\n A combine starts harvest in a winter barley field on the Elveden Estate near Thetford (Image: British Agri Photography)\n<\/p>\n
\n Last year, the crop was devastated after a similar June heatwave which hit yields and prompted an early harvest starting on June 28.\n<\/p>\n
\n They were down 40% on the average where they were able to provide some irrigation and 60% where they weren’t.\n<\/p>\n
\n He is expecting a similar dire result this year. A heatwave in 2022 wreaked the same destruction.\n<\/p>\n
\n The effects of the current heatwave have been exacerbated by an extremely dry spring on the 22,500 acre estate with just 8mm of rain throughout April and May combined.\n<\/p>\n
\n But June helped revive the wheat crop somewhat this year with about 50mm of rainfall.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Given the dry weather during the growing season things don\u2019t look promising at all, a great shame because everything looked so well in early April,” he says.\n<\/p>\n
\n By contrast, irrigated crops are looking well, he says, but it\u2019s taking a lot to keep them moist – with potatoes receiving 20 -25mm of water every four days.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\n Onions have also had two more applications than in most years.\n<\/p>\n
\n A combine starts harvest in a winter barley field on the Elveden Estate near Thetford (Image: British Agri Photography)\n<\/p>\n
\n The barley crop is “dead, basically”, he says. “It died quite a while ago.\n<\/p>\n
\n “Hopefully it’s on a par with last year and no less.”\n<\/p>\n
\n The estate’s light, sandy soils mean water drains away very quickly compared to farms on heavy, clay soil which retains moisture much better – so is worse hit by droughts and heatwaves.\n<\/p>\n
\n The expected yields from this year’s crop are particularly disappointing given the great early promise they showed before the weather took a turn for the worse in April.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It’s just so disappointing – we started the spring exceptionally well. It shows that farming is at the forefront of climate change.”\n<\/p>\n
\n Trailers and grain stores have been cleaned and washed down ready to receive the new crop over the coming weeks.\n<\/p>\n
\n “It’s going to be all systems go this week,” says Andrew..\n<\/p>\n
\n “We’ll be starting early potatoes very soon as well and when it cools down a bit we have got some onions we need to get into store. We can’t do it at the moment because it’s too hot – they land on the ground and they cook.”\n<\/p>\n
\n He adds: “The wheat is hanging on reasonably well but it’s dying back pretty quickly now. he rain two or three weeks ago has really given it a bit of a boost.”\n<\/p>\n
\n How crops have fared UK-wide varies greatly, he says. He visited Yorkshire recently and cereal crops there were looking “exceptional”. Rainfall in East Anglia has varied as well – even on parts of his own farm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Combines were dusted off at the Elveden Estate near Thetford ready to begin work on its winter barley…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":659951,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-659950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659950\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/659951"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}