Hot weather brings early corn harvest
Well it’s that time of year again, when corn harvest starts – somewhat earlier than usual this year, partly due to the very hot spells of weather we had earlier on.
The earliest I can remember was the very long hot summer of 1976 and our neighbour finished his harvest on the July 9, but that was just winter barley and we finished our wheat about a month later.
The hot weather finally broke on august 28, the day of a local farming families' wedding. Apparently everybody cheered at the reception when it started to rain. I think it rained for weeks after that and it made it difficult to get the next crop in.
With all the planning of crops and varieties to suit different soils and crop rotations, we hope, with the technological advances that we have the perfect crop, but nature has the last say in what we harvest too wet or dry at planting will have a big impact on the crop.
The same goes for the spring growing season and plenty of water early on is vital. There is an old saying – "a cold wet may fills the barn with corn and hay".
Advances in crop production especially wheat has potential to double yields since the mid 70s when yields of wheat were about three tonnes an acre, now the world records stands at 6.79 tonnes an acre produced in new Zealand with a Northumberland farmer close behind.
In the 1970s every bit of agricultural land was in production either grass or cropping were as when I drove down to Warwickshire the other day the amount of land lost to production due to roads, building, solar farms environmental schemes and general neglect seemed to be massive, and yet there still seems to be enough food to feed this nation.
How will we cope for food post-Brexit? The politicians will do their best to make sure we’re not short of food, but we might find we have a surplus of some food and short of others, time will tell.
Local agricultural shows are a way of showing our produce off, and a great day out for all the family.
These shows take a lot of preparation, hard work and teamwork, and weather you are taking part or helping to run it, it all seems worth it on the day, so go and visit one if you haven’t been before you’ll enjoy it. Locally there is Burwarton, Oswestry and Minsterley shows all coming up in August.
