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Nuffield Farming Scholar Andy Howard reflects on his Nuffield Scholarship and what it has enabled him to achieve since…

There were two key moments that got my Nuffield journey to the starting point. The first was sitting in a car with my friend and local farmer Tom Sewell, who was at that time in the midst of his Nuffield travels. Listening to him talk about his visits to foreign climes and inspirational farmers certainly got me interested in the idea of a Nuffield Scholarship. The second moment was going to a meeting and listening to this crazy French farmer, Frederic Thomas, talk about planting more than one crop species in a field at the same time, at that moment I knew I had a subject to study as well as the will.

The next stage was applying and going for my interview. I admit I have a supportive family at home and at work, which really helped, but many people say to me “I’d love to do a scholarship but just don’t have the time” or another excuse. My situation was that two days before my interview my second child was born and he ended up coming to the first Nuffield conference I went to at the age six weeks, so if I had enough time then most others will! The Nuffield staff are very helpful and flexible and will do their best to accommodate your situation. After the conference, the next stage was to plan and organise my twelve weeks of travel. That involved a lot of Googling, map staring and logistics. I ended up visiting 82 farmers and researchers in 10 different countries. 

This involved a maximum of four weeks away at one time, which was difficult with a young family but there really is not anything better than getting away completely from the farm and immersing yourself in a study tour. It opens your mind to what could be possible to achieve at home on our farm but just as importantly, you realise that wherever you are farming in the world there is no-one who has perfected their system. This was a very important realisation for me and took pressure off me mentally, as you can convince yourself that the people who author books on your subject know it all and have immaculate farms. This I can tell you is not the case! Though the travelling and meeting of new farmers was an amazing experience, but it really is only the start. There are too many highlights to mention here, but you can visit my blog at the QR code below for more detail about my journey.

That section of my Nuffield Journey was only 18 months out of the total of a seven-year journey. More has changed in my life since I finished than did during my travels. You are told before you embark on a Nuffield Scholarship that it opens many doors, and this certainly has been true for me. One of the immediate changes was the amount of public speaking I have done since. Before my scholarship I would struggle to speak for more than 20 minutes at a farmers meeting, they now have to kick me off after 90 minutes. In the last 5-6 years I have spoken to over 100 different groups in different countries around Europe, something that would have been unimaginable before.

On the farm there too have been many changes. I realised from visiting many inspiring farmers that many of the artificial inputs we use are unnecessary. This led me to reduce our inputs by 10% every year for the last five years. This has not only made the farm more profitable recently but also made farming more exciting. We have changed from a boring, predictable synthetic input system to a knowledge intensive, flexible system that is constantly changing and evolving. The scholarship inspired me to change my drill so that it can cope with intercropping and plant different plant species at the same time. I have also built, with my father, a bespoke intercrop separator from many second-hand components (Image 3), so we can now separate the intercrops we grow on the farm.

Even before my scholarship, I had started to do on-farm trials by myself to investigate whether new ideas would work on our farm. This has accelerated exponentially since finishing my scholarship. People have wanted to collaborate with me on trials on farm and this has added some professionality and scientific rigour to the process. We have worked with PGRO, Innovative Farmers, Diversify Project and Southern Water, and the information coming from these trials has been invaluable to our business. In the last couple of years this too has led to me being involved with an Innovate UK funded project called “N2 Vision” ( N₂Vision – Automated Robotic Nitrogen Diagnosis of Arable Soil (wordpress. com) ) The project is investigating how AI, Deep Learning and Robotics can apply nitrogen fertilisers extremely precisely to arable crops.

There are hopefully more projects in the pipeline that we are going to be involved in which all stems from being a Nuffield Scholar. It is an exciting time to be involved in the cutting edge of agriculture. From becoming more well known since my scholarship and doing many public speaking events, my email inbox started to become regularly filled with requests for information and ideas. Firstly, this is very flattering that people think you are an “expert” in your field (most of the time I feel like a novice) but can also become time consuming. After a while I realised that this interest could be monetised and so I contacted a fellow Nuffield Scholar Stephen Briggs about joining Abacus Agriculture ( Abacus Agriculture Consultants – abacusagri.com ) and so started my career as a consultant, again something unimaginable before Nuffield.

The changes to the way we have farmed since 2015 have also changed the crops we grow and opened doors to different markets for what we grow on farm. We now grow crops for Hodmedods (Hodmedod’s British Pulses and Grains [hodmedods.co.uk]), who are an amazing company that promote and sell British grains and believe in a fair share of the benefits to the whole supply chain. They have been a breath of fresh air to work with as they are not trying to grind you down to the minimum price or try to put as many quality claims onto the farmer that they think they can get away with. A real vision of how the food system should work!!

