UK: A big increase expected in spring barley plantings this year, farmers facing a shortage of seeds

Farmers in the U.K. are facing a shortage of seeds as planting of spring crops is set to surge, after record rainfall last year in England muddied fields and left less land available to be sown with winter crops, Bloomberg reported on February, 15.

Farmers are paying about 30 percent more than usual for spring seeds as rising demand has led to shortages of domestic supplies and spurred an increase of imports, said David Neale, a business development manager at Andoversford, England-based farm adviser Agrii. As much as 20 percent of U.K. fields intended for winter crops including wheat and rapeseed last autumn went unplanted because of excess rain, leaving that ground now available to be sown with oilseed and grain, he said.

“We pretty much exhausted some time ago supplies of U.K.- produced seed, and there’s been massive imports of seed from Germany, France and eastern Europe,” Neale said in a telephone interview. “Spring barley planting will have a big increase, and spring wheat, and there will be some increase in spring rapeseed and other minor crops” including peas and linseed, he said.

The majority of fields planted this spring probably will be sown with barley crops, said Neale, who expects seeding of the grain to jump 40 percent from last year. Spring varieties accounted for about 56 percent of all barley production in the U.K. last year, according to Defra.

Barley seed for spring planting currently costs about 500 pounds ($774) a ton, about 150 pounds a ton more expensive than in a normal year, Neale said.

“We’ll see a notable increase in spring planting,” said Watts, from Kenilworth, England-based AHDB’s Home-Grown Cereals Authority. “Spring planting in the U.K. is normally constrained by the amount of land available. Now we’ve got plenty of land available but we may be constrained by the availability of seed.”

15 February, 2013