The past week saw very little harvesting done, similar to the same week in 2016, except for a few half chances that some growers took.

While many crops were not ripe a week ago, virtually everything is now awaiting harvest.

The worry now is that the combination of wet and relative warmth could drive sprouting and damage specific weights, which have been good to date.

Other concerns arising from the damp or thundershower conditions would be brackling, the possible return of skinning problems arising from the wetting and drying, and possible germinative energy issues for malting barley.

All of these risks become more real the longer ripe crops are left in the fields.

Oilseed rape

Planting of oilseed rape should ideally be taking place this week, but many fields have not yet been harvested, while others are too wet.

Time is of the essence to get value from what you sow, so one might consider chopping straw to enable timely planting of rape.

If straw is chopped and you are not ploughing, it still needs to be incorporated if you are using residual herbicides.

Given where grain prices have gone once again, growers should seriously consider an area of rape as a break and cash crop.

Dry prices of up to €380/t continue to be available from a number of merchants for next harvest.

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Another year of weather and price challenges for tillage farmers

Lots of rain leads to harvest woes