GWCT Allerton Project — Long-Term Farming Research

Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust research farm at Loddington, Leicestershire. 330ha mixed farm researching farm ecosystems and effects of different farming methods on wildlife and environment for 20+ years. Head of Farming: Phil Jarvis.

Profile
Location Loddington, Leicestershire
Area 330 ha
Staff 3 FT
Soils Denchworth & Hanslope clay
Rainfall 660mm
Altitude 150–197m
System Mixed: winter wheat, OSR, winter/spring oats, spring beans + 280 mule ewes, Leicester Longwools, South Devon suckler herd
Approach Integrated Farming; minimum tillage since 2001

Phil Jarvis’s “Cover Crop Crossroads” article (Issue 7) — practical reflection on 5+ years of cover cropping on heavy clay, including species selection, blackgrass challenges, and financial viability.

“The Evolution of Tillage” article (Issue 21) — long-running tillage study.

Issue 21 — The Evolution of Tillage Techniques on Heavy Arable Land (April 2023)

A long-form personal history by Dr Alastair Leake of the journey from “There’s a reason why we use the plough” through three decades of progressive tillage research at Loddington and beyond. The piece doubles as a UK conservation-agriculture historical record.

The drill journey

  • German Rau one-pass (loosening leg + powered rotovator + seeder + roller): good establishment but only 3 m, high HP draw, intensive disturbance chitted weeds
  • John Deere 750A: 7-minute first run, 7 hours unblocking. Once tamed, “the results were impressive” — depth, seed-to-soil contact, undulating ground and trash all handled well. Drawbacks: hefty price tag and wide rows
  • Väderstad Rapid: bought after Sweden visit; Vaderstad UK MD spent hours under the drill making setup adjustments. The machine “gobbled up the acres”
  • At Allerton: transitioned from plough to Simba Solo + Free-Flow (heavy-ground belt-and-braces, shallow-plough disturbance without inversion), then Vaderstad Rapid disc, then John Dale Ecodrill, interspersed with a Claydon

UKSMI and ECAF

Leake helped found the UK Soil Management Initiative (UKSMI) with soil scientists, farmers, manufacturers, NGOs and agronomists, working through trash, slug, blackgrass and compaction issues. UKSMI joined like-minded national bodies from Denmark, Germany, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Switzerland to form ECAF — the European Conservation Agriculture Federation. EU LIFE Programme funding enabled travel, seminars, farm walks and shared learning.

The headline policy outcome

“In the UK we went from less than 10% of land under non-plough tillage in 1999 to over 50% by 2006, just 7 years, putting us only second to Finland on the leader-board.”

DEFRA commissioned the team to write A Guide to Managing Crop Establishment and run events with 12 case studies on different soils. A separate study compared 5 non-inversion farms with 2 ploughing farms and showed non-inversion saved 52 minutes per hectare at establishment — at a moment when farms were expanding without expanding labour.

[Source: dd-issue-21, 2026-04-13]

Issue 22 — Five Years of the Syngenta Conservation Agriculture Trial (July 2023)

A detailed write-up by Joe Stanley of the first-phase results from the long-term Syngenta-led Conservation Agriculture trial at Allerton (heavy silty clay loam) and at a light-land site at Lenham in Kent, conducted in partnership with NIAB and ECAF. The trial compared three systems across minimum 1 ha plots in a 5-field rotation:

  • Continuous inversion tillage (with secondary tillage)
  • Minimum tillage (low-disturbance subsoiling / disc-based)
  • Direct drilling with no additional soil movement

A Dale EcoDrill was used across all three systems for sowing; a Vaderstad Carrier was the primary cultivator on the min-till side; the ploughed plots were also worked down with the Carrier and occasionally a power harrow.

Headline results after five seasons

At Loddington (heavy clay) inversion vs DD:

  • Establishment: 8% reduced under DD
  • Yield: 7% reduced under DD
  • Fuel use: 44% lower under DD
  • Work rate: 50% improved under DD
  • Operational costs: 11% lower under DD
  • Net profitability: 14% per hectare higher under DD

At Lenham (light land) inversion vs DD:

  • No yield reduction between systems
  • 16% increase in net profitability under DD

The minimum-cultivation regime sat squarely in the middle as a clear stepping-stone.

Environment metrics

  • Soil GHG emissions: 8% reduction at Loddington, 5% at Lenham under DD
  • Carbon footprint per tonne of production: 4% lower at Loddington, 9% lower at Lenham
  • VESS soil structure: significant 10% improvement at Lenham; no clear difference yet at Loddington on heavy clay
  • Earthworms: +13% at Loddington, +112% at Lenham over the five years
  • Most dramatically: overwinter farmland bird counts +247% on DD plots at Lenham, +2,800% at Loddington vs ploughed (lapwings particularly absent from ploughed)

Phase 2: regen-comparators

From autumn 2022 the min-till plots have been discontinued and re-purposed as a series of “regen comparators” testing herbal leys, manure applications, optimised synthetic N, biostimulants, and grass-weed control in a regen rotation. Joe Stanley notes that other Loddington land under CA principles for a decade has registered a 10% increase in soil organic matter and significant improvements in worm numbers and microbial activity — five years is “in reality a short period of time when it comes to building soil health and carbon”.

[Source: dd-issue-22, 2026-04-13]

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