At the end of last year members of FARM* (the Federation of Agricultural Retail Merchants) visited Scotland and took in visits to farms, a grain storage co-op, the regulatory services and a plant breeder. This article provides a brief summary of the farm visit.

Coldstream mains

One of the well-known grain growers from the Borders region is Colin McGregor from Coldstream mains. He won the Farmers Weekly Arable Farmer of the Year 2011 award. The village of Coldstream is about halfway between Kelso and Berwick-upon-Tweed and the farm base is just barely north of the Tweed river, which is the border between England and Scotland.

McGregor Farms has a land base of just over 300 owned hectares but today the business farms almost 3,000ha in 14 different businesses. In the area around Coldstream, most of the land and farm units are in tillage but Colin’s land base is located within 15 miles of the home farm. Some of the farms are in Scotland, others are in England.

The reason for 14 different businesses is because his expansion model hinges on a type of share farming where the owner receives no rent but rather claims the SFP and takes a chance on additional income being generated and shared from the access deal. Likewise, the farmer pays no rent but does pay for the full growing of the crop. Both partners take a risk in the arrangement.

Ironically, most of the expansion undergone has happened by request from the owners rather than the other way around. And for this reason Colin sees the expansion continuing into the future. Indeed, his objective is to be the leading large arable farmer in the Borders region.

The land use is mainly winter crops with some spring break crops. The labour force includes nine full-time employees plus Colin and his wife, Jill. Most of the land might be described as medium to light and he irrigated spring barley in March 2012 when drought began to bite. Colin’s average rainfall is around 27in but he had just under 40in in 2012. In this same year his average winter wheat yield was only 6.8t/ha. And, like us, he had a lot of grain sold forward but had little or no quality grain to meet the specifications.

Variable years

One of the consequences of 2012 was that he ended up with more than 800 acres fallow in 2013 where the land was just not in good enough condition to plant. This type of land would not have provided a return to either the grower or the landowner in that year and so it was not sown and was left to improve naturally. The result is that cash is tight throughout the sector. Colin said that crops sown prior to 25 September 2011 were reasonably good but that those sown later were hit badly.

Now, one year later, crops are too thick and too forward. And there has been a significant price swing in the past year. Because price is outside of his control, he is a believer in minimising the risk of price reduction. Risk is reduced through a whole range of measures, many of which target reduced yield variations from year to year.

Many of these are targeted around precision farming techniques, using SOYL mapping, ensuring optimum lime and P&K levels and the use of an N-Sensor to optimise nitrogen application. He uses RTK steering to optimise machinery efficiency and GPS driven variable seed rate. Colin estimates that RTK auto-steer alone is providing an annual saving of £26/ha.

Colin uses two 40m self-propelled sprayers – one mainly for use on oilseed rape – and these have GPS controlled cut-off function on 13 separate boom sections.

Getting wetter

Volatility is not confined to output prices. Colin said weather volatility has been among the biggest constraints in recent years. He said rainfall levels have been increasing and that is making farming more difficult. Coping with more rainfall is just one of the reasons why Colin has moved towards surface-based cultivations but he emphasised that he will still plough when it helps to get planting done.

In the past he used Challengers for cultivation but he has switched to Case Quadtracs to provide his horsepower. He believes that these are less hard on the soil, especially when turning.

Since 2009 he has used three tracked combines with a total header width of 27m or 90ft. However, given the problems of recent years, he is considering upgrading these for 2014 to give him a combined header width of 36m (3 x 12m) – a 33% increase in capacity.

Given the increasing size of all these machines, Colin is inclined towards controlled traffic mechanisation using RTK precision. But this is only part of any solution and he is now also looking towards earlier drilling and using winter barley as an entry crop for winter rape.

Proper establishment is seen as key to harnessing the full yield potential of any crop.

Perhaps the most unique thing about the McGregor business is that access to land is based on what Colin calls Contract Farming Arrangements (CFA). These have come about as landowners take back their land to claim their own Single Farm Payment. Land leasing is possible, with tenancies ranging from five to 15 years, but there is not a big uptake on these due to reasons pertaining to inheritance.

The CFAs tend to be from three to five years and are all unique and individual. Each CFA is a separate business with minuted management meetings and separate banking. There is also a separate SFP for each business. In a CFA, both parties stand to gain or lose from the arrangement. In general, the farmer supplies all the inputs and the machinery while the landowner supplies the land.

The arrangement on sharing profit will vary with the individual and the quality of the land etc. The farmer pays for all the inputs and they are bought in his name. However, Colin said that he has established a co-operative to source and supply the inputs to all the different businesses.

The main crop in the farming business is winter wheat and this is mainly grown in rotation. The length of the rotation is different based on soil type. The heavier land tends to have a six-year rotation while eight years is used on the lighter land.

The actual cropping practice was badly affected by the bad weather of recent years and this forced more spring barley into the mix in 2013.

As well as winter wheat, there is a very significant area of winter oilseed rape with over 200ha each of winter barley, potatoes and vining peas, as well as a sizeable area of beans.

A big number of varieties are grown for each crop with variation in maturity important for the bigger crops.

*FARM is a trade association/society representing 40 companies supplying agrochemicals to end users. It was also a co-founder of IASIS.