Darren Allen: Direct drilling delivers as wheat margins come under pressure
Darren Allen, tillage farmer pictured on his farm in Ballymaloe near Shanagarry in Cork. Picture: Chani Anderson
Harvest 2026 is more or less finished, and incredibly early at that. I don’t ever recall having the combine parked up and finished (apart from the beans) at the beginning of August, when some years we mightn’t even have started!
While the lovely dry weather made the task so much easier to organise and helped reduce drying charges, I, like all tillage farmers around the country, suffered reduced yields this harvest due to drought and a shortened growing season, although I was not as badly affected as those farming in the southeast, from what I hear.
As you might recall from my other articles this year, I have been watching and waiting with bated breath to see how my experiment with establishment systems in winter wheat would turn out.
I basically set my wheat with a standard plough and one-pass as normal on October 15, and alongside it had two blocks sown on September 26: one with my Weaving direct drill, while the other received a run of an Erth Panbuster before being sown with the Weaving drill. These were sown earlier, as advised by my BASE colleagues, as is the practice with reduced-cultivation establishment.
All have looked similar in the field all year and have received the same inputs. Costs have risen substantially since planting, especially fertiliser and fuel, so my thinking is that, if I could harvest similar yields, then my profits would rise with the minimum-cultivation systems.
Well, the results are in, and yields were very close to what I expected.
Using the plough and one-pass with home-saved seed as a control, it yielded 3.93t/ac. The Erth/Weaving drill (min-tilled) yield was almost identical at 3.97t/ac, while the Weaving direct-drilled wheat yielded 4.20t/ac.
I have two observations from this.
First, this is from only one year and one field, and where the winter wheat was sown would have been some of my heaviest (more water-retentive) soil.
You would need several years’ data to be fair to all systems, as I did get to set the wheat in ideal conditions for all, but it did show that savings can be made if conditions allow.
Second, and more worryingly, average yields of 4t/ac in first wheats are not paying for the risk involved. Other crop types in this rotational slot might leave me more profit.
Either the costs of growing winter wheat will have to be reduced, the price per tonne will have to rise, or higher yields will have to be achieved.
Sure, yields of 5t/ac are being got on some farms, hopefully not at any environmental cost from high chemical nitrogen rates, but not consistently across all fields each year. It has become a very costly crop to grow.
You might also recall that I experimented with a small area of spring barley where I didn’t apply any fungicide but supplemented with some biological alternatives.
The barley yielded exceptionally well at 3.31t/ac where the fungicide had been applied, and 2.30t/ac where it was omitted. This was an extra tonne per acre, which converted into an almost five-fold investment gain from a modest fungicide spend this year.
In fairness, in another year and at a lower yield, the difference might not have been so stark, but it is getting the consistency right and a level of insurance to protect my profit that I am looking at all the time.
I did have two loads fail for malting, which really hurts when you try to do everything right.
Maybe there is an argument for growing higher-yielding feed barley when there is a lack of demand for malting. However, I do like growing the crop and get good support locally, so I will most likely persist with it.
Elsewhere on the farm, the combi crop of peas and beans came in at 2.1t/ac, which I am really happy with considering its early harvest date. It allows plenty of time to get a stale seedbed for weed germination before considering winter wheat as the next crop.
With the protein payment, it will, for the third time since I began growing them, outperform winter wheat financially.
Spring beans are almost ready and will most likely be cut by the time you are reading this, but from reports of what has been cut to date, there will be no records broken.
With all the talk of a serious fodder crisis among livestock farmers, I would reiterate the farming organisations’ message that there are plentiful supplies of quality Irish-grown cereals and straw available on your doorstep.
There is no need to import alternative feeds or straw from outside the island. Support your own local industry.
- Teagasc Tillage adviser: Laura Whelan
- Teagasc Signpost adviser: John Mahon
