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How To Start Drilling For £8K
Clive Bailye’s seed drill of choice is his 6m John Deere 750A , which has been used exclusively for 3-4 seasons. Last year, with an increased acreage, the founder and publisher of this Direct Driller magazine thought a second seed drill was necessary. Having just the one machine was a risk and in a difficult season would mean drilling was delayed. He looked around and found a good condition Horsch CO6 tine drill advertised in Germany.
Words and pictures by Mike Donovan
After delivery he rebuilt the coulters to a narrow profile so as to reduce soil disturbance. He says the tine drill is very useful driling after straw crops such as osr and also through the straw on second crop cereals.
Buying the drill from a German farmer was not particularly complicated, and provided him with a higher spec machine than Horsh sell in the UK. The seed dart tyres are much wider, and the machine is fitted with blockage monitors as well as full width front packers and also a liquid fert application system.
A sheaf of photos were taken, and Clive then asked for some of specific parts to show wear. The deal was done at under £5,000 which Clive says is the market value of these machines which are too large for small farmers to buy. Original owners like to buy new and sell when the machine is still in good condition.
Narrow tines with wear tiles
@Clive knew he wanted to make changes, substituting the Horsch tines and coulters for something far narrower, and has ended up getting his own design of tine made, which has a wear tile made from Ferobide, far harder than tungsten. The drill is on the farm primarily for osr and 2nd crop cereals drilled into chopped straw and the 25cm spacing is okay for these crops.
Comments on Clive’s on-line forum, TFF, said the drill many not be so good with beans, as the slot is a mere 12mm wide. And in barley the spacing may well be too wide as it needs to be thick. Clive points out that the seed pipe can actually be a bit wider than 12mm as it is in the shadow of the point. It would be good to have the option of using it for beans.
Above left: The cheap CO6 is being calibrated ready for its first outing
Above right: The adapted Horsch is being filled by the home built drill logistics trailer with seed and liquid starter fert.
Getting around the German instructions
The Horsch came, of course, with a control box and instructions in German. More on-line discussion revealed that English instructions were available on the Horsch website, and another explained that Horsch was sourcing some of these parts from Agton in Canada anyway. Zealman from New Zealand explained that the button marked with callipers should be held down for around 5 seconds. The menu is where you adjust the tramline sequence, valve layout and row numbers.
Ball hitch is a continental standard and provides a positive connection between tractor and drill
The Stocks Wizard has a rotor modified for Avadex which otherwise leaks everywhere
A Stocks Wizard is on the back of the drill and used for Avadex. Here again the knowledge of actual farmers is helpful. Alistair Nelson warned that the rotor and the surrounding shroud need to be changed, and he got good advice “from Rick at Stocks”. Clive has the same setup on the 750A and says that the Avadex leaks everywhere unless the modification is made. The drill was acquired and modified in 2016 and the results have been excellent.
The machine went through the residue without many problems and having the second drill has meant more timely planting. Clive has shown that moving into No-Till is not the expensive exercise so many farmers think it might be. The total cost, after modifications which included replacing all tines and coulters, was under £8,000.
Author Mike Donovan writes: we have featured a number of home made direct drills in @Practical Farm Ideas, and are always interested in seeing more. Please contact mike editor@farmideas.co.uk or 07778877514.
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My IPM And Nuffield Journey Has Started…
Is the adoption of IPM (integrated pest management) a journey? A journey of change required to react to changing market demands; a journey of learning, stemming from wanting to do something different to protect natural Beneficial’s and predators; a journey to increasing profitability from the production of a crop grown to an IPM enhanced standard? Teresa Meadows, Nuffield Scholar 2020, shares her thoughts as she sets out to look at this topic in more depth.
The start of my global Nuffield journey has shown these themes developing through the conversations held with farmers, growers, consultants, researchers, CEO’s and organisations across the world. I am looking at how we can learn from these people and practices around the world to be able to increase the uptake of integrated pest management in the arable sector back here in the UK. Embracing the virtual world over the last few months, I have had the pleasure of speaking to people both at home and abroad from the comfort of my home office. I have spoken to those who are long established IPM practitioners, such as Andrew Watson, cotton grower of Australia; those that are carrying out research so that an IPM approach can be adopted, such as Sarah Mansfield, researcher on pasture pests in New Zealand or those that are taking those practices out to the field, such as Vinod Pandit, running the Plantwise programme in Nepal.
The conversations from Bangladesh to Switzerland and the US to Germany have covered crops including leeks, cotton, pumpkins, tomatoes, onions, pasture, cut flowers; protected glasshouse and field crops and every conversation has been had with someone with an enthusiasm and a passion for the topic of IPM, in its different guises. There have been so many highlights already and many conversations that have served to provoke or change thinking. A selection of these are included below…
Putting IPM at the start and heart of a programme
Fargro’s IPM specialists, Neil Helyer and Ant Surrage (www.fargro.co.uk/) work hard with their horticulture growers on creating IPM programmes – putting cultural control and biological approaches first and at the heart of what they do…and only using chemical approaches as a last resort. Can we change our mindset in the arable sector to design an ‘IPM programme’ for our crops, rather than a ‘fungicide/ herbicide programme’? There are lots of good examples of IPM being employed across our sector, but do we bring this together as a holistic IPM programme at the centre of what we do for everything, and name it that? Perhaps not quite yet?
Monitoring to increase understanding
Andrew Watson, cotton and arable farmer in Australia (Twitter: @bugs_r_ us) has driven the use of recording through the season, not solely of crop growth stages, but also of pests and natural enemy levels and has gained so much value for the business from this approach. His weekly cotton recording data, consisting of plant mapping (height, number of branches, number of fruit) is collected alongside insect profiles and these are charted against the rising levels of pests and beneficials. The knowledge of this interaction has allowed an increased understanding of the levels and the natural fluxes, moving from an average of 3-4 insecticide sprays per year to only having one year that they have had to spray the farm since 2007 and trying new approaches and technology, such as releasing beneficials from drones above the crop. Could/should us as farmers or our agronomists or advisors be monitoring pest and natural enemy levels for our arable crops and using the outcomes to make decisions? We are good in many instances at monitoring the pests, but do we monitor the beneficials to the same degree?
A structured programme of advice and extension
Vinod Pandit who runs the Plantwise ( h t t p s : // w w w . p l a n t w i s e . o r g / ) programme across South East Asia, including Nepal, India and Bangladesh attributes much of the success of the initiative to the structured programme, formed of three main fields:
1. Plant health system – formed of the Plant Clinics run by their Plant Doctors at the forefront, where rural villagers can go to get their information, diagnosis of samples and advice.
