Supplementary memorandum submitted by
the National Farmers' Union of England and Wales
We spoke after the Committee's recent session
on biofuels, and I promised to supply some further thoughts on
the timing of planting crops in order to meet the EU 2005 targets
for biofuels.
As you know, the most common feedstocks for
biofuels are likely to be oilseed rape for biodiesel and wheat
for bioethanol. Both winter rape and spring rape are grown in
the UK, but winter rape is by far the more common in view of the
significantly higher yields it offers. Of course, these yields
affect the carbon balance of the resultant fuels, and so I would
expect winter rape to remain the crop of choice when planting
for biodiesel.
Farmers typically plant winter rape in the last
week of August or the first week of September, with mid-September
representing the latest realistic opportunity. Farmers would make
decisions on planting a little earlier than this, usually during
July. The planting window for Spring rape is a little more variable,
and can fall between early February and late March depending upon
the climatic conditions. Wheat would typically be sown from the
second week of September until around the end of October.
Winter rape is typically harvested from the
middle of July, and the finished product starts to come through
in early August. Spring rapes are harvested in August and earliest
reliable availability is early September. Wheat harvest generally
starts in late July (in the right areas and for early varieties),
and continues until early September for the slower producer and
the more northerly producer. Generally in England wheat will be
in the barn by the end of August (depending on the weather) and
in the Midlands it can be as soon as August bank holiday weekend.
I think the relevance of this to policy decisions
on biofuels is fairly clear. Policies need to be clearly signalled,
if not in place, in time for processors to make farmers an offer
by July, in order that the product can be available by the following
autumn. This obviously implies that we will not be able to provide
the crop for a large biofuels industry in late 2004. However,
crop can be available for late 2005, which would give us some
chance of making biofuels pretty widely available for the end
of that year, which is the deadline for hitting the EU targets.
Of course, all of this is dependent upon much
else being in place, such as infrastructure and agreements with
retailers, and the Committee may wish to ask processors and retailers
to disclose their own lead times. From the perspective of the
grower, however, what is required is a change of policy sufficiently
marked and sufficiently early to feed through into orders in advance
of July 2004, when planting decisions are made for the coming
year.
I hope this is of some assistance to the Committee.
Please feel free to come back to us if you require further detail
or clarification, on this or any of the other issues raised in
the course of our evidence.
30 July 2003
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