Difficult weather conditions including very heavy snow and rain have brought spring planting in northern Romania and Ukraine to a halt, according to an Irish farmer who works and lives in Romania.
This was one of the key messages delivered by Co. Kildare native, Jim McCarthy, courtesy of his contribution to the latest edition of the Tillage Edge podcast.
McCarthy is currently growing 20,000ha of crops in an area of Romania that is close to its border with Ukraine.
Meanwhile, spring planting activities in Ireland are continuing apace, driven on by the current spell of weather.
But whether we are growing crops in Eastern Europe or in this part of the world, one fundamental rule is now in play: We all operate within a global market where commodities such as wheat, oilseed rape and maize are concerned.
So, what happens in the various regions across the world has an impact locally. This was hugely evident, courtesy of the food crisis that followed the start of the Ukraine war.
Rain and snow
McCarthy has a wealth of knowledge about farming processes in the Black Sea region but also about world grain markets.
He started his conversation with Teagasc’s Michael Hennessy by highlighting the impact of recent rains in Romania
“The place is in absolute muck,” he said.
“We have had 130ml of rain since March 26. Normally we would get 170ml from the end of September through until the beginning of the following June.”
However, one upside to all of this is the fact that winter crops are looking “wonderful”, McCarthy said.
“We have only half our beet crops in. Normally, the last week of March marks the beginning of the beet planting season in Romania,” he said.
“But heavy rain has brought all spring planting operations to a halt.
“We also had heavy snow to deal with during the first week of April. People were trapped in cars all over the place. It was absolutely ferocious.”
According to McCarthy, it is currently impossible to get out to fields in his part of the world.
“All the dirt roads were impacted badly by the snow and subsequent to this it just hasn’t stopped raining,” he further explained.
“In total contrast, this time last year we were extremely concerned about the drought conditions that were impacting on Romania at that stage.
“But we did need the rain, as there was so little moisture left in the soil, prior to its arrival.
“Most of our land is planted out in cover crops. As a result, most of the moisture that is available now will be retained within the soils.
“Recent work out of America indicates that a combination of no-till establishment and the use of cover crops ensures a 70% increase in the rate of water infiltration.
“This is very important for us in Romania.”
The recent snow and rain have impacted on northern Bulgaria and the southern regions of Ukraine too.
Spring planting
But, more generally, across southern parts of Europe, the drought continues. This is especially so in areas like the Iberian Peninsula.
“Huge parts of southern France are very dry. Poland is also very dry,” McCarthy said.
“In our own case the focus is very much on spring planting. But to date we have only managed to get in 100ha of sugar beet. We still have 10,500ha of beet to plant out.
“Where winter crops are concerned, all crops are looking well. But looking ahead, we will still need rain in July to deliver a realistic harvest across all of southern Europe.”
In the short term, however, McCarthy is not unduly worried.
“If we get good weather over the coming weeks, the growth rates achieved by beet crops will be phenomenal,” he said.
“Crops planted before the end of April will be closed in the drills by June 21. This is the kind of growth that we can get, if the weather plays fair.
“It will be the same with the maize. We had very bad hail in 2018 on May 16.
“As a direct consequence of this, we lost 1,000ha of crop, which was re-seeded immediately afterwards.
“But as it turned out, we got good levels rainfall in July and August of that year. And, as a consequence, the re-seeded maize yielded 10t/ha.”
Rotation
The recent snow and heavy rain will not be forcing McCarthy and his management team to re-think their spring planting campaign.
“Absolutely not,” he stressed.
“We have weather-proofed the rotation quite a bit. As far as we are concerned, there is a nice mix of crops in there.
“Winter barley was sown out last autumn because of the drought. We are holding the area of corn and in the poorer areas of the farm, we are now growing sorghum.
“There is now a good market for this grain. We are also holding the acreage of soya bean. This works well within the rotation.
“As a matter of course, wheat follows the soya.”
“The general rotation would be soya bean, followed by wheat, followed by a legume cover crop, then corn, followed by a cover crop of rye. After that, it’s back into soya bean.
“This rotation works tremendously well for us.”
According to McCarthy, there is a lot of interest being shown in sorghum at the present time.
“It’s a new crop for us,” he explained. “Most of it goes for cattle feed. But some also goes for brewing.
“There are also a number of health food options for sorghum. It is a huge crop in Africa.
“It can be grown with very little rain. The reality is that the world’s climate is changing. Drought is a major issue in so many countries.
“As a result, crops like sorghum and millet are now coming into many countries, in order to protect food supplies.”
Input costs
Like all other tillage farmers around the world, Jim McCarthy is striving to maximise the margin form the crops that he grows.
In this context, he has looked at the digitalisation of his business model. In practical terms, this means that he has been able significantly reduce costs.
“We also stayed out of the fertiliser market last November,” he said.
“All the input companies were putting fierce pressure on us at that stage. As it turned out, a lot of Romanian farmers bought expensive fertiliser at that time on the back of borrowed money.
“Unlike in Ireland, where fertiliser has to be physically imported on to the island, Romanian farmers can source product from any direction at any time of the year.
“In our case, the price of urea fell to just above the €500/t level in late-February. So we bought then.
“We committed to 1,500t of product across two tranches at that time,” McCarthy continued.
“Getting the fertiliser at that price was a great help.”
According to McCarthy, Calcium Ammonium Nitrate (CAN) is available locally in Romania at €380/t.
“There was tremendous resistance across Romania to the hike in fertiliser prices introduced by manufacturers last autumn,” he said.
“And this boiled down to the fact that farmers just couldn’t afford to make that level of commitment.
“The end result of all this was that input suppliers had to come up with another plan of action, not just on fertiliser but across the range of other products used on farms.
“This led to a growing use of generic, as opposed to branded products, particularly where herbicides are concerned,” he said.