Farmers may turn against the wheat grain

Bakeries could be affected by farmers who were considering “turning their backs” on growing milling wheat in favour of grain varieties that offered a better yield, the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) has warned.

Farmers were “returning to the drawing board” and some might choose to grow barley, beans, peas or animal feed next year, said NFU chief arable advisor Guy Gaden. Such crops need less cash investment, he added.

Gaden attributed the trend to the fact that this year’s wheat milling crop had been particularly troublesome: largely due to the UK having one of the wettest Augusts on record, which had cost farmers dearly.

This year farmers have had to spray wheat milling crops for over six weeks to stop them from getting infected with disease, which has cost an estimated £5 per tonne. Drying the grain has also put an extra £20 or more on the cost of a tonne.

But despite their best efforts, in some areas of the country the wheat crop has been damaged and the remaining crop is at risk over the next couple of weeks, said Gaden.

“If farmers haven’t harvested all their wheat by the end of this month then the milling quality will have seriously deteriorated and it will be downgraded to feed quality.

“Unless farmers are offered better incentives for growing milling wheat then they will start turning their backs on these low-yield varieties,” said Gaden.

He said that farmers had been working 24 hours a day over the bank holiday weekend and the harvest was now around 25% complete. However, it would traditionally have been approximately 90% complete by this time of year.

If the quality of harvest was not as good as anticipated, millers and bakers would have to import grain or flour. That would ultimately put a strain on bakers and the price of bread would inevitably go up, said Gordon Polson director of the Federation of Bakers.

“Bakers would also need to import, if farmers in the UK made a deliberate effort to grow less milling wheat. This would be bad news for bakers and the supply/demand equation would become even tighter,” he added.

At this time of year, the market price of wheat would normally start to drop as wheat brought in by the harvest outstripped demand. This was not currently reflected in the market price because of the problems with the harvest.