- Cleveland farmer, William Wardman, is a long-term high erucic acid rape (HEAR) grower
- With the crop now moving from ‘niche’ to ‘mainstream’ as the demand for more UK growers increases, he explains why it’s been a success for his farm
“We were attracted to HEAR by the premiums which were readily available, together with the confidence we get from the contracts,” William explains. “We don’t grow any other oilseed rape. We’ve found HEAR is easy to grow and can get yields up to 6.9t/ha, although the average over the last ten years is probably closer to 4.5t/ha.”
William’s crop is grown for and marketed by Frontier Agriculture, which has an exclusive supply agreement with speciality chemicals manufacturer Croda Europe Limited. William continues, “The Frontier contract is based on the OSR price plus a premium, and we use it as a cashflow crop.”
An experienced producer of the crop, in recent years William has extended his rotation to one-in-five years to help control issues such as flea beetle, now growing around 70 ha of HEAR each year. Alongside it, he farms around 1,400 ha of cereals and a further 400 ha of grass on in-house and contract arrangements, as well as growing spring cereals, grazing cover crops for the farm’s 1,000 breeding ewes and 300 head suckler herd, and running a large horse livery business.
William’s HEAR crop benefits from a Frontier agronomy package, with the farm working closely with local agronomist, Andy Roy. Of the partnership he says, “It works very well for us to stick with Frontier, sourcing all our inputs for the HEAR crop from fertiliser and sprays to seed, right the way through to marketing.
“We’ve found very little difference to any other rapeseed crop. It grows similarly and is clean and quite responsive.”
As well as his own HEAR, William combines the crop for neighbours and manages local, central storage. “The key consideration is that you must keep HEAR completely separate from other OSR crops,” he stresses. “For us that’s not an issue, as everyone in the area grows HEAR.”
Frontier currently offers three HEAR varieties: Ramses, Rhodes and Resort, all of which score well in terms of disease and vigour and the business aims to grow its contracted area by up to 40%. Crops from Frontier growers are supplied to Croda as part of a longstanding agreement, where they are used to produce oleochemicals and products including food-safe lubricants.