2. Knowledge Bank – an online information system with the latest research, articles and tools to support those on the ground with technical information
3. Monitoring and evaluation – to see what actions have been successful and what has been delivered on the ground, which can then be used for continual improvement.
With Plantwise partners in 33 countries and 9,200 Plant Doctors based in these countries, the successful implementation is attributed by Vinod to the strong extension system and easy implementation using the knowledge system to back-up advice and guidance. Can AHDB and others across the UK arable advice sector follow a similar structured programme, bringing together existing knowledge, information and programmes into something that is widely recognised as the “go-to” place for information, advisors running a structured programme of extension and the programme continually evaluated and improved?
The incentives
Abdullah al Shakib, an independent research consultant in Bangladesh, recently evaluated a behaviour change programme with 50,000 smallholders in rural communities in the country. The discussions about the main reasons for change through these programmes rang true for many of our experiences and discussions – the impact of effective knowledge sharing in communities, the need for independent advice, the use of ‘lead farmers’ in a community, but also the positive impact of a financial incentive.
Abdullah went to two districts as part of his work, where the programme was working to influence the introduction of integrated pest management. He found that in one area, the farmers had seen a 200-300% improvement in their practices. In the other area, this was only 30-40% increase above the baseline. Abdullah was very interested, why, with the same kind of interventions, one area performed so well against the other lower performing one.
In the area not performing well – they smallholders were selling to local traders and local fruit shops, so the prices were low and they weren’t receiving any agronomic information from the buyers. In contrast, in the area with high performance levels, the smallholders were able to link with big buyers and big chain stores, such as Agola, who were purchasing their vegetables, as well as their milk. So, when purchasing, the buyers would say, “you can give me the pumpkin, but it has to be a weight of 1.5kg and this colour and if it reaches this specification, you will get 30-50% more price…”. This agronomic information helped with the growing of the product and these new practices were then implemented and rewarded by a higher price.
Abdullah’s conclusions were that in every business, you need to show incentives – either a cost reduction, increase in productivity or increase in price…or a combination. Conversations with Abdullah and others surrounding incentives, centred on the financial reward, reduced business cost or increased market access from the use of IPM measures. Can this financial compensation be created in the UK arable sector to add extra incentive for the widespread uptake? How important is this factor vs others – I am interested in looking into this further as I proceed in the conversations.
The Nuffield journey has started, the conversations around integrated pest management and facilitating the widespread uptake of these practices have begun, themes are emerging and conversations naturally lead to more questions, avenues to investigate and more passionate, articulate and enthusiastic people to talk to. To follow my Nuffield journey, please see my blog posts on LinkedIn or keep a track via Twitter (@CerealsEA).
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A Blank Canvas
Written by Tom Chapman, Head of Regenerative at Innovation for Agriculture
How would we design agriculture now, in the 21st Century, if we were starting from scratch? What would we do differently, given what we know about regenerative agriculture and about farming with, not battling against, nature? Would we continue with the same cropping, the same machinery, the same fertiliser & spray regime and the same field layout or would things be radically different?
We should all know the five golden rules of soil health, but it never harms to reiterate them. They are:
1. Always keep the soil covered and protected from the elements
2. Keep a living root in the soil at all times
3. Avoid both chemical and physical disturbance of the soil
4. Avoid monocultures, diversity is essential
5. Integrate livestock into your system
Starting with a blank canvas, the farming system that most closely meets the above rules is a perennial crop of forage plants interspersed with trees and shrubs and grazed by a mixture of ruminants, monogastrics and poultry. However, humankind has a massive (and some would say disproportionate and unhealthy) demand for grains so we need to find a way of integrating the growing of these into our ‘new’ farming systems. Unfortunately, perennial grain crops still appear to be many years from commercial reality, so we need to find a different way to tick the soil health rules using annual cropping.
A number of farmers in Australia are growing crops drilled directly into longterm permanent pasture, giving it the obvious name of ‘pasture cropping’. As the grasses start to slow in growth and become dormant in the autumn, these pasture croppers drill their cereal crops directly into the sward. In early spring the combinable crop grows away from the grass, shading the latter and slowing its growth. After the crop is harvested in mid to late summer, sunlight can, once again, penetrate to the forage understorey and its growth accelerates.
They accept that the grain yields from the system will be lower than we currently achieve, but they also know they can, effectively, doublecrop it, moving their grazing animals onto the grass understorey once the grain crop has been harvested. The wonderful thing about the system is that it captures much more sunlight: No more bare earth, lacking in green leaves to photosynthesise and produce sugars. Consequently, they are seeing tremendous improvements in soil health. Root exudates feed the soil life, year-round; grazing livestock convert the crop residue and forage plants into plant food; humus levels rise; and the land becomes vastly more fertile.
There are a number of farmers here in the UK who are experimenting with this technique. At the moment forage rye is most popular, so not strictly a standard combinable crop, but its ability to continue to grow at low temperatures and its tall growth habit, relative to the grasses, means they are having some success (I drilled a mixture of forage rye and vetches, last autumn, directly into permanent pasture and am watching its development with great interest).
If we were to adopt this practice more widely in the UK, and to do it with mainstream wheats, barleys and oats, would we see a return to the tallergrowing varieties of yesteryear? Plants that could rise above the grasses growing at their base would capture more sunlight, as well as making harvest easier. They would also have to be deeper rooting, to out-compete the grasses below ground. The improving natural fertility offered by the healthy soil is likely to lead to stronger plant stems which, combined with the slightly lower yields, means lodging risk would be lower than we experience with tall plants in our current farming regime.
There is a downside to the above plan, from a regenerative point of view, in that the annuals being sown are still a monoculture, albeit sown into a (hopefully) diverse sward. Would our ‘designed from scratch’ farm truly be drilling monoculture crops, or would it be drilling a range of different crops – grains, pulses and legumes, oilseeds and brassicas – into the same field? This would be the ‘herbal ley’ of the cropping world. The mixed crop would have a varied leaf architecture, to maximize the amount of sunlight it intercepts. The roots would differ too, with some surface feeders and some reaching deep down into the subsoil, bringing up water, minerals and other nutrients as well as adding organic matter at depth. The diversity would host an amazing array of beneficial organisms and fungi, all working to improve the soil still further.
Designing such a farm from scratch, though, would also mean designing from scratch the way we harvest our crops. A traditional combine harvester probably wouldn’t be able to handle a range of different-sized seeds. Now I’m no mechanic – those who know me will ascertain that I’m a true ‘dog and stick’ farmer (though without the dog!) – so will leave predictions of what the new harvesting machine would look like to those with more of an engineering bent. Could such a machine do the harvesting, the cleaning and the sorting of seeds in one go, or would the mixed crop need transporting back to a specialised threshing and dressing machine at the farm?
