Why sprouts are bad for you.

Basic facts:-

1) Cereal crops are grown because of the cereals they produce.
2) The cereals they produce are seeds
3) Put seeds into the ground and they grow.

All in all this has been a miserable summer, although the floods haven’t reached the same biblical proportions that they did last year, fields don’t need to be knee deep in water to bugger up the harvest.The problem this year has been a steady stream or rather showers of rain. Just enough to keep the ground soggy enough to prevent the machinery getting into the fields to harvest the crops. In technical terms it’s too wet for the machinery to `travel’.

And the grain’s wet too. This causes two problems, first of all the wet grain which is harvested has to be dried. Basically the farmers measure the moisture content when it comes in from the fields, and for it to be sellable it has to be reduced to about 15%.

This drying is done by putting it through a grain dryer.... a big cylindrical vat through which hot air heated by propane is pumped. Given the price of gas, which is currently at 34p per litre, this adds about £20 per ton to the cost of getting wheat to the point at which it can be sold.

Also most of this wheat is only suitable for animal feed, rather than bread or biscuit making, so that reduces the price to the farmer by about a further £40 per ton.....

The other big difficulty caused, both by the wet, and by not being able to get the crop in, is the danger of sprouting. This is where the ears of the wheat or any cereal crop fall to the ground and the grain, which is a seed, starts to grow again. The grain is largely useless, and because it has sprouted almost impossible to get back. In most cases where there are patched which have sprouted they just have to be left to be ploughed back in or `spayed off’ and killed with herbicide. The loss amounts to hundreds of pounds per field.

`The grass-like green shoots in this field is part of the crop which has sprouted'

However the biggest problem for many farmers at the moment is being able to get onto their land to put in next year's crop. The oilseed rape should be going in about now, and some of the farmers I've spoken to say they simply won't make the deadline. This is a nightmare for farmers because most have already bought, and will have to pay for, the seed, the fertilizer and the fuel to plant next year’s crop. In some cases they’ll be looking at less valuable crops like beans to fill the rotation gap left by a lack of oilseed rape

This year the harvest is a bleak payday on the land. Where they can farmers will write this one off to experience and get on with the job of trying to salvage what they can from a dismal summer.