Wet continues: Many areas of the country have suffered badly from the recent heavy rain. Flooding is widespread, especially alongside rivers. This is not dissimilar to this time last year. It is pitiful to see lovely well-established crops now covered in water and other areas visibly suffering from prolonged high water tables. Some crops are now visibly under stress and turning yellow – a drop in temperature would be useful for as long as waterlogging continues.

Nitrates changes: The new nitrates regulations contain a number of benefits for tillage farmers. The partial relaxation of the green cover requirement is an example. Growers producing malting barley, seed crops or other cereals for human consumption are not allowed to use glyphosate pre-harvest and the green cover requirement prevented use post-harvest. Such growers can now spray off up to 25% on the stubbles following these specific crops and therefore cover all such ground on a rotational basis over a few years.

Winter barley and spring wheat growers are allowed an additional 20kg N/ha over the current allowances across all nitrogen indices.

There were also many additional allowances on phosphate use. Up to 20kg P/ha can now be used on maize at Index 4 fertility. And the same amount of P can be applied to cereals grown on Index 4 sites where the soil is pH 7 or greater. In both instances, recent soils tests (<5 years) are needed.

There have been a few useful changes on organic manures also. When applied to Index 1 or 2 soils, the availability of the P is now regarded as being 50% (was 100%) in the year of application and this increases the amount that can be applied. P is still regarded as being 100% available when applied to Index 4 soils. The available P content of SMC is also reduced.

However, growers who have fields running alongside surface waterways, as defined by their presence on six-inch OSI maps, must now leave a two-metre strip uncultivated (but managed) along by these defined watercourses. This is to protect against N or P entering the water. Realistically this will need to be wider to enable maintenance.

Field fertility: Many conferences and meetings over the past few weeks have emphasised the importance of soil testing. For tillage farmers there is increasing evidence that fertility drift is variable within fields and this is now evident in crop growth. So, rather than minimising the number of soil tests, one should be testing this variability and using the information to help more uniform yield potential. Every acre that is hit by low fertility is also decreasing the efficiency of use of all other inputs such as fungicides, nitrogen, etc.

While there is certainly no rush to get fertilizer onto any winter crop in the current conditions, this is a good time to decide what you want to do. Sulphur tends to drive choices for the first split and this can be influenced by what you will use later in the spring. CAN plus S can be used all through while those on mainly urea will try to front-load S with products like ASN or granular sulphate of ammonia.