Can how you grow crops impact on the nutrient and health value of food? It’s what farmer and doctor Hannah Fraser is trying to find out on a Nuffield Scholarship By Mike Abram For a long time there has been a suspicion that how you grow food will determine its nutrient status and ultimately impact …
Is regen farming producing more nutritious food? Read More »
Three start-ups are looking at new ways to deliver effective crop protection solutions that could overcome current resistance issues. Tech Farmer gets the insight. Tiny carbon particles, not dissimilar to burnt sugar, could hold the key to a completely new method of delivering crop protection. First discovered in 2004, carbon dots are extremely small spherical …
Labour shortages are driving fruit and veg producers to examine robotic solutions. Tech Farmer attends the World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit in London to find out more. Increasingly difficult to find and ever more costly. It’s little wonder that some of the UK’s most innovative farms and businesses are choosing to investigate and invest in the …
Knowing basic infrastructural information about fields is a key requirement to unlocking technological progress for an Oxfordshire wine producer. Tech Farmer visits JoJo’s vineyard. By Mike Abram Three simple words explain why Ian Beecher Jones, and his partner Tess, started the 2ha JoJo’s vineyard that nestles on the chalky slopes of the Chiltern Hills, not …
In June, Mike Abram visited three US farmers disrupting the norm in the Midwest states of Indiana and Ohio. Driving through northern and central Indiana there are a couple of things that strike you immediately – one, how flat it is, and two, how most of the cropping is either soybeans or maize. In a …
As more growers use foliar nitrogen applications, Direct Driller picks out some practical tips about how to formulate mixtures for maximum efficacy from Joel Williams’ masterclass. Written by MIke Abram Foliar feeding potentially offers a more efficient and quicker route to get nitrogen into a crop, particularly later in the season, but it does come …
Written by Mike Abram When prices of nitrogen rocketed ahead of last season, and supply looked anything but assured for a time, there was an understandable interest and move towards alternative sources of nitrogen fertiliser. One of those was foliar nitrogen with plenty of growers either trialling or increasing its use. Foliar feeding, particularly of …
How to make foliar nutrient applications more consistent Read More »
In the final part of our series on sap analysis, Mike Abram talks to a farming business that’s incorporated sap analysis into a wide range of cropping Extensive sap analysis, first in trials, but increasingly in commercial practice is starting to change the way Cambs Farms Growers, part of G’s Growers, is managing its wide …
Sap analysis proving valuable for large, diverse farming business Read More »
In the third part of our series on sap analysis, Mike Abram learns how to interpret the results. You’ve taken your leaf sample, packaged it up and sent it to the Netherlands, and now the results have landed in your inbox. There’s a whole ray of bars and numbers for just about every nutrient you …
In the second part of Direct Driller’s series exploring sap analysis, Mike Abram finds out about the science behindnutrient use in plants Nutrients are vital for life but if they get out of balance it can cause either deficiencies or excesses that restrict plant productivity. Sap analysis is a tool to help growers understand the …
