Case Study: Belter, Hemel Hempstead –

Belter puts in a strong performance in a difficult season

Hertfordshire farmer Andy Hobbs is a committed spring barley grower. Farming 2500 all-arable acres on medium loam soils at Pudds Cross Farm, Bovingdon, near Hemel Hempstead, he grows a minimum of 200 acres of spring barley each year, alongside winter and spring wheat, winter barley, peas, oilseed rape and beans.

“Spring barley is important for us. Some years we’ve had 400-500 acres and generally speaking we have always found a good market for it,” he says.

Planet has been the spring barley variety of choice in recent seasons, always grown with the aim of achieving a malting specification, but for harvest 2025 Andy also planted 75 acres of Belter.

Drilled during the first week of March, last season’s spring barley went into the ground in perfect conditions, recalls Andy.

“We like to drill as early as we can, depending on the weather, and the weather was perfect,” he says

While he has adopted a non-inversion tillage approach for most of his cropping, Andy prefers to plough his spring barley land overwinter, following up with a pass with a Kuhn Prolander tined cultivator before drilling with a Vaderstad Rapid drill.

“We like to plough ahead of spring barley to give it a good, clean start,” he says.

His agronomy approach is simple but effective, with spring barley crops typically receiving one dose of nitrogen, one herbicide and one fungicide.

“We find we can keep a low [grain] nitrogen crop by applying the whole dose of nitrogen, which is usually only about 110 units (137.5kg N/ha), the minute we see the crop breaking through the ground.

“Most years, we’re good with that, although two years ago, it bit us in the backside, because we had no rain for weeks and the crop picked up the nitrogen too late,” says Andy

Despite concern that the scenario could be repeated last season, after a ‘horrendous’ spring dry spell, which saw some parts of the farm receive virtually no rainfall from March right through to harvest, the spring barley did surprisingly well at harvest.

“I was really pleased, because the Belter, even without much moisture, gained really good height,” says Andy. “I kept looking at it and thinking ‘where the hell is it getting moisture from?’”

“We had a lot of straw, which we sold off the field to give us a clean start for OSR, and a lot of corn.”

The spring barley was combined at the end of July, two-three weeks ahead of what would be a typical harvest date on the farm, with the Belter outyielding the Planet by around 0.5t/acre.

“We haven’t quite finished selling the Belter, and I would never completely trust a combine meter, but I would say it’s done about 2.5t/acre (6t/ha),” says Andy.

With a plump, bright sample, a 67kg/hl bushel weight, zero screenings and a grain nitrogen of 1.64%, Andy has been able to get his crop of Belter away on a malting barley contract paying a premium over feed. Unfortunately, the Planet did not fare so well, with a grain N of 2.0 consigning it to feed.

Will he be growing Belter for harvest 2026? “I’ve signed on the dotted line,” says Andy”.