Our fieldwork partner Precision Prospecting Ltd

August 4th 2009

Our fieldwork partner Precision Prospecting Ltd

Precision Prospecting’s computer assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) unit is utilised by IBR to gather data for the Kleffmann AMIS crop panels. Manned by staff who spend most of their time talking to the agricultural community, their familiarity with both the agricultural technical and agronomic phraseology make them uniquely qualified to intelligently engage with farmers, optimising time spent on each call.

Whilst the autumn this year was more favourable for drilling, Farmers responding to last season’s AMIS panel (2008/9) clearly felt the pressure of a challenging autumn. Whilst conditions varied across the country, even those growers in the south of England had to cope with the knock-on effects of a delayed harvest.

“This is the first time in 30 years that I haven’t grown Winter Oilseed Rape” - farmer comment

Cropping plans were having to be reviewed as yet another field was too wet to drill and many continued harvesting well into October, when rape drilling would normally be complete.

Many growers were told to use a hybrid for late drilling. In the South East, poor crops were monitored to review future plans and where growers had got on well with drilling, following weather conditions and pest pressures wreaked havoc:

“Our crop sat in the ground and took weeks and weeks to germinate”

“My crop has already failed so this is not a good time” (12th Dec)

Growers talk of a boost to spring cropping with increases in pulses, spring rape and barley being mentioned. In the North East, Yorkshire and Humber not just soft ground but flooding(!) was the main reason given for a failure to drill autumn crops, the focus of these growers being spring crops assuming conditions improve later in the season.
Similarly inputs of agrochemicals were significantly affected in some areas:

“I’m not even going to bother putting any sprays on, there’s absolutely no point, will leave to the spring.”

And as if to illustrate the variability both around the regions and in may cases within regions, some farmers who had grown the same variety in the previous season because they had had good yields and robustness were pleased with how the varieties were standing up to the bad condition’s this year. So it seemed that some varieties were proving to be good in the poor weather conditions.

It will be interesting to establish, from the follow up with the spring/summer interviews, how many of the winter crops survived and how much of the land originally allocated to winter crops is now in alternative production.

REBECCA LEWIS ~ CATI UNIT MANAGER - PRECISION PROSPECTING

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