News

A Valuable Extra Earner

At 3.5 t/ha (1.4 t/acre), the 20 ha of Splendor harvested by Roger Moore and his son Stephen at Manor Farm, Stapleford on Salisbury Plain last year delivered an excellent additional return for little or no extra effort.

Devoting a good part of their 800 ha enterprise to seed crops, as they do, means maintaining crop cleanliness and identity preservation is second nature to them. And, although the family was expecting a considerable yield reduction on ordinary double lows, the HO,LL didn’t yield far behind the Castille that is the mainstay of their 200 ha annual OSR crop.

“This meant the fixed premium from the Splendor made us a very useful extra margin indeed,” recalls Roger. “So much so that we’ve double the area to 40 ha this time around and plan to make HO,LL a permanent fixture of our home farm rotation if it continues to deliver.

“We have a variety of rotations and tend not to grow rape more frequently than once every four year. So it hasn’t been difficult to slot the crop in here. It seems to do well on our chalky ground and has proved every bit as easy to grow and harvest as our firm favourite, Castille.

“Even though we continue to rely on the plough, we aren’t really troubled with volunteers. Our seed crop focus means we’re well used to keeping a careful eye out for off-types, anyway. And we can always rogue them out should we encounter a problem.

“Although we haven’t had to do so yet, we also know we can keep any areas of suspect cropping separate until we’ve put a post-harvest sample through the Vistive™ testing system. This removes any worry about failing to meet the oil spec as we’re introducing HO,LL into the rotation.

“We know we can get the spec and we know this delivers a very welcome premium. And as we’re also able to get yields not far short of conventional OSR, growing a food oil in such strong demand on a guaranteed contract makes sound sense whichever way we look at it.”