2 November 2025
Headlands, turn-rows, and the honesty of a field
Comparing the body of a field with its headland as if they were the same crop is how good land gets a bad reputation.
Headlands take the turning. They take the extra spray overlap. They take the cattle that were walked through in March because the gate is there. They take the stone that migrates from the lane. Treating a headland yield as a verdict on the variety is a habit we see every winter in Herefordshire.
On a mapping sitting we usually draw the headland as its own strip, even if the monitor did not. A 12-metre turning zone on a 24-metre tramline system is not a rounding error. If the body of the field made 9 tonnes and the headland made 6, the field did not “average 8”. The field made 9 on the land you can actually farm as a block, and 6 on the land you use as a road.
That distinction matters when someone proposes taking the field out of wheat. It also matters when someone proposes a new variety because “the farm average was disappointing”. Farm averages include lanes, wet corners, and the field you only kept in combinable crops because the landlord likes the look of it from the road.
Walk the headland after harvest while the stubble still shows wheelings. Count how many times the sprayer turned. If the answer is “constantly”, do not let that strip sit in the same column as the rest of the block when you argue about seed.