Arable Matters by Brian Henderson

While a few days of steady warm conditions might have reverted to the more usual 'dodge the showers' weather, it’s amazing just how much the face of Scotland’s countryside has changed over the past week or so.

With much of the raw earth of ploughed fields which still bore winter’s scars now tidied and levelled and the seeds of eternal optimism once more sown in the soil, fields have finally taken on that expectant air of spring.

The arable areas have been alive with tractors and drillers making the most of any opportunity to play catch up in what must be one of the latest seasons in memory. For while there’s often some crops left to be sown in the tail end of April, it’s been a long time since the latter part of that month has marked the start of operations.

So, while there’s obviously going to be a lot of catching up to do, it looks like we have once again succumbed to the urge to get the crops in the ground and put up with possibility of lower yields rather than resorting to fallow.

However, with the rush to make the most of the late spring, the sudden realisation that the IACS forms will need to be submitted in a couple of week’s time came as a bit of a shock to me when I realised just how far through the year we were.

For, I guess like a lot of folk, I was loathe to start in on this annual task until at least something was in the ground – and not to tempt fate that our best laid plans would go totally awry.

Realising that I probably won’t be alone in wondering what the deal is if crops aren’t sown by the closing date – or if plans have had to be revised after the forms were submitted – I asked SGRPID for their line on what we should do, if either of these situations arose.

Thankfully, their response was indicative of a fairly realistic attitude – the advice is simply to tell them, as best you can, what the land use is most likely to be.

“This applies to land which has not yet been sown, or on which a final decision has not yet been taken,” said a helpful spokesperson. “In these cases, please complete the forms with the best information available to you at the time of completion.”

There was even a realisation that, with the best will in the world, what we planned wouldn’t necessarily turn out to be what actually happens.

She said that if growers found themselves in the situation where what they intended to sow and what was declared on the SAF differed from what was ultimately sown, there is a period up until the May 31, 2018, during which growers can notify SGRPID of any amendments/ additions.

“Thereafter, they can either write to their local office to withdraw the claim from the parcel(s) in question or write to notify SGRPID that their SAF has become incorrect since it was submitted.”

Where any land was not ultimately sown, she said the majority of alterations were likely to be a change of crop code – for example to uncropped arable land (UCAA), an option which looked scarily likely until last week.

But, of course, she added that the normal terms and conditions – of the changes only being allowed if there had been no inspections or errors identified by SGRPID – applied.

As I write, it still isn’t clear though what will happen on the three-crop rule – with a derogation requested from the need to comply with this sent to the EU a fortnight ago, there’s no guaranteeing when the EU will give a formal reply.

However, EU farm commissioner, Phil Hogan, has already told Irish farmers that their request will be granted, so it would be a bit of a travesty if we’re not allowed the same flexibility.

Until we get the official go-ahead, though, that wee box in the on-line forms that tells you that you haven’t met your crop diversification requirements could be causing a few sleepless nights around the country.

But with a shorter growing period and the possibility of lower yields at the end of the day, a lot of growers will be focusing on keeping the costs of growing the crops down.

While cutting back on sprays might look like an obvious way forward, it’s always difficult to do when there seems to be a never-ending supply of new and resistant diseases needing ever more expensive chemicals to control them.

I read an interesting wee snippet the other day in a release put out by the lobbying group, Pesticide Action Network (one of many, it has to be said), which is focused on reducing the amounts of pesticides which are used.

Now we’ve all heard the figure that’s widely bandied about by the manufacturers and sellers that pesticide usage on farms has fallen by 50% since 1990 – and that sounds a pretty good track record.

But this group pointed out that this figure is based on weight alone – and if you compare a five-gallon drum of MCPA with a 250g pack of sulfonyl-urea you can see that working by weight alone might be a somewhat disingenuous way of measuring our use of pesticides.

I’ve even heard it said that the banning of sulphuric acid to burn down tatties could have accounted for the reduction on its own.

But while lobbying groups soon seem to wander into emotive claims that sprays are now also much more toxic – rather than pointing out that they are better targeted at specific pests and diseases – you’d have to admit that some of these figures have a ring of truth about them.

For, they point out that the area of land treated with all pesticides has actually risen by 63% since 1990 – and while, on average each hectare of cropping land was sprayed around 2.5 times in 1990, that figure has now risen to over four treatments – with some tattie crops being sprayed dozens of times.

While I’m not sure if these figures have been independently verified, we’re all aware that once the sprayer is out of the shed it never seems to go back in – and so I suspect that a quick look at our accounts might provide just such verification!