Bumper harvest in danger

GRAIN growers were putting off price worries this week and waiting anxiously for the wet weather to lift.

With fresher weekend weather expected to end with very heavy rain on Sunday, getting in the harvest is the priority, rather than selling it.

In any case, similar weather in the UK is holding up their grain harvest, and the grain market will remain unstable until the 1m to 1.5m tonnes of UK feed grain which is usually imported onto the island of Ireland is secured.

With a lot of grain now ripe, farmers need dry weather to harvest it, but a prolonged spell of the current humid wet weather could wreak havoc with what originally looked like a bumper harvest.

Wheat is especially vulnerable to weather damage.

According to IFA grain secretary Fintan Conway, bumper harvest forecasts should also be revised due to barley and wheat yields on light soils in the east falling 0.5 tonnes per acre behind expectations, and disappointing yields also from second and continuous wheat.

Southern barley growers seem to have secured the best yields.

Growers can take encouragement from a strong spot market in the UK, but this is due to bad weather temporarily leaving a shortage of new crop to replenish empty grain stores. Everything hinges on the harvest getting under way properly again.

And feed grain prices could dip, if weather damage results in huge tonnages of milling bread wheat being diverted for animal feedstuffs.