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Thurston Garden,

Are you sure the farmers round you are not being paid to leave a strip of field uncultivated? Also take note if they leave it this year.

You are a bit out of date calling straw a waste product. Try and buy a load now. You might get a shock at the price. The farmer installed a straw burner about 8 years ago to take advantage of the "WASTE" straw. It was hardly ever used and he has now installed an oil bolier and the straw boiler is completely redundant.

MINESAPINT

Those margins around fields (I was told by local farmer in whose fields I do my metal detecting) are a legal requirement these days. Or was he spinning me a line?

Cannot claim to be up to date with my information, someone usually comes along who is once a topic is started. My understanding is farmers could elect to leave margins for wildlife (4 metres?) for which they would receive payment. However I now understand that the set aside scheme is scrapped due to food shortages and wonder if these measures to help wildlife have also been scrapped for the same reasons. Farmers have also had the option to leave large areas of "difficult to farm" land, scrub etc for which they receive payments under the wildlife banner.

Quite happy for someone to come along & correct this information.

MINESAPINT

MINESAPINT wrote:Thurston Garden,

Are you sure the farmers round you are not being paid to leave a strip of field uncultivated? Also take note if they leave it this year.

You are a bit out of date calling straw a waste product. Try and buy a load now. You might get a shock at the price. The farmer installed a straw burner about 8 years ago to take advantage of the "WASTE" straw. It was hardly ever used and he has now installed an oil bolier and the straw boiler is completely redundant.

MINESAPINT

I think it would be wholly reasonable to assume they were being paid to leave the margins - it's called the Rural Stewardship Scheme! And it's 6m, rather than 4m.

I think it is also fair to assume that if you are an arable farmer without a straw bale furnace to heat your farmhouse, then straw is a waste product. Would this be why strains of cereal have been developed over the years to have short stalks possibly?

Thurston Garden wrote: I think it is also fair to assume that if you are an arable farmer without a straw bale furnace to heat your farmhouse, then straw is a waste product. Would this be why strains of cereal have been developed over the years to have short stalks possibly?

Not just that (straw became less popular when the housing types for livestock changed, from deep litter to more cubicle/slatted housing). The shorter stalks mean that the cereal is less prone to wind damage.

It may depends on what part of the country you are in. Around here, I think every farmer manages to sell all their straw (provided it's decent quality). If there is no livestock in the area, and mainly arable, they'll have more of a problem with that.