The biggest benefit from my scholarship has been the network of friends I have made around the world. If I have any issues on the farm, I know someone will be able to help. Also, the numbers of visitors to the farm (pre-covid) meant we had regular visitors from around the globe that always kept life interesting and continued the learning experience. So, if the story above has not interested you in a Nuffield scholarship, then it may not for you. However, if your interest has been piqued, then go out and speak to scholars and just apply! What is the worst that could happen?

Applications for 2023 Nuffield Farming Scholarships are now open until 31 July 2022. To learn more and access the online application system, please visit www.nuffieldscholar.org.

Written by Richard Rawlings, Agronomist, Zantra Ltd and Robert Patten, PlantWorks Ltd
The application of nitrogen on-farm will be under pressure in spring 2022, due both to its price, at the time of writing hovering at £650.00 /t and its availability, so far government intervention has done little to ease either price or supply.

The reason for the price rise has been well reported as it directly links to the gas price. Natural gas is used in the production of anhydrous ammonia gas, which forms the base of most types of modern nitrogen fertilisers. Whereas in other industries the power source for manufacturing can be switched (oil to gas or gas to electricity), this is not the case here. Natural gas is essential to achieve not only the high temperatures to enable the process, but it is also a source of hydrogen required in the reaction. Thus, we are wed to its continued use.

A perfect storm has led to the gas price rise, including greater global demand due to colder weather in Asia, depletion of European stocks and of course politics and war. There is no solace in the fact, but we are not alone in experiencing higher than expected nitrogen prices as we share the pain with Europe and beyond with US fertiliser prices reaching record highs. The reality is that 2022 will see the largest change to nitrogen regimes used on UK farms in two generations. Many farmers have already committed to winter wheat and in the coming months they will be considering the economics of growing the crop in 2022. Subject to farmers being able to afford the market prices, and indeed to source nitrogen, it is generally accepted that most farmers will need to modulate their nitrogen inputs by up to 30kg a hectare.

Not looking for false silver linings but this may create an opportunity to consider the rates we currently use on farm as norms. Work undertaken by the National Institute of Agricultural Botany (NIAB) in 2020 looking at nitrogen reduction rates in winter wheat showed little difference in yield between 100% application (250kg/h) and 70% rate, with any decline being offset by the costs of application.

Unfortunately, the wet winter of 2020/21 could have depleted much of the residual nitrogen from UK agricultural soils. This article comes a little late for promoting the use of legume-based cover crops, but spare a thought for this approach next year, equally a fundamental review of your rotations could be due in 2022 to include the use of known nitrogen fixers. Many agronomists out there can expect some challenging questions from clients as they seek to manage soil nitrogen in 2022 and beyond.

Efficiency will be critical to the economics for winter wheat in 2022. Many farmers will be considering the move to liquid nitrogen application for ease of use, storage, accuracy or to combine tank mixes and reduce fuel costs. The adoption of more precise agricultural techniques allows for a faster response to crop needs and protein management.

Another area of improved management is Nutrient Use Efficiency (NUE). One of the ways to use less fertiliser is to ensure that the majority of the applied Nitrogen, Phosphorus and Potassium (NPK) is taken up by the plant. Where previously we may have accepted nutrient losses to leaching, volatilisation or becoming chemically soil-bound we now know more about the plant, soil and nutrient interactions and we can manage these to improve the nutrient flow into the crop. Many of the nutrients that are taken up by plants are first metabolised (digested) by microbes in the soil that strip away and re nature the chemistry to make it plant available. In many cases the interaction between plant and microbes goes further with,  for example, plants with a strong association of mycorrhizal fungi turning down their own mechanism for up-taking phosphorus in favour of taking it up more efficiently from the fungal network.

Ironically the use of sustained chemical inputs in farming reduces the functioning of the crop microbiome and decreases its value to the farming system. Biofertilisers can be used to redress this imbalance and used routinely to increase NUE. Commonly available biofertilisers include both mycorrhizal fungi and Plant Growth Promoting Bacteria (PGPR). The latter group are the most relevant to farmers that have planted winter wheat in 2021 as they are spray applied in the following spring. Trials in the UK under commercial nitrogen regimes have sown that nitrogen can be modulated downward post application of PGPR with these beneficial bacteria acting both to increase nitrogen uptake and to trap nitrogen offering an additional slow-release mechanism.

