Tillage Newsletter - February 2024

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In this month's edition:

• Winter cereal crops
  Do you re-drill poorly established crops or not? You need to decide soon. Any decision should be economic, but also consider seed availability, workload and crop rotation. Assess your crops and where there are viable plant counts, stick with them as they stand a good chance of giving decent yields.
• Winter oilseed rape
  Oilseed rape crops mostly look fine but February can be frustrating, as pigeons will continue to graze crops. All efforts to stop this should be deployed. Otherwise, they can cause a lot of damage. The effect of pigeon grazing will determine how much N is needed for the crop in the coming weeks.
• Beans
  The Protein Payment Scheme 2024 is worth €7m. If a similar area of protein crops are planted this year, payment will be much lower that what was paid in 2023 (€584/ha). Beans are still a good economic alternative to spring cereals.