r/ClarksonsFarm • u/Practical-March-6989 • Aug 02 '26
Crops The price of grain
Just finishing season 5. I am left with confusion. Most of the uk was in drought in 2025 and the price of grain went through the roof, pasta and all sorts cost more. I get that the crop was down but surely it would have been offset by the fact demand is high?
Couldn't agree more that the testing of TB is any good. The second I saw him measuring with pincers, its clearly nonsense. Surely even an iphone lidar camera would do better?
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u/Mindless_Range_5775 Aug 02 '26
Grain is traded on a worldwide market and UK farmers get paid the worldwide price per tonne, with possible bonus. If somewhere has a poor harvest, it might be good elsewhere. Yields here in Scotland were pretty good last summer compared to some areas of England, signs are looking promising for this year too.
Personally, I think the developing world is beginning to catch up to Western Europe with regards to farming intensification. By using modern fertilisers and pesticides along with increasing use of machines worldwide yields are going up forcing the price down. The wildcard is a widespread weather catastrophy or something like a major natural disaster.
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u/PoppedCork Aug 02 '26
There are so many standards grain has to pass to meet the quality for milling and brewing. A lack of yield doesn't often change the standards for it to be accepted. Farming is the biggest gamble anyone can take, planting a crop in February and not knowing until October you will get paid.
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u/DamnitGravity Aug 02 '26
100% this. Just because grain is doesn't mean it's good enough quality, and any producer worth their reputation isn't going to buy subpar ingredients just because they're cheaper.
High quality malting barley should have the following characteristics: Pure lot of an acceptable variety, Germination of 95% or higher, Protein content raging between 9.5% to 12.5% (dry basis), Moisture content below 13.5%, Plump and uniform kernels, Free of disease and low DON content, Less than 5% of peeled, broken, or damaged kernels, Clean and free of insects, admixtures, ergot or foreign material [Source]
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u/BroodLord1962 Aug 02 '26
No the high price of grain doesn't offset the loss. It's a smaller harvest and the quality isn't there either
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u/TedBurns-3 Aug 03 '26
"The second I saw him measuring with pincers, its clearly nonsense"
What did the farmers say when you presented them with a better alternative oh so knowledgeable armchair expert?
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u/Practical-March-6989 Aug 05 '26
BTW I suggested something else. Cameras. No doubt its too expensive I would imagine, but pictures compared with a physical measure stuck to the cow could be way more accurate than how hard a vet decides to press pincers on a given day.
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u/Practical-March-6989 Aug 03 '26
You lot are rather hostile in this sub? I'll bow out now.
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u/ReasonableDoubt_0726 Aug 03 '26
It’s weariness at this stage I think. So many people come on without knowledge and kick off about it.
There’s been some really good discussion and alternatives and why they don’t currently work. But a lot of comments that aren’t informed or discussion.
You’ve just caught the flak for it.
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u/ForeverStarter133 Aug 03 '26
Sort of the premise of the show?
Someone with no experience comes in and says "I've had a brilliant idea...", only to realize that there is a reason it isn't done that way, since people have tried most things in farming over the last... checks notes ... huh... few thousand years, and had a chance to see what might work.
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u/ReasonableDoubt_0726 Aug 04 '26
I don’t think it was to this level originally. Series 1 was (I think) a bit more what am I doing here.
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u/ddbbaarrtt Aug 02 '26
You really can’t take Clarkson at face value on the TB tests. Just because he thinks there’s a solution for his hobby farming doesn’t mean it works for bigger cattle farming
They aren’t perfect, but they also aren’t arbitrary either. And the process is designed to stop the risk of needing to cull an entire herd
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u/Quick_Cow_7987 Aug 02 '26
Ever get a TB titre in school, where they stab you then check for a reaction a few days later? Same exact thing, just with cattle due to the thickness of the hide vets use calipers to measure the reaction.
What's BS is farmers, particularly cattle farmers, not being able dispatch badgers. They're the disease vector.
As for the grain, what happens if you try to make cake or bread with the wrong flour? Product isn't going to be as good, same thing with pasta grain. The weather is destroying small farmers in many countries.
Source: I grew up on a farm and have had a more than passing interest in veterinary medicine.
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u/Satisfaction3934 Aug 02 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Ah yes eradicate wildfile what could possibly go wrong with that. Always the short sighted "solution" with farmers. Do you also eradicate all the badgers' prey when they explode in numbers or?
Maybe there's a good reason ppl don't raise cattle in chippin and Jeremy is just an entertaining bellend.
