of 4400 tonnes was substantially bigger than it had been in 1999. Oakley
produced an amazing 12.0 tonnes per hectare, followed by Humber
at 11.6, Glasgow at 10.9, Robigus at 10.6, Einstein
(all second wheats) 9.5 and Sogood, which was sown on January
18th after sugar beet, still managed a very respectable
7.8 tonnes per hectare. We were lucky to have combined most of our wheat in
between storms before the serious monsoon struck. This fact meant that the
quality of the grain was reasonably good even though it had all gone through
the drier. One of the mysteries of this harvest was that the southern end of
the farm with its thin soil actually enjoyed better yields than the northern end which we usually consider to be our best wheat land.
It all goes to show what can be achieved if the rain falls at precisely the
right time throughout the growing season. OILSEED RAPE Like the wheat,
oilseed rape looked magnificent throughout the growing season. But from May
onwards it became clear that once again we were suffering from the disease
called Sclerotinia. As a result the yields suffered substantially and we only
managed to produce 3.4 tonnes per hectare – which is marginally above
our ten year average. Unlike the wheat, I sold 75%
of the oilseed rape crop pretty disastrously,
achieving a price of £220 per tonne. Had I waited another six months I
could have made £360 per tonne. This was the one black spot in my sales
performance this year. SUGAR BEET Last year was the best
sugar beet year we have ever enjoyed, with a yield of 81 tonnes per hectare
– compared to our five year average of 66
tonnes/hectare. Yet in spite of this achievement we shall be reducing our
sugar beet acreage by 25% next year since the price has fallen from £36 per
tonne to £26 per tonne in about five years (during which time the cost of all
our inputs have risen sharply). Indeed sugar beet is now very definitely on
probation at Thriplow and it may well be that we stop growing it completely
unless the economics improve dramatically. In order to achieve
this I organised a meeting of sugar beet growers at Whittlesey in July. 300
farmers turned up and, as a result, both the NFU and British Sugar returned
to the negotiating table. The upshot was that the price we were offered for
our beet next year rose by £2 per tonne. Since British Sugar processes
roughly 7 million tonnes of beet annually, this meeting resulted in British
sugar beet growers receiving an additional £14 million. It was a fascinating
- and somewhat surprising - experience of farmer power. BEANS Another crop which did
better than normal. The Wizard winter beans produced 4.9 tonnes per
hectare, compared to our average yield of 3.9 tonnes per hectare. However,
the price of £165 per tonne was actually worse than last year. We will grow
more beans next year (as will many arable farmers) because they leave a lot
of nitrogen in the soil for the following cereal crop. And with the price of
nitrogen fertiliser today this is not to be sneezed at. PEAS For the first time in
four years we grew a field of peas. The variety was called Prophet.
Had it been called Profit it would have been misleading. Like every
crop on the farm, the peas looked excellent until the monsoon flattened all
the plants so that when we came to combine the field we left around a third
of the crop lying on the ground. We also managed to clog up the combine with
so much mud that it took four men an entire day to clean out the innards. In
spite of this the peas yielded a faintly respectable 3.6 tonnes per hectare.
We will grow more peas next year because, like beans, peas also enable us to
buy less nitrogen fertiliser. SETASIDE The fact that the
world appeared to be running out of food persuaded Brussels to abolish
setaside this year. We were happy because it enabled us to grow an additional
68 hectares of wheat. MACHINERY Two years ago we
replaced three of our four tractors and so did not need to join the very long
queues at machinery dealers along with every other farmer in Britain who was
replacing his tackle after five dismal years. We did, however, buy one new Vaderstad
Carrier cultivator which has proved
exceptionally useful on our minimum tillage (i.e. no ploughing) system. LIVERY STABLES After last yearÕs
splurge on a new manege and five more stables, this year has been quiet and
uneventful. Long may it stay that way. THE FUTURE In last yearÕs report
I finished by writing ÒThe question which obsesses every farmer in Britain
- and indeed the world - today is a simple one. Will the price of all grains
(not simply wheat) stay high? Or will it fall back to more ÒreasonableÓ
levelsÓ .
The answer, we now know, is the latter. Last year wheat was worth £150 a
tonne. Today it is worth £80. But the outlook is far
worse than this single figure suggests. The cost of my inputs for next yearÕs
harvest has gone completely crazy. Take fertiliser for example. We use three
different types - nitrogen, phosphate and potash. Last year I paid £180 a
tonne for nitrogen (urea); the cost today is £450. Last year I paid £180
for potash; this year it costs £580. Last year I paid £260 for phosphate;
this year it costs £690. As a result it is estimated that the breakeven price
of a tonne of wheat next harvest will be around £120. The forward price for
November 2009 today is £109/tonne. If I were a rational
economic animal I would have not planted a single grain of wheat in the
ground this autumn. But being a stupid clod-hopping farmer, I did what the
hymn says, I ploughed the field and scattered the good seed on the land. More
fool me. Nevertheless I suppose
I should be grateful that in the global economic slump
which now seems inevitable, farmers, along with politicians,
prostitutes and psychiatrists, should remain relatively unscathed. Always
assuming that the human race wishes to survive. O.W. November 2008 (The 35th consecutive Annual Report) |
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