The past week has seen a lot of harvesting carried out across the country, with large amounts of winter wheat harvested and a big dent made in the spring barley harvest.

Spring barley, the biggest crop, still has a long way to go. Most crops were sown from late April and some into May.

Large amounts are harvested in the south and southeast of the country, but there are still big areas to be harvested the further up the country you go.

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Reports so far are very mixed on yields and quality.

The amount of spring barley planted for malting this year declined significantly as distilling demand has reduced. Intakes are not keen to take in very low-protein barley as a result.

There seems to be extremes, with some barley very low in protein.

However, as the season goes on, protein contents seem to be on the higher end of the scale with many reported at 12% and higher.

Screenings were also showing high for some farmers and, in many cases, farmers had little explanation for the difference between fields.

Moisture contents had returned to more normal levels this week, but there were still crops heading under 16% at the end of last week and at the weekend.

Yields are generally from 2-3t/ac, with some below this and some over 3t/ac.

Feeding barley varieties look to be performing better and hitting well over the 3t/ac mark.

Winter wheat has also been mixed.

Poor yields have continued, but there have been some exceptional crops as well. While the majority of crops are around the 4t/ac mark, there were more reports in the past week of 4.5t/ac crops and even some above this.