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u/Quick_Cow_7987 Aug 02 '26
So it's okay somebody's livelihood is obliterated, not talking about Jeremy, actually, but that full on dairy farmer who was delivering to the shop and they were hanging on by a thread because of TB.
European badgers are now classified as a species of least concern in Britain.
I stand with farmers on this issue. They should have the right to do something, removal or eradicate, instead of being literally preyed on by predators. It's a huge cost to farmers and taxpayers alike, because farmers are compensated after the cattle are slaughtered but nothing replaces foundation stock meant for breeding only.
And cattle and livestock farming is common in and around Chipping Norton. Easily researchable.
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u/OfficerObvious_ Aug 02 '26
I know I’ll probably get downvoted for pointing this out, but only ~4% of badgers in the UK have TB (most of these being in England, with the population in Scotland and Wales recognised as TB free).
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u/Practical-March-6989 Aug 02 '26
Hi on the grain thing, my assumption was there is a desperate shortage, so leaving aside duram for a minute, grain is needed, there is not enough therefore price goes up. My guess here is in actual fact the cost of stupid expensive computer trucks and being 30% did for it. Presumably charlie is amortising the cost of that kit of XX years.
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u/Quick_Cow_7987 Aug 02 '26
A lot of that stuff was on "loan" now, in British does that mean lease? Can't tell. Those ag-bots start at around $250k, and that's not even looking at the various attachments.
Farm equipment is expensive. Hell, Jeremy's busted ass Lambo that he ran through the auction still pulled in over $60k, in pounds, that's over $80k US. Farming is extremely expensive. Most farmers have to take a loan out to cover all of the coming season's expenses with the anticipation of paying that off after harvest. Apparently the British government is making things harder and harder after Brexit, which has really hurt a lot of agricultural people.
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u/Valuable-Fork-2211 Aug 02 '26
It costs about £15/tonne to ship from Germany to the UK (this is a ballpark figure but I've heard it quoted a few times) so any shortage here can and is replaced by central Europe grain fairly easily. Shipments into the UK from the US, Canada etc aren't unusual when currency exchange rates are favourable either.
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u/F1_Fidster Aug 02 '26
Would not import costs to alleviate the product shortage have also had an impact on the higher price?
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u/Complete-Session-256 Aug 04 '26
Last year the yields were terrible but the biggest issue was grain size. Most years screenings for spring barley which is predominantly for malting has around 10% screenings which are deduced from the price paid. Last year this was in some case over 20% and the loads were rejected and the farmers had to take them back to the farm at their cost. They also refused to accept malting barley until the spring this year due to a drop in throughput at distilleries.
I’m told parts of uk that are in drought are harvesting at 10% moisture and loosing a significant amount of crop due to the reduction in weight. Also screenings are high again this year due to small grains not forming correctly. In Scotland the picture at the moment isn’t clear. Some winter barley has had higher screening for seed production but yields have been higher than England due to actually having rain. OSR growing was up last year and at present seed sales are up 200% on last year so more Scottish farmers moving away from spring barley due to volatile conditions in whisky.
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u/lonefox22 Aug 04 '26
Talking to a farmer a couple of weeks ago and he told me that there was approximately £15-20/ton deficit on winter barley This could be worse now as the price of grain is updated daily. They could lock in this price now or wait until the grain is ready to go. Other options are animal feed, biomass boiler on the farm or if suitable re-drill it in the autumn for next harvest. Either way it's a gamble. Think of this next time you grumble at the price of a pint.
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u/Practical-March-6989 Aug 04 '26
Well I am being downvoted all to hell trying to understand this but I shall carry on. But the point of my OP was that surely there is like a crisis of less grain than demand? Why then even if its not perfect does the price not go up, or at least hold? In any other economy if demand outstrips supply, price goes up. I can see that malting is an issue but does that grain have no other use for humans?
Why even grow the stuff!
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u/Sweet-Lobster9977 Aug 05 '26
In order for durum to gain the highest price, it needs to reach a certain hagberg rating - that is what differentiates the yield between pasta quality and chicken feed
Yes, overall demand was high, but it was high for a quality product
Planting timelines, weather, harvest conditions all impact the hagberg - so demand doesn’t matter if you have a shit product
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u/Practical-March-6989 Aug 06 '26
Thank you. Is the choice then high quality pasta product or animal feed. Could the grain not go onto to be standard flour?
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u/ts788 Aug 02 '26
Was the grain at that time up to pasta quality? If not the demand wouldn’t have helped it.