Forecast for crops as rain stays away

This spring we had the lowest rainfall in Yorkshire for 80 years. Green is now giving way to gold as thousands of acres ripen in the sun but many of these cereal crops have been hit by the lack of water and by the cold weather early in the growing season.

Farmer Richard Bramley, of Kelfield, near Cawood, says: "The normal growth stages that we might have expected to see at a particular calendar date just weren't happening. In the case of wheat, a lot of them were two weeks later."

He has 160 acres of milling wheat, 100 acres of winter barley and 40 acres of spring barley and adds: "The spring barley is going to be significantly affected, I think the yields are going to be a lot lower. There's going to be a lot less straw as well. The amount of straw is going to drop in all crops. The winter barley has ripened as normal really. I don't think the yields and the quality are going to be overly affected by it."

On a positive note, a month of further sunshine will make the harvest easier, allowing farmers to avoid having to use expensive fuel oil to dry the grain. And there could be other good news for cereal farmers in Yorkshire, according to Jack Watts, the senior market analyst for the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

"The price is looking a bit stronger," he says. "That is on the back of some 'dry-weather' fears across Europe and in the UK and in reaction to information which came out in the US."

Expectations are that dry weather will mean that the grain is less "plump" than it should be.

Bill Handley, a technical expert with the Home Grown Cereals Authority, says that the dry weather is stopping cereal crops from finishing properly and this may affect the quality of the grain. He also says it may now be too late for any last-minute rain to make much difference. "Even if we had rain now we would get more of a situation of secondary tillering rather than the main tillers getting the benefit of the rain."

Secondary tillering is when the plants grow extra shoots which can hamper the growth of the ear of the main shoot, the one which produces the grain being harvested.

For other crops, a wet spell certainly would be welcome. Mike Dangerfield, a member of the management team at RS Cockerill, one of Yorkshire's largest potato growers and packers, says the dry weather could cause problems if it doesn't end soon. "Irrigated crops are okay, but other crops will start to suffer if we don't get any rain."

The company grows almost 500 acres of potatoes on their own farm at Dunnington, near York, and also packs and processes potatoes from many other independent growers throughout Yorkshire. This year has been mixed for the potato crop.

"It was a bit delayed due to the wet weather, but planting was reasonably good," adds Mike Dangerfield.

"The crop's grown away reasonably well, but obviously it's just beginning to get under stress because of the heat and the lack of water. They just start to re-absorb tubers, so we get less tuber numbers potentially and the canopy starts to really suffer.

"When it's hot and dry they just stop growing. So you won't get the yield and you'll get quality problems."

Potato prices are looking better though, because of an overall drop in plantings this year. The seriousness of this dry spell has been highlighted in the North-West by the possibility of emergency orders to allow the regional water supplier, United Utilities, to take extra water out of some of their reservoirs. Some of these are only half full at the moment.

Yorkshire Water's position is better, with reservoirs at 69 per cent. They say rainfall in the first half of the year was the lowest since 1929, at only 35 per cent of the normal amount.

If there is a shortage of water, many farmers may find restrictions imposed on what they use for irrigating crops. For fruit and vegetable growers water is vital.

Riverford Organics at Home Farm in Newby Wiske has 350 acres of vegetables. At the moment, the farm is busy harvesting pointed cabbage, broad beans and onions for their box scheme. General manager Mark Smith says: "We're quite lucky that most of the land borders the River Wiske, so we've got quite a readily available water supply which we're using to irrigate a lot of the crops."

On a normal year the rainfall is sufficient. This is the first time in about five years that the farm has had to make up for nature's shortcomings. If it wasn't for the artificial irrigation, which is usually carried out early in the morning before the sun gets hot, these vegetable crops would fail.

"They basically just stop growing, they wilt off, and they just lose their vigour. Cauliflower, broccoli, cabbage and things like that they are pretty water hungry."

If water in the rivers grows short and restrictions on irrigation are imposed, there would be few alternatives available. "To be honest, there's not really much that we could do. It wouldn't be viable to bring water from anywhere else, it has to be close to the crop. It would cost an awful lot of money to pump water or tanker water. We'd probably just have to keep our fingers crossed and hope that it rains."

Despite these fears, this has been a good growing year at Home Farm. "They're very good vegetable crops, very healthy."

It's not just the harvest which has been hit by the

dry weather. The English Lamb and Beef Executive (EBLEX) is warning that a lack of grass growth may mean some livestock farmers will soon have to consider feeding supplements to beef and cattle.

CW 10/7/10