Shrubs and trees would also feature in our ‘new model farm’. Silvoculture can already be seen on a number of farms with fruit and nut trees forming alleys wide enough to allow a sprayer or fertiliser spreader to pass through. Typically these are in straight lines, though with GPS and autosteer, do they need to be? It would be much more natural to have sweeping curves to our cropped areas, reducing wind flow and creating microclimates across the land. There could be a mixture of hedges, grazeable shrubs and trees, some for firewood and some for fruit and nut production. Certain tree species even fix nitrogen!
Would we be able to throw away our sprayer and fertiliser spreader on our ‘new’ farm? Monocultures are like commuters on the London Tube: one person coughs and they all catch a cold. Likewise in your fields, a stray fungal spore, or a swarm of insects and the whole crop is decimated. Growing a ‘herbal ley’ of arable crops in a permanent pasture sward would mean disease would find it incredibly difficult to spread, just as insects would have a tough time targeting their preferred host plant.
The mixture of plant species, in conjunction with the animal grazing, would mean the crop is also self-fertilising. We already see this with foragebased herbal leys and never seem to need artificial fertiliser to make them grow. Nitrates in water, nitrous oxide emissions polluting the air, such things could be consigned to the annals of history, were we to follow this path.
Putting the engineering challenges to one side, a mixture of crops, surrounded by trees and shrubs, all growing in a permanent pasture field that is grazed by cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry for part of the year ticks all the soil health rules. Soil is continually covered, there are always a diverse mixture of living roots in the ground, which isn’t disturbed (either by machine or by chemical), and the livestock dung, urinate and salivate onto the fields to stimulate the soil biota. Cash crops are harvested each year and the land also produces beef and lamb for sale.
Sunlight would be captured all year round, pumping energy into the system, minerals would be cycled and recycled, both in the acidic root zone and by the growing quantities of soil fungi and bacteria, and the water cycle would start to function properly, with surplus rain captured and held by the carbon in the soils to tide you over the dry periods, rather than running in sheets over the land and out to sea, carrying precious topsoil and nutrients as it goes.
We are all weighed down by the baggage of our existing paradigms, and many will say the above is just fanciful, but could it be the future, if we started with a blank canvas?
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Does Ploughing Fit In Regenerative Agriculture?
Watching the live feed from NASA last week as the rover ‘Perseverance’ touched down on Mars was a quite spectacular achievement. A planetary alignment, or confluence, of millions of externalities came together to achieve something marvellous, along with a generous helping of rigorous planning and attention to detail.
Sometime a series of events can surprise you in every way. Just recently a series of events unfolded which form the basis of this article. The first instance was when someone posted on TFF a slide from a webinar which appeared to show that ploughing was good for the soil. Intrigued by this I found a recording of the webinar and proceeded to watch with interest. The researcher presenting the webinar made no such claims about ploughing, quite the opposite, it was suggested that to increase SOM we needed to move away from intensive cultivations. As per usual communication was the loser, and I suspect a lot of people went away feeling rosy as they knew that cultivation was again ok.
A few days I was watching another webinar listening to notable practitioner and teacher of ‘Regen Ag’ espouse that ploughing in a regen ag system is ok because every farm and every situation is different. At this point I went and found something better to do than listen to pointless nonsense. I’ll admit that the first pillar of Conservation Agriculture (CA) makes reference to ‘minimal soil disturbance’ and not ‘no soil disturbance’, but does it really allow for maximum disturbance? I know that we all want to be flexible. Flexibility within the confines of the system is allowed, but ploughing is well and truly stepping out of the system, and for what? I would argue there is no gain from rotational ploughing, in fact I would go further and suggest that each rotational ploughing destroys the very biologically active system we are trying to create.
The clock has been reset to zero and you have to start all over again. It should be noted at this point when I refer to ploughing or cultivation I am referring to any intensive cultivation such as subsoiling, ploughing, combined single pass machines with legs and discs, powers-harrows etc.
The final event happened shortly after the aforementioned webinar where I happened to hear James Alexander of Primewest being interviewed on Radio 4’s ‘Farming Today’ programme. James mentioned some research that had been carried out on his farm comparing the net carbon gains of his organic system compared to his Regen Ag system. Knowing James a little I contacted him to find out more about the work undertaken and the results. Upon speaking to James it became clear that the real eureka moment had been completely lost in the short clip played on Farming Today.
Cultivation, as we all know, plays a considerable part in carbon release from the soil. The research, undertaken by Charlotte Cook of Indigro Agronomy, using the Cool Farm Tool to calculate net carbon release and sequestration, revealed exactly what I was anticipating. It is important to note at this point that if you are not practising Conservation, or Regenerative Agriculture then cultivation is an important part of your overall establishment strategy. We are not against cultivation per se but are focused on achieveing the benefits of optimising cultivation inputs.
From the data in table 1 it can be seen that for all metrics, except fuel use, the regen ag system has a higher carbon output than the corresponding organic, in particular the massive spikes from the manufacture and use of nitrogen fertilisers. This does not come as a surprise as I am sure we are all familiar with the large energy demand during manufacture of fertiliser N and resulting carbon–loss from soil once the nitrogen is applied. All of this does not paint Regen Ag in good light until we turn our attention to the broader picture with the inclusion of cover crops into the calculations, shown in table 2.
Here we can see that the action of including cover crops along with reduced soil movement through zero-till has significantly altered the picture. The carbon stock change per hectare now shows a large net sequestration of 8.7 tonnes/ha for the regen-ag system. This is over 3 times the sequestration achieved compared to a production system where intensive cultivation is employed. This tends to agree with some research from the US which showed that soil ploughed to 11 inches released 30 times more CO2 than undisturbed soil in the following 24 hours.
I am not trying to pit organic against conventional production, far from it, but it’s a useful comparison to show that our choices are not always straightforward. It also very much depends upon your viewpoint on the use of pesticides. The most important point of all of this is that we have to learn to reduce our tillage practices as much as possible if we really want to benefit our soils and the wider environment. Similarly we are going to have to become a lot more focused on our use of nitrogen fertilisers.
While we may be able to reduce our dependence on them partially I am not certain we can ever maintain our current level of output without them in some degree. Our use of nitrogen fertiliser is probably on borrowed time, and we really need to focus on how we can use this resource much more efficiently, or at the very least begin to cut N rates back. A production system based around CA principles should allow us to do this, for as we build soil carbon, we are naturally building soil nitrogen. We also need to ‘grow’ more of our own nitrogen through better rotations and better soil health.
