Innovation: Fun but potentially painful
I was recently nominated for the BBC’s food and Farming Awards under the “Farming for the Future” category. Awards are not really in my comfort zone and I thought hard about whether I wanted to accept the nomination. What convinced me to accept the nomination was the fact that the BBC are impartial, with no commercial input/bias in the awards. At the time of writing the judges haven’t yet visited. Their imminent visit has made me reflect on what we have trialled over the years, it’s not until I stopped to think, that I’ve realised how much we have done. I guess some would argue that I’m addicted to on-farm trials and they may be right. I’m a firm believer that you need to trial new ideas on your own farm to see if they work for you. Going to trial plots around the country can be interesting but can also be irrelevant to your own situation.
With this in mind I thought I’d use this article to talk about what we’ve trialled this year, the results and what we plan to do next season.
We have had 2 big replicated trials on the farm this year. The first is trialling the impact of Compost Extract on wheat yields and nitrogen need, with Kent Wildlife trust and Reading University as partners. Plots were with and without extract and 4 different nitrogen rates from 0 to 240kg/N/ha. Initially in the autumn I was very excited about this trial. The plots with compost extract applied with the seed had much larger root systems. This difference disappeared as the season progressed and in the spring I could not visually see any difference between with and without extract plots. So it was a surprise that in terms of wheat yields the extract plots gave an average of 0.4t/ha yield increase. This though was not statistically significant as you need a 95% confidence and it came up just short at 93%. We are doing the same trial again next season and it’s being expanded to two farms. With a few tweaks we hope for a more positive result next year.
Our 2nd replicated trial on farm is part of a Project called N2 Vision+, it’s partially funded by Innovate UK and is in conjunction with Manchester Met University, Royal Holloway University and Autodiscovery Ltd. The idea is to be able measure nutrient content of plants by using visual digital instruments and then apply the nutrients needed regularly using foliar fertiliser from a robotic platform. We have already proved that using deep learning we can detect nutrition using digital imagery. This year we trialled trying to replace all wheat nitrogen demand through foliar fertiliser and comparing to solid fertiliser. Unfortunately border control got in the way of this trial. The application equipment needed for the trial came from France, it got stopped at the border for weeks and mired in paperwork ( a Brexit benefit?). This meant we started foliar applications too late and they never caught up. I do believe we can get more out of foliar fertilisers but it involves going through the crop multiple times which isn’t practical for a crop sprayer but hopefully is for a robotic platform. The numbers are still being analysed at the moment.
We also had a number of simpler (less scientific) tramline trials. The first was comparing different companion species for planting with wheat. I had done the trial 4 years ago and so had a good idea of what wouldn’t work. This year we trialled: beans, vetch and peas and a combination of all 3. Beans were the best but we are going to plant a mixture of all 3 to spread our risk. Also I am going to trial broadcasting linseed before drilling to give extra biomass going into the winter. The seed for this trial was kindly donated by Kings Crops.
Bean foliar disease as we know can be devastating in terms of yield if you get treatment wrong. So after hearing of Ben Taylor Davies’ experience of using Scyon, a biostimulant, last season I decided to trial the product here this season. The Scyon plots had 3 applications of biostimulant and the plots next door had no Scyon, but had fungicide applications as needed. During the season (which was wet and ideal for Chocolate Spot) we couldn’t see any difference. The combine also showed no difference. This gives me confidence to expand it’s usage next year and try on other crops.
A trial we repeated this year was with Protozoa tea. Last year we saw a moderate yield benefit in wheat but a huge yield increase in Herbage seed.
This year we saw the same again, the interesting observation from this year was that where we applied the tea last year as well as this year there was an even bigger yield benefit. The benefits seem to compound. The usage of Protozoa tea here seems very beneficial.
Not an official trial but confirms a previous trial done, was with the use of wheat variety blends. We had two fields next to each other. One a crop of Crusoe and the other a 5 way blend of varieties including Crusoe. The crop of Crusoe got Brown rust very early and took us by surprise, the rust was impossible to eradicate and ended up reducing the crops leaf area. In the end the wheat blend yielded 2t/ha more and we spent £100/ha less on fungicide. It’s a simple technique that seems to work for us.
This coming season I am not certain of all the things I will be trialling. One trial that is already in the ground is a seed rate trial in Overwinter Cover Crops. There’s a French researcher who reckons we don’t plant enough seeds in cover crops, so we’ve doubled the seed rate in an area. The idea that over a number of years using “intensive” cover crops you can start to reduce artificial fertiliser. We’ll see!
In summary, I would encourage everyone to do on-farm trials but be prepared for failure! Also, don’t take one years results as gospel. Every year is different and results will change.
Most importantly don’t take my word or anybody else’s word either. Try it yourself, on your farm. Good luck!
