Rob Raven — Farmer Focus Writer

Family farmer on just under 700 acres of Beccles series clay who has scaled to managing close to 10,000 acres of land and livestock under a regenerative contracting model. Frames his approach not as ideology but as resilience and de-risking — keeping a multi-generational family farm viable.

📰 Read articles by Rob Raven — Heavy-Land Regenerative Contractor on Direct Driller → View author archive

Issue 14 — From a Home-Built Drill to 10,000 Acres (July 2021)

Origin: A Home-Built Direct Drill

Frustrated by endless power-harrowing of Beccles clay (“famously goes from too wet to work, to too dry, in about five minutes”), and unable to justify a commercial drill — and with no contractors locally — Rob’s family built their own:

  • Narrow tines on 200mm spacings
  • Independent coulter depth control
  • Hydraulically adjustable downforce on press wheels
  • 4m worked, pulled by 100hp

It was effective enough to convince them and freed up time to take on contracting work. Eventually invested in a “proper” disc direct drill to drill on the green and run more roadwork. Now runs both disc and tine drills with lightweight tractors on wide VF tyres.

Soil Transformation

“The top three inches of the heavy land used to be tan-coloured clay that was either like concrete or plasticine. Now it is highly organic, black and tilthy.”

  • Imported compost, muck-for-straw deals, cover crops wherever possible, livestock to manage over-zealous covers
  • Both 2019 and 2020: >100mm rain in the last week of September — disc drill back in within days. “I watched the drill go smoothly through a low place that used to stand with water every year, and it was a Eureka moment for me”

The Cover-Crop-to-Wheat Pivot (Late 2019)

A live demonstration of the de-risking thesis: walking multispecies cover crops in late November during the disastrous wheat year, Rob noticed they were still trafficable and wheat prices were climbing. Did an about-turn: drilled wheat straight into the standing cover with the disc drill, terminated cover a couple of weeks later, harvested a good crop of valuable wheat from fields originally destined for spring barley.

De-Risking Philosophy

  • Home-saved seed kept on farm so any failed autumn crop can be replaced with a spring drilling at no extra purchase cost; seed tested rather than treated so unused stocks can return to the heap or go into cover crops
  • Low-spend OSR: home-saved seed, companions, direct drilled, then left alone — if it works, it’s a crop; if not, it’s a catch crop into which another crop is direct drilled
  • Pre-em herbicides avoided where possible; insecticides eliminated; on-farm fertiliser and fungicide reduction trials underway

Scaled Contracting Model

Now provides regenerative contracting on several nearby farms plus farm management on two neighbouring country estates. An expanding livestock enterprise sits alongside the contracting work, giving control of that element of the system. “I am now responsible for crops and livestock across a much wider range of soil types and management history than I would have had in a lifetime on just one farm.”

“It would be more accurate to say that this is a farming system which harnesses and enhances the huge natural fertility provided by the soils and climate of our region, rather than constantly battling and degrading them!”

[Source: dd-issue-14, 2026-04-13]

Issue 20 — The LD Subsoiler Trial and a Direct-Drill Reality Check (January 2023)

An unusually self-critical Farmer Focus that pushes back against the purist no-till line. The spring brought a great autumn drilling window after a stressful dry spell — but the trials that drove the column’s content are about occasional soil movement.

The home-made LD subsoiler

Built in-house and first used on “new” land that had been yearly Topdown-worked to 8″. That land’s top 8″ were “solid and airless like concrete”, so Rob ran the LD subsoiler at 10″ and direct drilled — “fantastic crops, and have been able to DD the same land this year into lovely structure.” The success was too big to ignore, so he’s now running LD subsoiler trials on long-term DD land that yields OK but has plateaued.

“I really hope the trials do not prove to embarrass the untouched land, or it is going to really mess with my convictions (and my status at Direct Driller!), but I do think it is correct to constantly challenge everything, especially our own ideas.”

Spring barley and cultivated cover incorporation

Sugar beet gone entirely — even at £40/t Rob can’t justify the winter damage from heavy machinery. But no-till spring barley has been a persistent underperformer, and a beet-contract-forced cultivation pass after sugar beet on light land in a super-dry year outperformed the DD equivalent by a large margin. So Rob is trying a (fairly large) modified approach: broadcast cover crops then shallow 3″ cultivation before spring barley, leaving a corrugated seedbed with cover growing out of it, hoping winter weathering delivers the tilth DD can’t. Three methods in parallel: wide Bourgault VOS points set deeper, a set of discs, and a Topdown.

Food vs feed

The second half of the column lays out Rob’s growing ethical position: grains he produces should increasingly be for human consumption. Heavy-land malting winter barley is a challenge (wheat volunteers under no-till), achieved this year via shallow discing + glyphosate + patience before ULD disc-drilled Flagon. Spring malting barley now much easier thanks to new varieties and high-N contracts. Specialist crops (linseed, lupins, lentils, peas) continue despite storage and consistency issues: “any feed beans we produce are seriously low input, great for the soil and the invertebrate population, and they do at least displace soya.”

“Anyone claiming that their farming system can help save the world through GHG reduction and carbon sequestration should be ready for a bit of scrutiny over the downstream effects of their production.”

[Source: dd-issue-20, 2026-04-13]

Appearances

Issues 14, 20

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