The oilseed rape crops I have in the area look well, in general. Most were drilled into moisture or had rain straight after drilling.

A move back to establishing the crop with a conventional drill, rather than with a subsoiler or one-pass cultivator, has led to more even seed placement, and hence, even emergence. This has allowed the crop to fare better against the flea beetle pressures we have seen in the past few years.

Cost-effective crop establishment, a key aspect of this seminar, is critical to farmers' future profits, says session chairman Will Gemmill, regional executive and head of farming, Strutt & Parker.

“How farmers manage their soils and find more innovative ways of keeping them healthy while capturing carbon emissions will be critical in the future," he says.

With potato harvest results looking promising, Farmers Guardian takes the opportunity to catch up with John Chamberlain of Farmacy for the final part of our series, as he evaluates the 2019 season and looks ahead to next year.

 East Anglia: John Chamberlain (Farmacy)

Principal crops: Processing, some salads, soft/set skin, baking potatoes 

Suffolk Agricultural Association Rising Star award winner Tom Rouse is an agronomist with Farmacy, who says older generation farmers have a lot of knowledge to share.

Tom Rouse always had a keen interest in biology and chemistry and wanted to work in agriculture, so agronomy was a perfect fit.

Now, aged 29, Harper Adams graduate Tom is an agronomist with Farmacy, an independent agronomy adviser based in Lincoln.

Serving Lincolnshire’s farmers with the very best agronomy advice and services in order to be able to produce healthy food, profitably and with minimum environmental impact, has been the backbone of Farmacy plc’s business for the last two decades.

“Our ethos is to set new standards within the industry through a close working relationship with our farmer clients by providing cutting edge agronomy advice and services on all aspects of arable, vegetable and specialist crop production,” says Director, Mark Bellamy.