There has rightly been an increasing focus on soil health over the last decade as farmers become more aware that they are managing soil as a key asset on farms. As we move focus from maximising crop yield to maximising profit, there are new methods of precision agriculture, smart rotations, and microbial technologies to adopt to address ‘the missing 30Kg/h’ on farm.  

In just its first year of building the UK’s first digital buying group Farmdeals has secured many reputable suppliers in most areas of the UK for products such as fuel, fertilisers and feed. However, it has been disappointing that to date we have been unable to supply a full range of crop protection products. Despite every other buying group being able to offer product, we have struggled. For some reason the existing supply chain doesn’t seem to like the idea of Farmdeals. While we see ourselves as just another buying group, the supply clearly does not.

Disruption to bring better price to farmers requires lateral thinking. Seeing how FBN in the USA have solved a similar issue has shown us there are other ways. An article by AgWeb in the USA about FBN shows how much things can change, it’s an interesting read, scan the QR Code below to see it. Speaking to and inspired by what FBN have achieved, we have secured our own direct supply. In 2023 we will have limited availability of most of the main generics used. It is out hope that this will come with game changing prices, with a target of 20% below the average market price. To achieve this though we need our members help, a chance for farmers to work together to change the market in their favour.

The best prices will come if we can commit to volume, to do this we need an idea of what FarmDeals members (and those of you still to join!) might need. Filling out our form and estimating what you think you might use in 2023 will help us get the best possible deal for you.

It doesn’t need to be completely accurate, and we are not asking for any commitment. But those that fill out the form will have priority on the product volume we secure at the lowest possible price for 2023.

Dr Harry Langford, Dr Jemma Taylor

Helping farmers to de-risk the changes associated with adopting regenerative agriculture practices could play a vital role in ensuring a sustainable future for farming. To successfully achieve this, the industry needs to demonstrate tangible outcomes and associated impact, supported by quantifiable metrics, but how? CHAP Innovation Network Lead, Dr Harry Langford and Research Associate, Dr Jemma Taylor, are part of a team that has developed a business case to explore just that.

Through CHAP’s New Innovations Programme, which brings together skilled practitioners and technical specialists to define critical realworld challenges, potential ideas for overcoming areas of market failure are scoped. From this, business cases are formulated with a view to overcoming a shared sector challenge, in this case, de-risking regenerative agriculture decisions.

Reporting on the business case, Dr Langford and Dr Taylor provide sector insight, share the proposed solution and draw in knowledge from industry advocates of regenerative agriculture.

What and why

Regenerative agriculture (regen ag) is a series of methodologies, associated products and technologies, that seek to improve and build agricultural soils by creating a self-nourishing ecological system to benefit both food production and the environment. The most widelysupported definition of regen ag comes from ‘The Carbon Underground ’ – “farming and grazing practices that, amongst other benefits, reverse climate change by rebuilding soil organic matter and restoring degraded soil biodiversity – resulting in both carbon drawdown and water cycle improvements”.

This is something to be taken seriously, as we consider the broader and future implications of current agricultural practises and what could take place to ensure a healthy and sustainable future food system. For context, the modern intensification of agriculture began in the 1960s with the Green Revolution, and has since led to a number of ecological concerns including soil degradation, water pollution and high greenhouse gas (GHGs) emissions.

These are detailed as –

• Agricultural soils are degrading at an alarmingly fast rate. 33% of UK soils are thought to be degraded, with 6 million hectares at risk of compaction or erosion. Yet despite it costing an estimated £1.2 billion per year to the UK economy, translating soils research and unpicking the complexity of soil health to apply this knowledge on farm remains challenging.

• 35% of surface water bodies and 31% of groundwater bodies fail to meet ‘good status’ (ecological & quantitative) as legislated by The Water Environment (Water Framework Directive) (England and Wales) Regulations 2017 . A quarter of this is correlated with agricultural activity, primarily through diffuse pollution and sediment deposition.

• UK agriculture is responsible for 10% of GHG emissions, with emissions of methane (56%) and nitrous oxide (31%) dominating. Through the NetZero policy, the UK government has committed to net zero GHG emissions for all sectors by 2050. This puts agriculture under pressure to reduce its emissions and remove, through sequestration, what it cannot reduce.

However, there is good news. Agriculture can be a ‘carbon sink’ due to the capture of carbon by plants and the sequestering of carbon into soil storage. This not only improves soil health and reduces water pollution, but is also a vital component of climate change mitigation.

