Livestock feed watchers will have lately been able to update their statistics for the first half of 2013 with the publication of data for June for both Great Britain and Northern Ireland. And, in volume terms at least, 2013 will have been the source of some satisfaction with production volumes at their highest for several years in both Great Britain and Northern Ireland. So what has driven this expansion of feed production? Was it an increase in the livestock populations requiring to be fed? Or, wasit that 2012 was the second wettest year on record, being only exceeded by the millennial year 2000? And, as a stack of company reports of their year's activities have observed, 2013 has been far from helpful. Spring, such as it was, was late while Junewas cool and lacking in rain in the UK as a whole. Roger Dean has been looking at feed production in the first six months of the year - and paying special attention to the implications of weather conditions in 2012 and 2013.
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