Good soil health can be measured by indicators such as soil bulk density and porosity, water infiltration and air movement, good levels of soil organic matter and biological activity, reduced loss of soil, nitrogen and phosphorus into ground and surface waters. We know intensive tillage negatively affects all of these parameters and every time we plough we effectively reset the clock on achieving the aim of functioning soil. It could also be argued that by doing this you are never going to see the real financial benefits of regen ag and functioning soil biology if you cannot reduce the level of cultivation you employ. So with good planning and attention to detail it is possible to employ a production system which does not rely on the damaging effects of cultivation, and the wider environmental issues that cultivation can create. But ultimately are we happy to allow the promotion of #ploughing in conjunction with #regenag? Or does this detract from the message we are trying to convey?
My warmest thanks must go to James Alexander of Primewest & Charlotte Cook of Indigro for allowing me to use their research. I must also stress that I have used their research to support my own particular viewpoint and may not necessarily be what the authors were intending to show.
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Groundswell 2021 Change The Way You See Things
Gabe Brown often quotes his friend Don Campbell’s aphorism: ‘If you want to make small changes, change the way you do things. If you want to make major changes, then change the way you see things.’ This nutty little saying encapsulates so much wisdom, but it is much easier said than done. We all have our own little prejudices or theories about how the world works, or more crucially about why we farm the way we do. It is surprisingly hard to stand back and look at our operations and really see what is going on and how it could change for the better.
The great thing about the whole Regenerative Agriculture movement is that it is almost completely farmerled. There are plenty of suppliers who are now producing drills and other products which the pioneer farmers have created a demand for. There are also more than enough suppliers trying to jump on the bandwagon and flog us stuff that we don’t need. The habit of looking for solutions in bottles and bags seems to be ingrained in farmers, but, as readers of this publication will know, most of us need fewer inputs the longer we direct drill and we have resigned from the More-on club.
All that we need to do now on our farm, is ramp our yields up a bit, without ‘buying’ them and we’ll be even better off. Or…we could take advantage of some of the lessons that Lockdown has taught us and work at growing crops and other produce that local people want to buy and sell direct to them. Grow less and sell for more.
The trouble with trying to increase production is that we keep making mistakes, like ignoring the golden rule that no-tilled crops want to go in a fortnight earlier than with ‘conventional’ establishment in the autumn and a fortnight later in the spring. Last autumn we held off drilling oats until the wheat volunteers had chitted…and then it started raining. A bit like the year before. We eventually sowed them on a frost in mid February (it’s kind ground where they’ve gone) and it looks like we’ve got away with it, as the weather postdrilling has been kind to the seeds.
As I’m writing this, at the end of February, we’re drilling Mulika spring wheat into the remnants of a cover crop on more kind ground. The soil is in fantastic condition and the forecast is good, so the seed should be able to get away before any horrific rain event tries to drown it. Some of our later drilled winter wheats spent most of the winter looking a bit miserable with wet feet. Some patches we’ll end up having to redrill or over-drill with Mulika.
Time will tell if we will pay for this rule breaking, but we’ve had our fingers burnt too often by waiting until late March or April for spring sowing, this is too often followed by a long cold dry spell, which sets the crop off to a rotten start and ends with disappointing yields. The trouble with this being a farmer-led revolution is that farmers are the only ones doing meaningful trial work on this. Some of our trials, if we’re being honest, are just a polite way of describing mistakes.
We’ve had a lot of feedback from attendees at the Groundswell Show saying that they want to change their system but don’t know how to set about it, or that their agronomist/ father/husband or whoever tells them it won’t work on their land. So we’ve set up Groundswell Agronomy. It’s basically a dating agency: you get in touch with us, we’ll have a talk and then put you in touch with an agronomist who should be able to help you out. We’ve got a selection of wonderful and open-minded agronomists to put your way. It’s proving popular, we’ll be needing more soon so we don’t wear out the ones we’ve got.
As I often point out to people, we are, to an extent, making it up as we go along. We are not a demonstration farm exhibiting best practice, but we are still very excited about the potential we have, as farmers, of growing good food to sell, at the same time as improving our soils, the local environment and our bank balance. This enthusiasm for different ways of doing things is why we started the Groundswell Show.
We’ve been very relieved to hear the Government saying that by the end of June lockdown should be properly over. Which means we’re going fullsteam ahead with organising this year’s Show (23/24th June 2021), We’ve shifted the site to a nearby field and all the talks etc will be in tents rather than barns, which means we should be able to ventilate and socially distance if needed. As usual, it’ll be a nightmare trying to juggle which talks to attend. We’ve had so many interesting ideas for subjects to discuss put to us, that we don’t want to turn any of them away. It is such an exciting time to be a farmer.
At the moment it still looks doubtful that we can fly many, or indeed any, high-profile speakers in from abroad, but it may work well as we can put on many more homegrown speakers who are all doing fascinating things around the UK. See box for some details. We’ll have a new trial plot for the direct drills to work in, with plenty of space and more exhibitors bringing more ideas in. For those who fancy a walk, there’s an agroforestry experiment nearby, coupled with a no-input heritage wheat with clover understory experiment as well as the mob-grazing demo.
We’re not sure exactly how many people we can host each day, we’ll start selling tickets when we know… it won’t quite be like Glastonbury so you won’t have to go online at midnight, but it does sound like we’ll sell out pretty quick, so don’t hang about if you want to secure a place.
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Farmer Focus – John Pawsey
I was kindly featured in the January 2020 issue of Direct Driller magazine under the Agricology umbrella which was really an overview of the farm, where we had come from and where we were now as regards to our predominately, although diversified, farming business. Being asked again for a contribution is a great opportunity to give you an update and be more specific about how we are evolving along our organic farming journey.
For those of you whose blood runs cold at the mention of cold steel interacting with soil, I suggest that you move swiftly on to another page and embed yourself in the perfect aggregation of undisturbed seedbeds, because in the absence of pesticides and chemical fertilisers, some form of tillage is needed to feed and weed crops. We all know that the evil trilogy in terms of damage to soil health are embodied in in those three interventions, and although scoring well in terms of non-chemical usage, less tillage is still top of our organic ambition.
