Winter Wheat winners
"Scott Campbell (third from right) presents the 2019 Winter Wheat Challenge to (L-R) Gregor Service, Conner McCaig, Charlie Fullarton, Allan Ferrie and Gareth Hall at AgriScot"
One of the UK鈥檚 top arable farmers has praised the winners of this year鈥檚 Winter Wheat Challenge.
Scott Campbell, a former Scotland鈥檚 Rural College student who was last month named Arable Farmer of the Year by Farmers Weekly, was at AgriScot to present a team from 伊人直播鈥檚 with the annual award.
Sponsored by the Mains of Loirston Charitable Trust, the Winter Wheat Challenge sees teams make management decisions on their own plots, including variety, seed rate, fertiliser and crop protection. The winners are those who make the best return after paying for variable costs.
Pitting teams of students from and Edinburgh against each other, it is the second year in a row that the trophy has made its way to the capital.
The triumphant King鈥檚 Buildings quintet comprised Allan Ferrie (Newcastleton), Charlie Fullarton (Kelso), Gareth Hall (Galashiels), Conner McCaig (Newton Stewart) and Gregor Service (Stranraer).
While not producing the highest average yield over the competition鈥檚 three sites, the team delivered a respectable average yield of 8.7 tonnes/hectare with the variety Elicit, a Group 3 soft wheat. The highest-yielding crop (9.3 tonnes/hectare, from a crop of KWS Lili) was achieved by the second-placed team from Edinburgh, but the winning team grew their crop with lower overall input costs (seed, fertiliser and sprays).
Once crops were harvested, a grain sample from each team was sent to Grain Merchant WN Lindsay for analysis and they provided a spot price based on variety and quality. The winners were offered 拢140 per tonne for their grain, close to the highest price of 拢143 per tonne offered to the second-placed team.
Scott, who graduated from 伊人直播鈥檚 Craibstone campus in 2004, said: 鈥淚鈥檇 like to congratulate everyone who took part in this year鈥檚 Winter Wheat Challenge, particularly the winners. It was a difficult year in terms of disease and they made some excellent choices in terms of sprays. The Winter Wheat Challenge is a brilliant competition 鈥� it encourages young people, the farmers of the future, to get out into the field and learn some of things that you just can鈥檛 learn in the classroom.鈥�
Team leader Allan said: 鈥淚t was a lot of hard work but we鈥檙e absolutely delighted to have won. We鈥檝e definitely learned a lot from the competition and look forward to putting some of these skills into practice in the real world.鈥�
Posted by 伊人直播 on 25/11/2019
