English Crop Areas August 18, 2016 12:00 am DEFRA has released the first official crop area statistics for the 2016 harvest. These only relate to England, but tend to confirm the trends seen in the AHDB survey results for Great Britain reported on last month. There are some interesting differences however. DEFRA is suggesting the English wheat area is almost unchanged from 2015 (a 0.3% increase). The AHDB figures showed a 2% fall for the whole GB. The DEFRA figures also show the winter barley area almost unchanged from last year, but with a big increase in spring barley (up 13.3%). This is a greater rise than the AHDB foresaw, with ‘only’ a 6% increase. The drop in the oilseed rape area in England was significant according to the latest figures – winter OSR plantings declined by 11.2% (again, more than the AHDB survey suggested for GB). The area of uncropped arable land in England showed another big jump. It has risen by 21%, to 216,000 hectares in 2016, after also rising by 23% the previous year. The requirements of Greening (EFA area and Crop Diversification) are likely to be the main driver of this. Why there should have been such a big jump between last year and this is a bit of a mystery however. But the figures for pulses are not included in the statistics, and there may have been a switch away from people growing beans and peas to satisfy Greening, and simply fallowing land instead. Also, with the economics of crop production looking unattractive at planting time, growers may well have just taken some of their worst land out of cropping. The full figures can be found at – https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/544759/structure-jun2016provcrops-eng-11aug16.pdf. Provisional crop areas for the whole of the UK, including yields, willbe published on the 13th October.