We, along with others, have been venturing down the living mulch route. Our aim is to keep a low growing clover in the soil throughout our rotation to provide soil cover, smother weeds, feed the soil, encourage multi-species interaction with a harvestable crop and do less tillage. Our mulch at present is the Cotswold Seeds mix of Aber Ace wild white clover (80%) and Aber Herald white clover (20%) under-sown at 7.5kg/ha. We have grown it for two years now and to date the crop has outcompeted it which gives us some confidence that the mix will do it’s intended job. It would be great to get more species into the mix, but I’m keen to keep it simple at the moment. Other trialists are direct drilling straight into the living mulch sown broadly across the field, but having been under-sowing leys and fertility builders into our soils for over twenty years I do have concerns about this approach.
In my experience, clovers take a huge amount of water out of the soil and although you may get away with allowing the white clover to run free over a number of years in the damp West, in the drier East we have suffered considerable yield loss through those leys over-competing with our cash crops for water. I feel that we will have to contain the clover to lessen that effect as well as finding a mechanism to control it’s lateral growth and mineralise a small amount of nutrients to get an autumn or spring crop going.
We currently under-sow leys in 200 mm bands with our System Cameleon drill/inter-row hoe in-between our crop bands of 120 mm. My idea is to strip-till those 120 mm stubble rows at a depth of 40 to 60 mm to break the lateral white clover roots, do some weeding within the crop row and use some of the nutrients built up during the year by the living mulch. There is obviously some tillage going on there, but in essence only at a shallow depth and in less than half the field, just under 38% of the ground.
The difficulty is finding a strip-till cultivator that will do the job. There are plenty of machines born out of the wide row world of maize, sunflowers and sugar beet that will till at 450 to 500 mm, but having searched the world’s websites for a machine that will till at 320 mm centres and in a 120 mm width, I have drawn a blank. We would require a nine meter machine to fit our controlled traffic system which would mean twenty eight units and some pretty clever engineering to make sure that as little soil as possible is disturbed and that the living mulch is cleanly cut. I’m currently working with a Dutch company who specialise in weeding equipment to build a machine to fit that specification to trial this autumn.
It seems to me that vertical discs or cutters will be crucial to cut the clover as well as contain any moved soil in that 120 mm band. I would assume enough variable pressure (to take into account soil type or condition) on a low disturbance tine would also be key. The intention would be to strip-till the 120 mm cropped rows in appropriate conditions after harvest. Sowing will be done with our System Cameleon which can also hoe any weeds germinated in the tilled row at sowing time, with the seeds benefiting from some mineralised nutrients from the moved soil. A natural starter fertiliser if you like.
Autumn sown crops and the living mulch could be grazed over-winter by our New Zealand Romney ewes if conditions allowed – the Golden Hoof! For spring grown crops timing of that strip-till would be more crucial, but hopefully the clover extracting water, the benefits of undisturbed soils within the living mulch, should provide a better opportunity for success than our present system. Again, our sheep could be used over-winter to lightly graze the clover and to keep it in check pre spring sowing. Although at present I am still intending to run the living mulch within our current six/seven year rotation of two/three year leys for the sheep and building fertility followed by four years of combinable crops including a legume crop, it could revolutionise we way we farm.
If successful can we throw a set rotation out of the window? If we are building fertility annually within a cropping system, dealing with weeds through minimal tillage or through competition will we actually need a dedicated fertility building period or even a break crop? Will animals’ numbers and cropped areas be able to fluctuate depending on the market be it the combinable crop market or meat market? Could we be looking at a completely fluid system? There are so many things going for this approach and we haven’t even started on carbon capture.
I’m sure that you have spotted some agronomic schoolboy errors, but it ticks many of the boxes of the challenges we all face if we can make it work.
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Drill Manufacturers In Focus…
JOHN DEERE SIMPLIFIES OPERATIONS CENTER
The new look, feel and navigation of the John Deere Operations Center make it easier to use and provide a more consistent user experience with the latest mobile version.
The established MyOperations App for smartphones and tablets has been renamed Operations Center mobile and pairs well with the Operations Center web version. Both provide users with an all-inclusive farm management tool. Another improvement is the addition of Work Planner, which is now a key feature of the new AutoSetup system that allows farmers to streamline their work set-up and help operators start working more quickly in the field.
Farmers already use the popular Operations Center to collect and securely store their field, crop and machine data from their connected machines for easy analysis and to aid decision making. To meet the constantly changing demands of the business of farming, the improved Operations Center is designed to bring more clarity and organisation to farm data management.
It can help farmers set up, plan, monitor and analyse their data to make sound business decisions using the following features:
• Setup uses a JDLink connection and the Operations Center to synchronise the farm’s data, saving time while eliminating possible data entry errors.
• Plan uses a Generation 4 Display with the Work Planner feature to improve efficiency through increased accuracy.
• Monitor, with a JDLink connection and the new Home and Map tabs, helps farmers keep a watchful eye on their entire operation to ensure quality and efficiency, even when they’re away from the farm.
• The new Analyze tab in the Operations Center helps farmers turn this year’s results into next year’s decisions.
“We know today’s farmers are always on the move, which makes the app version of Operations Center more important than ever,” says Peter Koch, John Deere’s Digital Technology Marketing Manager. “That’s why John Deere has improved both web and mobile versions, to make them look more alike and function in a similar manner.”
To get the most from John Deere Precision Ag technologies, Peter Koch suggests farmers need the following:
• a Generation 4 CommandCenter display that gives farmers more precise control of machine functions from the cab;
• a StarFire receiver to ensure accurate positioning;
• JDLink telematics, which serves as the wireless connection between machines and streams data from the Gen4 display to the Operations Center.
Using the Operations Center’s new Work Planner feature, farmers can now preload all their display information so operators no longer need to complete this step once they are in the cab. The improved Operations Center is now live, and new customers can create an account online or download the Operations Center mobile app from the Google Play or Apple App Stores. Existing users will automatically receive all updates in both Operations Center web and mobile versions. More information about the new Operations Center is available from John Deere dealers or by visiting John Deere Operations Center.
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Incorporating Livestock Into A Regenerative Arable System
Written by William Waterfield FBIAC NFSc. from the Farm Consultancy Group
Are grazing livestock a perquisite of regenerative farming systems? Whilst this is a common thought and perhaps the holy grail for some regenerative farmers, there is little evidence to support this claim. Livestock certainly bring an extra dimension to the diversity of the system and an additional bacterial flora to the soil biota. Many arable farms have no experience of, or facilities for livestock, so do you really need to and if so why and how do you introduce livestock to your arable enterprises?
