The Cereals 2019 organisers and exhibitors have battled with 150mm+ of rain over the set-up and actual event days to still put on a decent show at Boothby Graffoe, Lincolnshire.
Despite having to cope with the heavy showers and resulting gloopy ground conditions, most of the machinery exhibitors seemed in good heart, saying that sales in 2018 had been surprisingly strong, and this buoyancy had carried through into the first quarter of 2019. However, many manufacturers and importers also reported a more recent slowing of business largely due to the inescapable ‘B….t’ word, and reckoned that the perceived increased likelihood of a no-deal EU exit towards the end of the year was making some customers nervous of renewing their investment in larger capital items. The reality is that, how the remainder of 2019 pans out will not only depend on the political situation, but also on what happens to the weather, crop yields, prices and the value of sterling in the interim.
In terms of the hardware at Cereals, a central theme was the ongoing battle against blackgrass …and how farmers might add to their armoury whether that be through the more effective application of herbicides and/or the use of techniques such as mechanical weeding, shallow cultivations to keep blackgrass seeds in the top 50mm of the soil profile and low disturbance drilling.
Keep clicking for a selection of the equipment on display
