Mr French - Newlands Farm, Essex

Mr French, a farmer, from Little Canfield near Great Dunmow in Essex runs an arable enterprise which has been in his family for several generations . The farm has increased in size recently, expanding from 121ha to 145ha. The farm is roughly 70m above sea level and three main crops are grown which include wheat, barley and winter oilseed rape.
Rogers’s role on the farm is to oversee day to day field operations and manage the crops throughout the year. He is also responsi ble for driving the sprayer and combine harvester.

Hammer is the only oilseed rape variety grown by Mr French, this year. He is growing around 50ha of the variety, which is made up of two large fields. The fields were drilled on the 2nd September and 24th September at a sowing rate of 3.5kg per hectare, with a target populationof 55 plants per m². The land which the farm is located on is heavy hanslope series clay which is relatively exposed.

The previous crops on the two fields were wheat and spring barley. The spring barley was planted after a failed crop of ‘ HEAR’ winter oilseed rape. Before drilling, the soil was sub-soiled, disced, pressed, , and power harrowed. The soil was also spread with chicken manure and Cropcare, as well as being sprayed with Butisan for pre-emergence weed control. The weather was fine at drilling but the soil was very dry. Mr French was concerned about emergence as the crop didn’t receive any rain for roughly two weeks. Since the crop was drilled it has been sprayed with Plover and Kerb Flo for resistance to black grass. James Potter, Mr French’s agronomist said ‘the crop hadn’t had any disease problems and the only pest damage was from a few rabbits from a nearby wood’. Mr Potter went on to say that he felt that the crop had been held back by Harmony M a broad leaf weed control sprayed on the spring barley.

 
Mr French stated that he, like everyone else, had serious problems with establishment last year. He decided that the HEAR variety that he had grown wasn’t going to come to anything and he would have to pull it up as the establishment was so low.

  When Mr French was asked why he had made the move from conventional varieties to hybrids, he said ‘we have decided to put all our eggs in one basket and grow Hammer this year, as we really need a variety with early vigour in order to have the best chance of establishing before the winter sets in. With other work commitments and a busy harvest period we generally drill our rape late so a hybrid was an obvious choice. We also work on a very tight second wheat rotation, therefore stem canker resistance is important when choosing a variety’.  

Mr French also stated that because of the heavy clay soil found on his farm, as well as the fact that it is very exposed, a hybrid would provide a better chance of establishment. He also felt a well established plant would offer the best competition against weeds such as black-grass. Another reason he gave for choosing Hammer was that it had one of the highest oil contents of all the hybrids and is 3% higher yielding than Excalibur. Mr Potter also added the comment that Hammer is tall enough to have a strong root structure and resistance to lodging but it’s not too tall to be unmanageable at harvest. He also pointed out that it has a higher Green Area Index (GAI) than a lot of conventional varieties, therefore requiring less nitrogen.