The why is perhaps the easier of the three questions to answer. Livestock introduce completely different fresh biota to the soils which may be good to the below ground eco system. Livestock, especially larger ones or those that dig are disrupters of the soil by either causing localised trampling or digging whose action creates space for new organisms to thrive. More importantly the stock enterprise should bring with it an income stream that is completely divorced from the vagaries of arable farming. By introducing grass, a new season long crop into the rotation will have benefits for the existing arable enterprise. This maybe from more first cereal or reduced costs in terms of weed and disease control and perhaps a reduction in fertiliser costs.
Assuming that one can obtained composts / bio solids, manures or slurries these may go some way to introducing new biology to the system but are probably not as effective as fresh manure. Having said that, there is some work to show that remial woodchip (uncomposted fine woodchip) improves soil health and yield. The one area that is very difficult to imitate is the effect of trampling on both the above ground material and on the soil surface below. Trampling has the effect of bring plant material into contact with the ground and accelerating the decomposition of material into new plant food.
Having decided that your system will benefit from livestock and that they will contribute to the business both directly and in the round which enterprise do you start with? Suitable livestock enterprises range from simple fattening of store lambs on cover and catch crops to a complete breeding beef cow enterprise based on complex multiyear diverse swards selling finished cattle. Selecting the correct enterprise will depend on several factors including where the farm and farmer is on the regenerative journey, the scale of and the available facilities on the farm the skills available to the farmer either from within the business or by a partner organisation.
The introduction of short term catch crops is often the first step on the regenerative journey and grazing these mixtures with fattening lambs or over wintering ewes would seem to make logical starting point. If a suitable grazier can be found, with a rent charged on a headage basis this is a fairly low risk entry point for many arable farmers.
The introduction of yearlong grass leys does not necessarily mean that a full-time livestock enterprise is required summer grazing licences may be available offering the grazier the opportunity of some fresh and clean grazing with reduction in the need for anthelmintics and lower cost. Alternatively, short term leys of one or two years may simply be cut and made into haulage or hay and sold. For that arable farmer, the key point will most probably be that the ley has to improve soil structure and contribute to the fight against grass weeds.
A season long fodder crop such as fodder beet or kale may be a suitable providing a livestock farmer with a large amount of forage for a short period and this might be fattening cattle or dry stock. Including a legume-based leys may form part of a Countryside Stewardship Schemes where the payments for AB15, a two year sown legume fallow are £522 / ha but needs to be in place for two years and has cutting requirements. Other stewardship options that might be of assistance to regenerative farmers include GS3: Ryegrass seed-set as winter food for birds which pays £331 / ha, this will provide hay or silage and might enable some grazing opportunities. SW6: Winter cover crops which £115 / ha but is only available on soils identified as at risk of runoff in the Farm Environmental Plan.
It is important that the grazier, if one is being used, understands what the arable farmer is trying to achieve. It is no good if the sheep on winter keep delays spring crop establishment or the leys are over stocked and persistently grazed to the floor, resulting in none of the desired trampling of grass being achieved. For these reasons it is often best if the rent is based on a headage rate and the number of stock and the period is agreed before the season starts. A common concern for many arable farmers is the lack of infrastructure and winter accommodation and on very heavy ground or exceptionally wet sites out wintering is probably not a starter. Out-wintering of cattle on straw pads can be an option for some. A more permanent low cost solution is to install a permanent bark pad or corral.
Many graziers are utilising techniques to enable out wintering of cattle for a much longer period than previously. This nearly always combines regular (daily) moves to fresh ground. Grazing of standing hay, the use of baled haulage left in the field from the summer and in a few cases a straw lie back pads and shelter belts. In most cases temporary electric fencing is sufficient to keep the stock in the correct place, especially where plenty of grass is available. Hay bales in situ require planning but avoids damaging the soil in the winter. The provision of water is one key consideration, but mobile drinkers and above ground systems can normally provide a low cost solution to the problem.
The idea that regenerative farming requires a mob grazed herd of cattle kept on diverse and herbal swards is perhaps the idealistic and aspirational end point for some farmers. In which case there is a whole new range of things to be considered. Including breed and breeding, markets, workload and additional skills, combining with potentially more infrastructure. However, such a system might open up premium markets such pasture fed, native breeds or local outlets and then become a diversified enterprise in its own right bring a new profit stream as well as more resilient arable enterprises.
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Agronomist In Focus – Mark Dewes
Stones or Beatles? Oasis or Blur? Cereals or Groundswell?
It’s a lazy way to categorise farmers but I’m not the first person to compare and contrast the diversity of ideas showcased at the two leading events for arable farming. An even cruder test would be to ask if our farming problems will be solved by the wizardry of gene editing or by following the prophecy of a soil health guru?
In most previous winters I’ve been like most agronomists who sit through presentations on fungicide responses and resistance shifts. This winter Bill Clarke slipped off the top spot in the charts and there won’t be many agronomists who haven’t been engaging with webinars on soil microbiology and regen ag. Many of us are re-learning the empathy for soil and crops which had been demoted during a time when synthetic interventions have ruled. We’ve been busy putting names to things we thought we knew but couldn’t explain or quantify. Whether an understanding of concepts like the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus on soil aggregation will help us to achieve more resilient soils remains to be seen. The language may be new to some of us, but the practices have their origins in good farming, and what has been will be again. Amongst this excellent work is some material which I have found much more challenging. Having listened to John Kempf’s webinar on total immunity of healthy plants to pest and disease attack, I found myself trying to keep my mind open without letting my brain fall out.
We are on a more determined route to a more sustainable future now than at any time in my career, precisely because the systems which we have adopted are falling down more frequently. It’s easy to be hard on your younger self and I now look back with a wry smile to 1997 when I discovered that all I needed to do was get drilled up by the end of September and pick an appropriate programme of sprays to deal with any problems. In fairness to that arrogant youth I was right for a few years, but a system propped up on inputs has started to crumble very quickly, particularly when rainfall distribution has challenged the system further. It seems appropriate that the word humility is derived from the Latin humus for earth. Humility is perhaps something we should apply to our farming now to balance some of the hubris of recent decades.
The species diversity that is part of many farmers’ approach to more sustainable farming Is not the only diversity worth considering. I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to look around at worldwide agronomy through a Nuffield Farming Scholarship study tour and taking influence from a diversity of sources has been a good experience. One that sticks in my mind was at the United Nations Committee on World Food Security where I heard a delegate from Rwanda describe farmers as priests in the marriage between food security and climate change. If I could live up to that description, it may be as close as I get to working in the clergy, but it reminded me that not all the answers will come from middle-aged white blokes in checked shirts like me.
