Moss-side guru is a cereal prize winner

THE farmer of Moss-side has once again won the Royal Northern Agricultural Society's award for the champion cereal grower. Mossie has been champion five times, but this year he has really swept the boards, he has even got the prize for the best crop of weeds.

And Mossie has had a further accolade. His farm has been selected to host next year's Royal Northern Crops Event. That's where the farmers who would like to grow four tonnes of winter barley and five tonnes of wheat, or a wonderful crop of weeds, can come and see how it is done.

It is funny how farmers show off to one another how to do it. Can you imagine Glaxo inviting the scientists of Astrazeneca to see how they are getting on developing new drugs?

The grain barons of the Mearns are planning to come up in a luxury coach for what they hope will be "a rare day oot".

Mossie will get rid of at least one of his over-fat pigs through his mobile rotisserie among the growers of the north-east.

They will be able to examine the guru's pioneering work with blended crops. That's where he grows two breeds of winter barley together, one short strong six-rowed variety and one lanky two-rowed barley. This seems to work because the foliage which makes the seeds is spread more widely and so each plant gets more light.

The short variety is stronger and helps to hold the crop up rather than "lodging" - collapsing in a mangled heap which makes it prone to disease and harder to combine.

They'll see his blend of wheat and barley, a crazy idea which takes blending further despite the problems thrown up by crops whose ripening dates are as much as a month apart.

That must surely mean that all the growth stages and therefore the spraying dates are different for the two crops but not even Mossie can spray the wheat and leave the barley and there is no market for a mixture of wheat and barley.

Yet it works for Mossie because he is feeding the whole lot to his pigs.

They'll be able to inspect Mossie's experimental plots, where he tries out new varieties, new chemicals, new systems of tillage or old systems that are worth another try.

It's just what the colleges do so well but Mossie does it better. He doesn't mess about with little "erse breadths" of plots. Mossie's plots are exactly one hectare each.

Big plots give two advantages; they imitate real field conditions better by using his normal field sprayer with its 20-metre booms, and little accidents like careering cattle, nesting badgers or curious farmers pulling handfuls so that they can bite them, make no impact on the results.

The Farmer is proud to say that he is to be a part of the great Mossside open day.

He had hoped to be in charge of the bar, or even to be a carver of the roast pork, but no. He is to be kept well clear of all that.

He is to be in the Moss, not even in charge but helping with the car parking. If you are to mingle with the great and the good you sometimes have to accept a minor role.

So what was that about Mossie adding champion grower of weeds to his CV?

I have told you of Mossie's philosophy that yield is the secret to profit in growing crops. You can spend a lot on extra chemicals and fertilisers as long as you get more yield.

He was particularly scornful of the lads who would stick out their chests and say, "Aye, but I grow malting barley. Aa my barley ends up in a whisky tumbler." And them growing half as much per acre in a good year.

In fact, the guru got so het up about it that he once described spring barley as "jist weeds".

That remark is back haunting him today.

You see, it was no surprise when the guru of grain won the winter barley award for 2008. It was no surprise that he won the prize for the best field of blended barley. But he also won the spring barley competition. And worse than that, his field (of the variety Cocktail) also won the malting barley award.

What is most remarkable, and may even be important, is that Mossie's winning field of spring barley could almost be called summer barley. It was sown, not in March when conventional wisdom has it that it should have been sown, but on May 5. It was judged as being the best on two months growth whereas it "should" have had four months growth to show the judges.

The secret seems to be another of Mossie's innovations which will be on show at the crops event next July. It was grown with only 30 units of nitrogen as opposed to a norm of about three bags of a compound.

The deficit was made up with pig slurry, applied to the growing crop. This isn't like my attempts in the seventies when I applied muck from a spreader and it fell in great dods on top of the crop smothering some and leaving other plants without.

This is liquid applied precisely with a sprayer.

It fairly works and the guru says he may have to grow more weeds. If he can sell three tonnes of spring barley for malting at £180 a tonne "this could be the way forward".