Comment – SFI and all that..

I’m not going to say that Spring is in the air just yet, but the snowdrops are up and the daffodils are starting to poke out (no blooms yet though in the frozen north). Thank goodness for something to look forward to.

In other news, social media is awash with chatter (some reliable, some not) on the possible convergence of straw and grain prices. For the uninitiated, this is when straw is that dear (or grain is that cheap) that they almost cost the same. This phenomena becomes a ‘thing’ with a cold wet winter. No surprise this year.

Elsewhere my spies tell me that 2024 harvest looks a lot like winter wheat and spring barley, not a lot of oilseed rape (for obvious reasons), and not a lot of other traditional break crops, and why would you? With a guaranteed £853/Ha income for winter bird food, why not take out the marginal arable land from the rotation and lock in some decent income, and a reset for the land before a decent yielding first wheat?

I was with an arable contractor earlier this week, tooled up for c 1000Ha of whole farm stubble to stubble work, and he reckons this years harvest will be squeezed into 4 weeks of combining said barley and wheat, over say 65-70% of his usual area. So a tighter harvest window for his existing combines, and a more concentrated workload.

Why am I telling you this? Well if the cropped area is down nationally, machine replacement cycles may stretch, spare part and wearing metal sales could stagnate and whilst farmers lock in their profits with the Sustainable Farming Incentive,it could be hard work persuading them to invest in replacement kit.

Perhaps an oversimplification, but it’s going to be an interesting year.

Have a good week, I’m off to the Penrith machinery sale to look for a cheap Magnum.

Andy