World record wheat crop in UK

Update on the world record wheat crop - the Lamymans (see below) were just pipped by the Smiths, in Northumberland - 15.64 tonne per hectare compared to 15.6 tonne (below).

http://www.agrii.co.uk/blog/northumberland-team-claim-new-world-wheat-record-with-master-seeds-crop-of-dickens/

Summary of the Dickens Crop -

·         330 seeds/m² (185 kg/ha) with fluquinconazole at T(-1) sown on September 22

·         300 kg/ha each of TSP and MOP after variable P&K to even-up soil indices

·         Post-em AMG and broad-leaf herbicide + insecticide + Nutriphyte PGA

·         310 kg/ha total N plus balancing S (on top of 140 kg/ha available N from the soil)

·         Four nitrogen fertiliser splits, two of stabilised urea

·         Four main fungicide sprays – including SDHIs at T1 & T2.

·         Little and often four spray PGR programme from T0

·         Foliar Mn, Cu, Zn, B and Mg strictly to tissue analyses

·         820 ears/m2 and 36 grains/ear in July

·         16.52 t/ha dry yield at 82 kg/hl specific weight

The slightly poorer Lamyman crop story -

http://www.fwi.co.uk/arable/wheat-yield-world-record-shattered-in-lincolnshire.htm

The website describes how the crop was managed, but does not mention rainfall, so that is obviously not of concern to them. Nitrogen used was 330 kg a hectare plus foliar sprays, and obviously this would have helped.

The same farmer also produced the world record oilseed canola crop -

http://www.fwi.co.uk/arable/world-record-oilseed-rape-yield-smashed-in-lincolnshire.htm

The economics of all this would be interesting.

Our productivity crisis

An ag econs seminar in Perth last week compared Australia's farm productivity growth with that of Canada. This was part of a more specific talk comparing our grain supply chain with Canada's. Taken alone, this information probably constitutes a "crisis" for Australian farmers.

From 1981 to 2012, Australia's wheat yields have improved by 12 kg per hectare a year, compared to Canada's 33 kg figure. A large part of this may be due to climate change that has benefited Canada, but reduced Australian yields. Also, some of this improvement, at least for Canada, has come from improved wheat varieties, which has been delivering 0.7 per cent improvement a year ( Farm Weekly, September 29th, 2015) - which is probably what I think the Australian genetic improvement.

Another comparison I dug up, after seeing these figures, was from some economists (Nossal and Sheng, 2013), that compared "total factor productivity" for agriculture in Australia, Canada and the United States -

The warning from the seminar was that Australia needs to act to protect farming industries.
I would also add that our productivity has deteriorated in recent years - though not just because of climate change and poorer seasons.

Our solution will start with putting the problem on the table. We can no longer pretend that our research and development institutions are delivering the productivity we should expect. I believe this problem has arisen from "out-sourcing" of farm R&D to professionals, and we need to re-engage farmers in the process.

For starters, the best way for farmers to measure progress, is to take seasonal factors out of the judgement about what is a good crop, by using Water Use Efficiency calculations.

Another current gripe is the short term focus on profit - one year at a time. Because of this, we have neglected a major limitation on yield for most farms, in liming. I suspect most farms would have other opportunities to lift yield and productivity that would become immediately obvious from water use calculations.

However to go beyond what we already know, but are not doing, we will need to develop better crop monitoring than we have come to expect over recent decades.