Over the Farm Gate, kindly provided by Adam Driver, Farmer Director
Another early harvest has arrived; we started harvesting Craft winter barley yesterday. This is performing about as expected: not great but better than last year. The quality seems to be okay. Since this grain is staying on the farm, we took the opportunity last night to turn the fans on in the grain store as it is coming off the field very hot.
Next up will be some early drilled spring barley after sugar beet, then a small amount of rape. I suspect we will start the wheat by this time next week.
We all know the added pressure an early harvest brings. Amidst the bits and bobs ready for harvest, we are busy completing the long list of pre-harvest jobs which include cleaning out grain stores, maintenance on machinery and new starter inductions, training and settling in. We should be ready just in time for when harvest really kicks off. The good thing about an early harvest on farm is that it leaves much more time through August to get fields turned around and prepped for the autumn drilling window. Whilst it feels under pressure now, I would prefer it this way around from an operational (but not yield) point of view.
Crops generally look quite good; they are certainly better than last year, but I suspect not barn busting. When margins are tight, knowing your cost of production is key to understanding where you can sell grain profitably. We continue to utilise DES for feed wheat which has been a real game changer for us. I am currently contemplating fixing some at the May ‘28 position to back off the fertiliser sales we made last week. At current prices, this actually makes the fertiliser the same cost per tonne as H25 in terms of the cost to grow a tonne of wheat. It's opportunities like this which Camgrain provides that allow us to manage risk in a much more measured way than in the past.
As we roll into harvest please, know how much we appreciate all the work the team at Camgrain does for us. The business is in a great place, and I regularly get comments from members about how pleased they are with how things are progressing. I also had a great time at the annual Cricket match and it's evident how well the team gets along.
Have a safe harvest and see you all on the other side!
