Huge contrast between two spring seasons

This time last year we had sold out of domestically-produced cereal seed and were trawling around Europe to find supplies of spring barley, wheat and oat seed.

With competition from Ireland and other regions which suffered from the hideous autumn sowing condition in 2012, those with stocks to sell were able to name their price and values of imported seed reached uncomfortable levels on farm.

The huge volumes that came into the UK from Denmark and Germany in particular did, however, allow for an enormous increase in spring acreage in 2013, and for many this enforced spring cropping performed very well, particularly considering that sowing was often delayed until April.

Thankfully the autumn of 2013 has been kinder with autumn crops being drilled in near-perfect conditions locally and, as a consequence, the area for spring cropping will be back to a normal level. The pleasing performance of the spring crops last year however has encouraged some to maintain a place in the rotation for spring cropping in 2014.

When looking at gross margins the lower growing costs of the spring combinables can produce financially favourably comparisons in additional to usual benefits associated with spreading the workload and easing cash-flow. The malting premiums have of course taken a hit due to the size of the crop available this harvest, but harvest 2014 is much more likely to be a seller's market and premiums could well be substantial for those involved.

Spring seed supplies are reasonably plentiful as may be expected and we are seeing a fairly quiet start to the seed season, with most interest at the moment in the feed spring barley varieties. For most growers looking for a feed barley variety they are just as interested in the yield of straw as the yield of grain.

While the grain yields are very well documented by HGCA and other trials organisations, the yield of straw has always been an assumption based on the longest straw being the highest yielding.

However, we have recently been made aware of work carried out by the official testing body in Northern Ireland (Agri-Food and Bioscience Institute) where straw yields are very important and are recorded for each variety annually. This work shows that Kelim comfortably out-yields all other varieties with a straw yield from 2009-2013 of 4.32t/ha compared to Waggon at 3.07t/ha and even beats Westminster at 3.74t/ha.

Unlike most long-strawed varieties Kelim is very stiff with the best rating available for resistance to lodging and resistance to brackling. As well as the top straw yield growers clearly want to maximise the grain yield and Kelim with a yield of 104 per cent achieves this out-yielding the previous favourite Westminster by nine per cent.

Other varieties that will be popular this spring will be the malting options such as Concerto – the UK's market leading variety that suits brewing as well as distilling markets. Propino is likely to be our biggest seller locally as it has the same yield as Kelim but can be grown very successfully for feed or for the brewing malt market.