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Thursday 2 September 2010
A WEEK of decent weather across the whole country has brought a sigh of relief and also serves to keep drying costs to a minimum – which is more than can be said for some parts of England, where some torrential rain has affected mopping up the remaining harvest.
SOME DRIER periods have allowed the knives to be out for winter barley crops and, so far, quality and nitrogens have largely been acceptable for malting.
WHILE MANY areas of Scotland received welcome rain this week, the dry weather until then continued to have an impact and cereal prices took off in a big way this past week.
UP TO June 1 this year, in the Borders we have had 388mm or 15.25 inches of rain, compared to last year at this time, when we had 171 mm or 6.75 inches.
WITH 30mm or just more than one inch of rain in the past seven weeks, and temperatures last weekend creeping up towards 25°C in the Borders and no rain forecast for the immediate future, then there are concerns for yield reduction in cereal crops unless we get some rain in the not too distant future.
CROP GROWTH is still being held back by frosty nights and some cold winds through the day, when we should be seeing crops burgeoning forth at this time of year.
HUMANS DON’T like it, animals don’t like it and neither do little seedlings.
EXCELLENT WEATHER has mean that spring sowing has progressed, but it will be interesting to see how much spring barley, for instance, has been planted.
WITH SPRING approaching, longer daylight hours and sowing now started, EU and UK barley markets are still awash with last year’s crop, much of which is good malting quality.
Will up corn, down horn be an inevitable consequence of the current grain price spike?