Regen ag techniques enhance these natural processes by making them more effective. A key challenge is to better understand and measure these benefits, in order to accurately validate the sequestration. This will enhance the adoption of sustainable practice, as well as ultimately enabling revenue generation, either by public good delivery (via the upcoming Environmental Land Management Schemes) or through the carbon market. The latter could be an important emerging market to capture, as the price of carbon offsets in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme has doubled in the last year, from ~€28 to ~€56 per tonne.

We want to see what role CHAP could play in overcoming this challenge.

Analysing the market

Many farmers already practice a range of regen farming techniques in the UK and across the world. The beauty of the system is that it is a process of continuous improvement, so there are always entry points and next steps for those who engage with it. The greatest uptake country-wise so far has been in Australia, with Vietnam having the largest percentage change in land farmed regeneratively between 2017-2018 . The charity Regeneration International, which supports regen ag practice, currently has 391 partners, 13 of which are in the UK . There has also been an increase in academic research, with the number of papers mentioning the topic doubling between 2018 and 2019 .

Large companies such as PepsiCo, McCains and Danone are now pledging to support regen ag and encourage their supply farms to take up the practice. This not only benefits the environment, but could also potentially lead to a market advantage. The UK-led G7 Sustainable Supply Chain Initiative, including 22 leading food and agriculture companies such as Unilever and Sainsbury’s, also launched on 16th December 2021 with a focus on building better agricultural systems. Netflix also premiered a film by Kiss the Ground , an American charity advocating regen ag, bringing it firmly into the public eye.

Supporting regen farming practices further are decision support systems (DSS) and tools. Popular examples include:

• Cool Farm Tool – Online GHG, water and biodiversity calculator for farmers

• Agrecalc – Carbon calculator tool to monitor and reduce a farm’s carbon footprint

• RegenFARM Platform – Agri-tech platform enabling farmers to redesign food production by simulating regen ag interventions

• Farm Carbon Toolkit – Digital benchmarking tool for farmers to calculate carbon footprint for their farm.

Newly emerging tools extend this portfolio further and include AGREED, a platform to provide data-driven decision support around naturefriendly practices, and the Soilmentor Regen Platform, a benchmarking tool for farmers based upon 10 critical soil metrics. Companies committed to breaking into the carbon offset market in the UK and EU are doing so by establishing trading platforms to ease the process of converting carbon capturing activities into sellable assets. Those in the UK are being supported in these ventures through the new UK Land Carbon Registry, but this sector is still in its infancy.

The case for change

“We wondered, ‘if regenerative agriculture is so great, why aren’t more farmers switching to it? what’s holding them back?’ When we dug a bit further, we realised it was the perceived risk of transition without clear tangible benefits that stayed most hands. That’s actually good, because those barriers can be overcome with sound data and support.”

Kelly Price, CEO AGREED

To meet the demands of an estimated global population of 9-10 billion by 2050, food production will need to increase by 70% on the same or less agricultural land area. The “Driving Productivity Growth Together” report, shows that increased, and more efficient productivity is a key strategic outcome for the UK. The AHDB believes farmers and growers have the biggest part to play in meeting the UK productivity challenge. This increasing pressure on farmers to increase productivity is against a backdrop of tightening regulations, withdrawal and restriction of crop protection tools, rising resistance to existing pesticides and increasing demand for reduced input and impact on the environment. The case for change can be summarised in the following ‘problem statement’, that this business case is tasked with addressing.

Problem statement

“We need to measure, prove and demonstrate the tangible impacts of regenerative agriculture in order to de-risk change, drive adoption and create a new place for farming. There are not currently enough, sufficiently well-proven or locally-translatable, models for regenerative agriculture that truly balance yield, resilience, and carbon sequestration”

Regenerative agriculture – part of the solution

The use of regen ag leads to a number
of benefits –

• Building soil organic matter to improve water holding capacity & crop resilience, and reduce runoff & erosion.

• Improving soil microbiome to enhance plant nutrient uptake & help prime/protect plants against pests & disease.

• Enhance the sequestration of carbon into soil storage; helping address climate change & achieve the net zero target.

Further exploration is required to establish how carbon sequestration could most effectively be achieved, and whether it could provide an income stream as an investible natural capital product. The value of this opportunity is significant, as most other industrial sectors cannot act as a carbon sink. More broadly, there is good correlation between regen ag and improving the ‘ecosystem services’ provided by the soil: e.g. purifying water, cycling nutrients, sequestering carbon, regulating flooding, and providing food, fibre and fuel.