Sustainability is defined for my purposes as those methods with which we can continue into the future, profitably and with acceptable external costs. Farmers had been adapting their systems for a long time before they discovered the need for an agronomist to navigate the complexity of crop protection choice. Agronomists play a part in the decision-making on farms but the principal role for which we originally trained and took instructions from our clients is diminishing; we need to continue to bring something to the table before our chair is removed. There is still a job to be done in organising a sensible crop protection programme, but as that programme becomes simpler and less effective, our skill set needs to evolve.
I was humbled last autumn as I realised that some of the most important decisions my customers were making were those which I’m not well qualified to help make. In two situations a few days apart, I contributed to the decision on whether or not to drill in poor conditions. In one case I said drill and the other I said don’t. As you might have predicted, both were drilled and, on reflection, I think I was wrong in both cases. It demonstrated to me that some of the things I need to do now are different from those I needed 20 years ago and I’m better qualified for the latter than the former.
So, an agronomist needs to adapt just like our customers do. This realisation seems to have hit home recently, and it’s been rewarding to see agronomists from the independent and trade sector alike raising their game regarding training and application to a rapidly evolving reality. Our customers want as much input from us on the way to integrate stewardship scheme options to their arable rotation as they do on herbicide regimes. Advising customers to build more resilient systems by growing fewer cash crops and more species rich pasture doesn’t come easily to all agronomists but alongside the adoption of new technologies and conventional chemistry it’s the blend between Cereals and Groundswell which will be increasingly important to get right.
At Agrii we have been developing an approach to this new normal, pulled together by our Green Horizons manifesto. It’s an umbrella which covers our commitments to sustainability, balancing the external costs of how we farm with the essential work of producing food. Of course, the answers aren’t simple or complete but in providing an over-arching direction for our work it will guide what we do. Examples include the commitment for 100% of research to be based on Integrated Pest Management principles, the introduction of Variety Sustainability Ratings based on genetic resilience and work to improve Nutrient Use Efficiency. All this is done with a continuing focus on productivity, as it is still the case that high yields usually maximise resource efficiency. Green Horizons is Agrii’s framework to address these issues and I expect to see more of the same from all sorts of agronomy businesses.
One element of this conversation which affects the whole industry is the unintended impact of agrochemical use. This elephant has been in the room for some time. We have been adopting Integrated Pest Management for many years but one of the indicators of success is the trend in agrochemical use. Results from the most recently published Pesticide Use Survey conducted by FERA don’t tell the story we would like. There is mounting pressure to reduce the unintended impact of plant protection products through legislation. The National Action Plan for the Sustainable Use of Pesticides and part two of the National Food Strategy are just two of the trains coming down those tracks. It’s time for us to grasp the nettle. Agrii have now made a commitment to measure and reduce the negative impacts caused by our use of PPPs. That might not be what was expected a few years ago and shows how far we have come and how quickly things are changing.
The blend of conventional, newer and re-discovered approaches will be what defines the future of the support that agronomists provide, and whether the technologies are showcased at Cereals or Groundswell, they will need to be considered in concert. I’m still only part way through my apprenticeship to this trade so I don’t want to pick a favourite just yet.
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High Quality Food With A Positive Environmental Impact
Selling organic, ‘Pasture for Life’ food directly to consumers brings dividends for one farming family. Sara Gregson reports…
First generation farmers Chris and Denise Walton have, over the past 40 years built an award-winning sustainable farm and butchery business, operating close to the Berwickshire coast in the Scottish Borders.
“We always wanted to sell our beef, lamb and pork directly to consumers,” says Denise. “We strive to produce the highest quality food, whilst also having a positive environmental impact. We are organic and certified Pasture for Life (guaranteed 100% grass-fed with no grain ever fed), which we believe is the Gold Standard for land and animal welfare management and completely fits with our business ethos.”
Neither Denise or Chris come from farming backgrounds; Chris has accountancy qualifications and Denise trained in environmental and land management. Moving to Scotland and starting with a 20-acre smallholding in 1989, they increased their acreage to 250 acres by working in partnership with neighbour Amanda Cayley. In 1993, together they took the opportunity to buy the nearby arable unit of Peelham Farm, bringing the landholding up to 670 acres.
“The farm was pretty run-down, farmed for the short term, had no hedges and was ecologically poor. The land rises to 700ft and comprises some heathland and acidic grassland,” says Denise. “As new entrants, Chris had to work off the farm in the early days and making a profit has been central to what we do. But farming with nature was also a primary driver for the business from the very start.”
Twenty-seven years later, their son Angus and his wife Helen have joined the business and they have now started the third generation by having two young children. Amanda, now retired, is still very much involved in the life of the farm and the butchery. The couple started making charcuterie from their pork, mutton and beef in 2005 and then developed an on-farm butchery for their cattle, sheep and pigs in 2008. The aim was to become price-makers rather than just price-takers. They started attending farmers markets in local towns and cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow and supplying independent retailers and restaurants.
“We talk to our consumers a lot and to local chefs to gain feedback about our products. We tell them how we aspire to excellence in land management, animal care and environmental stewardship. We are spreading messages of agroecological land regeneration and the production of healthy, grass-fed meat. It really fits in with consumer thinking at the moment – people want healthy, environmentally-sound food.”
Livestock
Peelham now has a herd of 150 Aberdeen Angus suckler cows. There are four Aberdeen Angus bulls, selected for breeding attributes of ease of calving, good depths of sirloin and high levels of intramuscular fat. Ninety per cent of the livestock is born and reared on the farm. The rest come from a small network of other organic and Pasture for Life farmers whom Denise and Chris work closely with in neighbouring counties, including 100% grass-fed dairies which supply rose veal from ‘unwanted’ male dairy calves.
Sheep numbers have fallen in the past couple of years and now comprise a rolling flock of 60 to 100 cull ewes and store lambs to supply the butchery with lamb, hogget and mutton.
“A few years ago we were trying to manage three breeding enterprises all at the same time,” Denise admits. “We were all exhausted at the end of calving and lambing. So we have reduced the number of Red Duroc x Tamworth sows down to 50 and Angus is now focussing on the cattle. We have moved away from setstocking and he is installing fencing and water supply to the fields to allow long-rotation grazing.”
Winters can be harsh with temperatures averaging around 1 degree centigrade for three to four months and average annual rainfall of 1,000mm. The cattle calve indoors in March and April and are out grazing by the end of April. There is good housing and the heavy soils have so far limited outwintering possibilities.
The cows are fed only grass silage. Calves stay with their mothers all summer and are weaned at housing. The poorer performing beef calves are kept back and reared and sold as ruby veal. All the calves are tagged with electronic tags and their growth rates are measured constantly. The beef calves finish at 24 months at 500 to 600kg liveweight on just silage and grazed grass.
