Harvest progress in Great Britain
Updated 09 October 2020
Use our interactive tool below to discover harvest progress across Great Britain. You can also select specific crops, areas and the years you wish to compare at a regional or national level.
Overview
The sixth and final AHDB harvest report details harvest data up to the week ending 06 October.
Since the last report a fortnight ago, we have now reached the end of harvest. Southern and Eastern England finished harvest by 22 September, with the rest of GB finishing in the week to 29 September. An estimated 200Kha of crop area was cut in the week to 29 September, the last acreages across Northern and Scottish regions.
Conditions were mostly settled towards the end of September, enabling the last wheat, oats and spring barley acreages to be cut. Despite the storms in late August, harvest progress has remained in line with previous years, benefiting from an efficient start out of the blocks in July.
In later harvested milling wheats, low Hagberg falling number became a prominent issue. Specific weights largely remained stable over September, whilst protein levels for high bread milling specifications remained a difficult target to hit. There were increased reports of sprouted grains in the later harvested crops. Overall crop yields are below last year, with wheat, winter barley, winter OSR and oats also below the five-year average.
With calmer weather across September, balers were able to quickly clear up the last acreages of straw where needed, including those affected by the storms. This assisted some early drilling schedules to push on. This harvest period has seen more frequent reports of green straw within the swaths, potentially affected by the later drilling of some winter varieties in spring. Some swaths needed turning following the heavy rainfall across most regions in late August. Straw yields remain lower than recent years, affected by patchy crop areas and greener headlands.
Harvest progress to WE06 October can be summarised as:
- Wheat– 100% complete. GB national yield estimated at 7.1 – 7.3t/ha.
- Winter barley– 100% complete. GB national yield estimated at 6.5 – 6.7t/ha.
- Spring barley– 100% complete. GB national yields estimated at 5.8 – 6.0t/ha.
- Oats– 100% complete. GB national yields estimated at 5.1 – 5.3t/ha.
- Winter oilseed rape– 100% complete. GB national yield estimated at 2.7 – 3.0t/ha.
How to use the dashboard
- Use the drop down menus at the top of the dashboard to select a harvest week and crop. This will allow you to view the national harvested area for that crop (top chart) as well as a regional breakdown (right-hand chart). National quality and yield information (left-hand table) is also available for all crops alongside harvest progress comments (map). The line chart tracks national harvest progress, for the selected crop, compared to previous years.
- Use the drop down menus at the top of the second chart to view the harvest progress, of a particular crop, throughout the season.