Category: Arable

Twenty nine new varieties have been added to the AHDB’s Recommended Lists for cereal and oilseeds 2017/18 whilst 28 varieties have been removed.  This year sees the addition of six soft wheats whose markets include distilling, soft biscuit wheat for export and soft endosperm feed.  This is the first time for four years additions to this category have been seen.

For winter wheat, the overall list increases by five.  New varieties include KWS Zyatt a provisional nabim Group 1 high yielding, high quality bread making wheat.  Two new spring varieties have also been introduced.  KWS Cochise and KWS Chilham are both high yielding nabim Group 2 milling wheats and can actually be drilled in autumn or spring (useful for crop diversification?) due to having orange wheat blossom midge resistance.  The new wheat varieties all show good resistance to yellow rust, having ratings of between 7 and 9.  This year Septoria tritici ratings are now reported to one decimal place, with eight of the new varieties having resistance scores between 6.2 and 7.3. In addition this year’s list also shows the percentage protein achieved in milling trials.

The new oilseeds list sees a balance between yields and resistance.  The new varieties show good resistance to light leaf spot and phoma stem canker.  Three new winter feed barley varieties have been added; KWS Creswell is a two-row feed variety for the north, Funky is a six row conventional and Sunningdale is a six-row hybrid variety.

A summary of the new AHDB Recommended Lists can be found on the AHDB website at https://cereals.ahdb.org.uk/press/2016/november/28/six-new-soft-feed-wheats-join-new-rl.aspx  The full AHDB Recommended Lists booklet will be distributed in early 2017.

As expected, the final estimates for the 2016 Scottish cereals and oilseed rape harvest confirm it was a poor year.  The cereals harvest is put at 5% lower than the 10 year average; down 11% compared to 2015.  Both yields and area were lower than in 2015.  The total cereal area decreased by 3% to 428,000 Ha; yields were 5.4 tonnes per hectare for spring barley and 8.4 tonnes per hectare for wheat.  This has resulted in a15% fall to 1.3m tonnes for spring barley production, Scotland’s most important cereal crop.  Winter barley and wheat production have declined 19% (to 329,000 tonnes) and 9% (to 926,000 tonnes) respectively.  Only oats bucked the trend with the crop yielding 200,000 tonnes for the first time since the early 1970’s.

Oilseed rape production was the lowest since records began in 1992.  The average yield was just 3.3t/Ha resulting in total production of 102,000 tonnes.  There was no specific weather event which affected production, it was a combination of factors, with less than ideal weather at seed bed preparation time, overall growing conditions were not great and the weather at harvest was challenging.

The 2016 British potato crop will be the fourth lowest since the 1960’s according to the first estimate produced by AHDB Potatoes.  Whilst the planted area is 4% up on 2015 at 116,000 hectares, yields look set to disappoint.  Average yields are 8% down year-on-year at 44.9 tonnes per Ha – the lowest since the 2012 harvest.   Total production is put at 5.22 million tonnes, well below the 10-year average.  Similar trends in output are evident across North West Europe.  Usually, when the GB harverst is low, it draws in imports from continental Europe.  But with reduced volumes in countries such as Belgium an the Netherlands, plus the effect of the weak Pound, there has actually been a strong export trade so far this season.  All this has helped to push market values up to high levels.

In commenting on current grain markets, we could simply cut-and-paste from the articles produced over the last two or three months – all the same factors continue to prevail.  As previously outlined, there is fundamentally plenty of grain in the world.  The USDA increased its forecasts for both wheat production and year-end stocks again this month.  After the initial shock of the Trump victory, the Dollar has strengthened, hitting the competitiveness of US exports.  All this keeps the ‘base’ price for wheat at low levels.  However, both the EU and the UK markets have been shielded from these falls.  The European wheat market is considerably tighter than the US.  This is a combination of lower output from the last harvest, and high volumes of exports as a result of favourable currency movements.  This is especially true of higher-quality wheats.  This latter point has benefitted the UK, where our quality has generally been far better than continental harvests.  The export campaign has been good so far, of course helped by the weakness of Sterling.

