Can anyone identify this crop?

[SoupDragon]

Out for a dog walk and there were fields and fields of a crop I don't recognise and I'd like to find out what it was to satisfy my curiosity! I've had a short Google but really have nowhere to start from.

Broad beans :)

I think they are broad beans.

I don't think I've ever seen them growing, even though I'm sur my parents grew them when I was growing up. Don't they need poles like runner beans then?

I knew MN would know the answer. Thanks :)

No, they don't need any support, though I think the tips are stopped after a while, to bush them out and also discourage aphids which can invade them.

Every day is a school day :)

Broad beans - I've been growing them for years. I use string around the rows as support as it's quite windy here, and pinch the tops out when they are about 80 cm tall. I usually eat the tops as you can cook them like spinach, then I get loads of beans and freeze about half of them for the winter.

Field beans, variety slightly different from garden broad beans, stay on the plant until October ish when the dried beans are harvested with a combine. Used for animal feed and human consumption. There are more of them in the ground this year due to a change in farming subsidies requiring a bigger range of crops than some farmers were growing, plus an additional 'environmental' tick box.

i'm with Springsprang on this one, definitely

Field beans. Used for fodder.

Although they look just like broadies, we dont eat broadies in the uk on that scale.

Yes, I would agree the ones in farm fields are usually the field bean variety. Round here they are sometimes left in the fields and then ploughed in, I guess the farmers still receive their "brownie points".

Fields beans

Cow food

They fix nitrogen into the soil Elliptic.