September 2010 Diary

After what has been the fifth consecutive wet harvest in North Shropshire, Rob Bebbington's crops of Flash, DK Cabernet and Excalibur have safely been harvested with some pleasing results.

This year's oilseed rape harvest started on 5^th August with the 32 hectares of Excalibur the first to be cut. This was followed over a two-week period by the 43 hectares of DK Cabernet and 28 hectares of Flash, with all three varieties safely harvested and in storage by 19^th August.

Combine Front

Fieldfare Farmers successfully harvested 103 hectares of oilseed rape despite another wet season.

The Excalibur ripened very evenly and reached maturity well ahead of the other two varieties with Flash being the latest of the three to be ready. This helped us to spread the workload and allowed us to be more flexible and to choose when to take either oilseed rape or barley depending on which dried out soonest each day.

In what has been another wet harvest in the North West, this has proven to be a really useful strategy and has taken some of the stress out of another frantic season. In fact, of the 471 tonnes of oilseed rape that we harvested in total, only 30 tonnes didn't need to be dried.

Fieldfare Farmers - oilseed rape harvest results, 2010

Variety	Date Harvested	Area	Yield
Excalibur	5^th August 2010	32 ha	4.21 t/ha
DK Cabernet	14^th August 2010	43 ha	4.61 t/ha
Flash	19^th August 2010	28 ha	3.78 t/ha
			Average 4.20 t/ha

The table above shows a significant difference in terms of final yields with Flash noticeably behind the other two varieties. However, although the yield figures for Flash look a little disappointing at first, it was the cheapest crop to grow in terms of fixed costs as it was min-tilled instead of being sown into ploughed land, and has still made a decent return from investment. Overall we have been more than happy with all three varieties as our average yield is up on recent years and this trend has been mirrored by the sale price we received.

Fieldfare Farmers - oilseed rape costs of production, 2010

Variety	Total fixed costs	Total variable costs	Margin over fixed costs
Excalibur	£329/ha	£227/ha	£556/ha
DK Cabernet	£317/ha	£252/ha	£569/ha
Flash	£279/ha	£384/ha	£663/ha

We managed to forward sell the majority of the total crop prior to harvest using United Oilseeds to sell on the futures market. That meant we received between £262/t and £290/t for 70% of the final tonnage with the remaining 30% being sold off the combine for £273/t. This is a very pleasing result for us, especially in comparison to previous years when the market has traded closer to £180/t.

Combine Back

The majority of this year's harvest was forward sold using United Oilseeds' futures and pool marketing mechanism.

Looking forward to next year's crop, we have already forward sold a decent tonnage through United Oilseeds and have taken the decision to drop winter beans from the rotation in favour of increasing the oilseed rape area. At current future market prices this makes complete sense for us.

Next year's crop is already in the ground with the last of the new season's oilseed rape being drilled on 8th September. We have again chosen to use a selection of three varieties to spread the harvest workload and have drilled 30ha of DK Cabernet, 40ha of Excalibur and 52ha of Fashion.

Fashion is being positioned as the next big variety in this area, with local trial site results indicating that is has great yield potential so we'll be interested to see how it performs next to the other varieties.