Roughage tour Field beans - week 35
Field bean harvest shows good yields
Both winter and summer field beans have been harvested and the yields are relatively good. The harvest moment and the ripening of the field beans are striking this season, as can be seen in the Boerenbusiness Roughage tour. How did the harvest go and how did the dairy farmers experience the cultivation?
Overall, it has been a relatively good growing season for field beans. Very good yields have been achieved in various regions this year, but in other places the yield has suffered greatly from the drought. The spread in yield is therefore large. The harvest of summer field beans also came in close behind that of winter field beans.
At the beginning of August, for example, the winter field beans were harvested on the farm of dairy farmer Sander Vijverberg in Strijen (South Holland). The result was good: The final yield was 7.850 kilos per hectare. The yield potential of winter field beans is normally between 5,5 and 8 tons per hectare. That of summer field beans is somewhat lower at 4,5 to 6,8 tons per hectare. Vijverberg also had 4,5 hectares of summer field beans, but the yield was not nearly as good as with his winter field beans, he estimated earlier. The yield eventually came to 5.600 tons per hectare. The harvest of the summer field beans came shortly after the winter field beans, because the crop matured very quickly. Next season there will again be room for 9,5 hectares of winter field beans in the area.
The ripening of the summer field beans in Wapse (Drenthe) also went very quickly. It was expected to start harvesting in September, but that already happened on August 22. "Due to the weather conditions, the ripening process went very quickly. It is ready about three weeks earlier than expected," says dairy farmer Robert Welhuis. The number of kilos per hectare has not been weighed, but Welhuis estimates it to be an excellent yield for summer field beans. There were, however, some weeds between the field beans: "The beans were nicely dry with the harvest, but there were also some weeds between the crop, which made the beans a bit moist. We then had them in the trench silo for a few days, so that they arrived sufficiently dry in the shed".
Jesse Torringa
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