How is the 2019 harvest progressing?

The winter barley harvest started two weeks ago and it’s more or less finished now.

We would have started seeing the early crop winter wheat harvest get under way this week but rain is hampering progress.

The harvest of spring crops is a couple of weeks away as crops are still fairly green. It will probably kick off around 20 August.

At the moment, farmers in our catchment have just started cutting winter oats and winter oilseed rape, which seems to be going very well.

The yield and quality of both crops looks to be very good. Winter oats are yielding up to 4t/ac, while oilseed rape is yielding up to 2t/ac and coming in at 15% to 16% moisture.

How did winter barley crops yield?

The start of the winter barley harvest was variable enough with yields anywhere from 2.5t/ac up to 4t/ac.

Overall, I’d say this year’s winter barley crop has disappointed, averaging 3.25t/ac to 3.75t/ac.

There were underlying issue with barley yellow dwarf virus (BYDV) in some crops.

There were even some instances of take-all in barley, which would be unusual enough.

How are wheat crops looking?

The wheat crops in this region look really good but so did the winter barley crops.

Winter barley did not visibly show any signs that there was an underlying issue but we are optimistic wheat crops will have strong yields.

Wheat is a big crop up here in this region so we won’t know the full scale of our harvest intake until the wheat harvest starts.

Grain stockpiled at Drummonds, Ardee.

How many tillage farmers do you buy from?

Drummonds sources winter and spring barley, oats and wheat, as well as peas, beans and oilseed rape, from over 400 tillage farmers.

We have a very big catchment with 10 grain intake sites located throughout Meath, Louth, Dublin, Kildare, Westmeath and Offaly.

Our grain intake will be in the region of 140,000t to 150,000t this year, which would be in line with last year.

Between the cereals and beans that come in over the weighbridge at our sites, around 50% to 65% of our animal feed rations are made from locally sourced crops.

Do you have any early indications on prices?

Early indications from the market suggest green prices in the region of €135/t to €140/t for barley and €145/t to €150/t for wheat.

The current differential of €10 between wheat and barley may fall to €5/t. Prices for oats and oilseed rape can vary as most farmers will have grown them on contract and have forward-sold.

Is forward-selling crops popular among tillage farmers?

We would always encourage farmers to forward-sell when market prices are at a level that will return a reasonable profit.

We find it’s the same farmers every year who forward-sell. They usually tend to forward sell a third (33%) of their crops.

Typically, about 15% of our grain intake is forward-sold by farmers.

For the rest of our intake, Drummonds will settle our harvest prices late September/early October when harvest pressure subsides.

However, this model of pricing carries a lot more risk for the farmer and the merchant.