News MSE
Sowing date catch crop after maize often unfeasible
The Dutch Dairy Farmers' Union (NMV) is sounding the alarm about the obligatory cultivation of a catch crop after maize on sandy or loess soils. Due to the relatively cold and wet spring and summer, a lot of maize is not yet ripe on 1 October - the date that the catch crop must be sown - and growers are in trouble with the catch crop. The NMV requests that the sowing date be changed to 31 October.
The NMV already sent a letter to agriculture minister Carola Schouten on 16 July to draw attention to this problem and to extend the last sowing date. There has been no response to this so far, while the circumstances have deteriorated. Reason for the NMV to draw attention to this problem once again and to request that the sowing date be extended by 30 days to October 31.
Force Majeure
The cultivation of a catch crop after maize is quite a challenge this year. Sowing a catch crop under wet conditions is undesirable. Any structural damage that occurs when sowing on soil that is too wet has adverse consequences for the (capture) crop and is not in keeping with good agricultural practice. Due to the heavy rainfall in the spring and summer, many growers did not have a chance to use a catch crop as an under- or additional seed in the spring or summer. In the extremely dry summers of 2019 and 2020, the under-sowing failed on many plots, but that could still be restored by an early harvest of the silage maize in the autumn.
New sowing date
This year, the maize is on average later than in recent years. Harvesting unripe maize has a negative influence on the nutritional value, the starch is only formed when the cob is ripe. In addition, unripe silage maize is often very acidic. This can lead to problems with the digestion of livestock and to the development of dangerous gases in the silo or silage pit. The NMV reads on mijnrvo.nl that a good agricultural practice is the starting point in all cases and therefore requests that the mandatory sowing date be changed to 31 October due to force majeure.
Jurphaas Lugtenburg
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