The recent rise in precision agriculture and associated monitoring and measuring technology brings further opportunity for regen farmers. The improvement in data granularity, if effectively harnessed, will provide more information on crops, the environment, carbon and local ecosystem services with which to make decisions. If regen farming is to be rewarded through external factors (e.g. the market or ELMs), this data could also provide evidence to support.

Sensors can now measure key soil health indicators, from simple indicators, such as pH and organic carbon content, to more complex, such as microbial diversity or volatile organic compound (VOC) signatures. Aerial or satellite imagery can measure crop health and predict both yield and nutrition requirements, and sensing, sampling and laboratory analyses can determine biodiversity, community structure and plant micronutrition. Despite these opportunities, there are still a number of barriers to the adoption and scale up of regen ag.

Barriers to overcome

During stakeholder workshops organised by CHAP as part of creating the business case, a number of barriers were outlined and confirmed:

• Risk Real and perceived risk from undertaking new practices with unknown and less predictable outcomes. 

• Evidence Lack of robust data and evidence in a complex system. 

• Diversity Heterogeneity of soil systems & discrete farm management plans. Hard to make certain practices work at individual farm or field level. 

• Transition How to implement a successful     transition period. Regen practice seeks to improve the biological system, which takes time. 

• Reward Lack of incentive, reward & recognition for regen produced food. 

• Confusion How parameters for regen ag compare to conservation agriculture, integrated farm management (IFM), etc. 

• Mindset Resistance to change must be overcome – mindset and risk appetite. 

• Integration Practices often only bring benefits when part of a full system. Need to combine factors to make a difference.

Solution – The Field Profiler

CHAP proposes the development of a ‘Field Profiler for Regenerative Agriculture’, in the form of a profiling tool which exploits best-in-class approaches to measurement and clustering, to deliver accurate and resonant profiles to support regen ag decisions. The primary purpose of this is to enable land managers to target multiple different objectives for their land, from yield improvement to carbon farming, by providing predictions of the likely outcomes of a management decision and insights into the possible pathways of delivering those outcomes. Its secondary purpose is to support the development of common metrics with which to benchmark regen and net zero agriculture. This would be done through the integration and effective use of existing data, as well as generating new data through sensor and in-field measurement of the environment in and around the crop at a sub-field level, to create a series of profiles that represent the diversity of fields under-going regen ag.

Long-term, it is hoped that this data could be used to define a ‘digital twin’ of the field, for real-time analysis and predictive insight. By focusing on improving measurement and insight, this solution provides a measurement protocol for, and benchmarks of, regenerative success, and provides the data to underpin improved scenario testing and simulation. It directly addresses the need to measure, prove and demonstrate the tangible impacts of regen ag to de-risk change and drive adoption. This is due to the profiles being scoped for individual fields rather than whole farms, allowing small-scale changes to be made with expected positive outcomes, so lowering entry barriers for uptake of regen ag practices.

The ‘Field Profiler’ was assessed as delivering the equal best economic return on public investment, despite being the highest cost. It substantially outperformed other assessed options for qualitative benefits (particularly in providing a clearer focus for research and practice). It is recognised that it carries a moderate level of risk, but this can be managed and mitigated through good sector relationships. CHAP is confident that it can successfully deliver the ‘Field Profiler’ as a solution to the current challenge, as it strongly aligns to its purpose, vision and strategy within the UK agri-tech sector.

With special thanks to CHAP’s partners and collaborators for enabling this report to be created.

enquiries@chap-solutions.co.uk

http://www.chap-solutions.co.uk/

1. The Carbon Underground Regenerative Agriculture definition paper https:/ secureservercdn.net/50.62.174.113/02f.e55.myftpupload.com/wpcontent/uploads/2017/02/Regen-Ag-Definition-7.27.17-1.pdf

2. https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2017/407/contents/made

3. Oxford Analytica (2020), “Regenerative agriculture needs public-private support”, Expert Briefings. https://doi.org/10.1108/OXAN-DB254346

4. https://regenerationinternational.org/our-network/

5. Newton P, Civita N, Frankel-Goldwater L, Bartel K and Johns C. (2020). What Is Regenerative Agriculture? A Review of Scholar and Practitioner Definitions Based on Processes and Outcomes. Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems. 4:577723

6. https://kisstheground.com/ 7. ‘Driving Productivity Growth Together’, (AHDB, 2018)