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TURN POPLAR AND ASH INTO CASH
Don’t let timber quality deteriorate - Safely harvest while it has value!
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Arable
Brighter future beckons for oilseed rape
• Record prices increase crop value • New drive to combat fl ea beetle • Field trials fuel grower optimism
H
igh prices and deeper in- sights into cabbage stem fl ea beetles suggest oil- seed rape is recovering after fall- ing out of favour. The future for the crop was discussed during a recent BASF webinar. It featured
Thomas Delivering
Crop Nutrition Enhance Early Rooting
Wilkinson from ADAS, NIAB break crop specialist Colin Pe- ters and grower Adrian Joynt. Price prospects were explained by Martin Farrow from ADM. “We’ve seen record prices for both new and old crop – but it’s not just oilseed rape,” said Mr Farrow. “Soya, sunfl owers, palm oil prices have all risen. “Worldwide we’re forecast to produce 10 million more tonnes of oils and fats this next year than last. Yet that only increas- es stocks by 1.5 million tonnes. There’s not a lot of room for any- thing to go wrong. Mr Farros said he was close-
lywatching the USA, Australia, Canada and Ukraine. “It looks good at the moment but there’s still a lot of volatility in the market with covid, politics and weather all playing their part.”
Crop trials
Although cabbage stem fl ea bee- tle has driven a reduction in area, new fi eld-trials confi rm that drill- ing early or late can avoid the worst damage. Supported by BASF, the tri-
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Mark Carter (Midlands) 07950 313704 Tom Robinson (Southern) 07494 668732 Ryan Taylor (Northern) 07957 953706
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info@bionatureagriculture.com 26 ANGLIA FARMER • AUGUST 2021
als are one aspect of an on-go- ing three-year ADAS project. It aims to minimise the impact of fl ea beetle by improving under- standing of pest phenology and biology – as well as testing con- trol methods.
Drilling early means plants are larger and better placed to survive when beetles move into crops; while drilling later means
adult beetles have a shorter win- dow to lay eggs. The cooler condi- tions also hinder egg hatch lead- ing to fewer larvae in crops. One of these trials took place
on Adrian Joynt’s 600ha farm in east Shropshire. With more than 100ha of rape in his rotation, Mr Joynt says fl ea beetle pressure has been increasing year-on-year. “This year we lost a crop for the fi rst time,” he says.
Lack of rain Three fi elds with the same crop- ping history were involved in the trial. Initially there were three drilling dates: 26 August, 6 and 15 September. Rape drilled on 6 September was lost to fl ea bee- tle and was redrilled on 1 Octo- ber. This crop also failed.
Industry joins forces to combat flea beetle
NIAB break crop specialist Colin Peters has issued an emphatic call for growers and agronomists to help combat cabbage stem fl ea beetle. The CSFB Smart initia- tive is an on-farm monitoring and trials programme bring- ing together farmers, agron- omists, researchers and the supply chain, with the aim of testing management methods and tools.
“There is no blueprint for combating fl ea beetles,” says
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