However, UK wheat is starting to become uncompetitive on export markets as domestic prices rise on the lack of availability, and the slight firming of Sterling over recent weeks.

Oilseed prices remain robust.  In the US the Government has mandated a higher-than-expected quantity of biofuels for the coming year, pushing up soya values.  In the EU, planted areas of oilseed rape are reported to be down in both France and Germany, as well as here in the UK.  Whilst Paris prices have reached two-year highs, the effect on the UK market has been muted by the uplift in Sterling.

The AHDB’s Early Bird Survey (EBS) has been published.  It shows the wheat area for harvest 2017 marginally lower, with larger declines in the oilseed rape, winter barley and pulse areas.  The area of spring barley is forecast to rise again.

The survey is undertaken by the Association of Independent Crop Consultants (AICC) and The Andersons Centre each autumn and in the past has provided accurate figures at an early stage in the cropping year.  Data has been gathered from 262,500 hectares of arable land across GB to assess national cropping intentions.  The table below shows the estimated crop areas for 2017 when the EBS results are overlaid onto the UK provisional June 2016 crop area figures.

EARLY BIRD SURVEY (EBS) ESTIMATES OF GB CROP AREAS FOR HARVEST 2017
‘000 hectares	DEFRA June Survey 2016	EBS Forecast Harvest 2017	Change
All Wheat	1,824	1,799	-1%
Winter Barley	438	397	-9%
Spring Barley	685	799	17%
Oats	141	130	-8%
Other Cereals	41	44	7%
OSR	579	557	-4%
Other Oilseeds	28	54	95%
Pulses	230	216	-6%
Arable Fallow	251	214	-15%
Other Crops on Arable Land	333 ¹	364 ²	9%
Total	4,550	4,574
Source: DEFRA /The Andersons Centre ¹ Sugar beet, potatoes & vegetable; ² Sugar beet, potatoes, maize, vegetables, roots & other stock feed

The results show that the wheat area is forecast to fall marginally compared with last year to 1.8 million hectares; this is 4% below the five-year average.  The wheat area also includes spring wheat which, anecdotally, is reported to continue to be rising.

The winter barley area is expected to decline by about 9%.  Conversely, the spring barley area is forecast to continue to increase, up by 17% compared to last harvest.  This gives the highest spring barley area since the late 1980’s (apart from harvests 2001 and 2013 when poor planting conditions in the previous autumn led to an unusual increase in spring cropping).  However, it is possible that some spring barley could be swapped for spring wheat if the price spread between wheat and barley continues.

This autumn, drilling conditions in most parts of the UK have been good, (apart from a few areas being dry) which means that the majority of planned winter cropping should have taken place.  These sorts of conditions usually see high winter wheat and winter OSR plantings.  The increase in spring cropping is therefore due to reasons other than poor drilling conditions and is more than likely due to black grass control.

The oilseed rape area is anticipated to fall again; this is the fifth consecutive year that the area has fallen and is the lowest since 2004.  The overall forecast decline of 4% masks key regional differences.  In the West Midlands, South and Scotland the area is expected to actually increase on the back of better prices (especially compared to the economics of alternative break crops).  But in the East, the area is down by 28%, as producers struggle with flea beetle and dry conditions at drilling.

After seeing significant rises in 2015 and 2016 the pulse area is forecast to fall by 6%.  This would be back to 2015 levels, but still well above the five-year average.  It seems whilst many were using pulses to meet their EFA requirements, lacklustre pricesfor the crop has seen producers find alternative options to meet these measures.  Fallow land is seen to be declining by 15%, probably due to markets looking better for most combinable crops and a lower uptake of agri-environmental schemes.  The area for ‘other crops’ has been less reliable in previous years, but is expected to increase mainly driven by a rise in maize plantings and temporary grass destined for anaerobic digestion plants or for weed control.