Adding value
There are three full time butchers and a full time help with the charcuterie, making a wide range of air-dried and fermented meats including prosciutto ham, smoked juniper mutton, pancetta, salami, chorizo and smoked nduja.
“We try to add value to everything we produce and sell as much as every animal that we can, including liver, cheeks, trotters and marrow bones,”
says Denise. “We have just started selling Auld prime – native cow beef that has been hung for at least six weeks.
“Curing is a good way of adding value to an animal. For example, you can sell as ewe for £18 a head, or cure one of its legs and sell it sliced for £55/kg. “Having the butchery helps us see what effect any changes in management out in the fields is having. For example, we can see how much better native breeds are at converting grass into saleable meat compared to some continentals we once dabbled with. And we can see how the levels of intramuscular fat alter too.”
Coronavirus
The pandemic has had a significant impact on the business at Peelham Farm.
“Covid knocked us sideways for the first ten days of lockdown back in March, but since then demand has been five times what it normally is at the Christmas peak and interest has remained high,” says Denise.
“We are reaching many more customers online, website traffic has increased by 170%, and we have upped our game considerably on social media. We have engaged a brilliant photographer to take photos of us working and we do lots on twitter, Facebook and Instagram – telling potential and existing customers what it is we do and why we are doing it. “In essence, we are showing them how their purchasing decisions are affecting every stage of the production process – through the butchers, the farmers, the livestock, the grassland and the soils. They are an intrinsic part of an agroecological system which is bringing health and balance to every element of that chain.”
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Farmer Focus – Andy Howard
As I write at the end of February it is finally starting to feel like spring. I have even managed to go out without wellies and a coat for the first time in months. Since my last article in September, we have had rain, lots of it! 650mm since 24th of September. Parts of the farm have flooded 4 times since Christmas but after all that, the majority of our crops look well. A couple exceptions of late drilled wheat on heavy clay have suffered but we are in a lot better position compared to last year.
Since my last article I have built 4 Johnson-Su bioreactors with the aim of applying compost extract next autumn with our drill. To be able to check the quality of the compost extract I have bought a microscope, so far, I have looked at a tick off our pet cat and my daughter’s blood with it. My aim is to add a wide diversity of biology into our soil to improve nutrient cycling and plant health.
How well it works only time will tell! Recently I purchased a second-hand Claydon Terrablade Inter Row Hoe. Our grass weed issues are mainly in patches or at low levels. Recently the efficacy of Spring SU herbicides has slid to almost useless with the price staying the same, so any leftover weeds have been hand rogued or spot sprayed. This is very time consuming and I feel if I can get 70% of the patches with the hoe it will make hand rogueing quicker and overall cheaper. This first year with the hoe is going to be a steep learning curve.
The last 6 months has also seen the start of a robotic development project (UKRI funded) where I am a collaborator https://n2visionai.wordpress.com/ . The aim of this project to use a robotic platform, with various cameras onboard, to capture image data of a crop of winter wheat and analysis how the crop reacts to different rates of nitrogen fertiliser and correlate this to soil data. This image data will be run through deep learning analytics at Manchester Met Uni. The long term aim of this project is to develop the software and hardware to measure at a plant scale the Nitrogen status and treat the plants with fertiliser individually, if fertiliser is needed. This will be real precision farming.
Robotics and AI seem to be a hot topic in agriculture at the moment. I believe it has a key role to play in solving challenges we face in agriculture. One concern that people seem to have with this technology is that it will mean a loss of jobs in agriculture, there is little evidence of this in past technology revolutions. Jobs change and are created in different areas; this I believe will happen in agriculture. One of my major concerns for the future is finding decent skilled labour and being able to pay them a decent wage. A question I ask is why would anyone want to work on a modern arable farm?
Why would you work for a relatively low wage, working very unsociable long hours at the time of year everyone else is on holiday or going to festivals and have to handle potentially toxic chemicals? Not a great job advert! There seems to be a badge of honour in farming for people to work longer and longer hours, if you don’t you aren’t a proper farmer. Personally, I do not mind working long hours, but I also want to spend time with my friends and family. I hope to be the last generation of my family that sits on a tractor for 100 hours a week just to get crops planted. If we want to encourage new young blood into the industry, we need to have jobs and wages to attract them. I believe Robotics and AI can help with this issue.
Good luck to all with the rest of the season, let us hope the taps have not been turned off completely again like last year!!
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A Food Processor’s View…
REGENERATIVE AGRICULTURE – THE NEXT STEP FOR THE WHOLE SUPPLY CHAIN
Written by Rebecca Hesketh, Agriculture Manager for Fresh Produce at Waitrose & Partners
Many of us are asking whether this point in history is one we will look back on as when a ‘shift’ occurred in our system that changed the course of lives and the agricultural industry. There are many aspects of the agricultural world that may feel like they are on shifting sands at the moment, but the opportunity that presents itself through regenerative agriculture may just have some of the answers we need when facing the challenges ahead of this industry.
Whilst regenerative agriculture may feel familiar to many of the readers of Direct Driller Magazine whom I’m sure have long been farming with soil health in mind, we have found it helpful to further define what this means to us, drawing upon the number of definitions out there at the moment. To us, regenerative agriculture is a system of farming that increases biodiversity and enriches soils, therefore improving water quality, enhancing ecosystem services and capturing carbon in the soil. This definition allows us to bring this concept to life within our business and supply chains, to set ambitions and to build a plan to achieve them. There are many different ways we would look to work with our farmers to put this into practice on farm, but whatever we ask our farmers to do, it is important to us to ensure it’s meaningful and relevant to their farming business. There is no one size fits all! One area of focus will be building the health of our soils, which may be achieved through practices such as using cover crops and minimising soil disturbance. Importantly, through the practical application of regenerative agriculture through practices such as these, the benefits are seen not only in the improvement of our soil, but also in the quality of our water, the health of our surrounding ecosystems and just quite possibly the wider planet’s health too.
It is this that particularly draws us to regenerative agriculture, a movement that was built upon the foundations of conservation agriculture and has grown up from the grassroots movement started by the Rodale Institute and the revered Gabe Brown’s of this world. Through the lens of regenerative agriculture, healthy soil is seen as not a happy by-product in a supply chain, but as a core part of what farming achieves alongside the supply of food and a healthy ecosystem with thriving biodiversity. Seeing those vital parts of farming as just as important as what is produced to be sold. It can be best explained as a holistic framework through which to view farming and food supply in the future with the dual purpose of producing food that is both good for us and also the environment, doing more than just maintaining the current state of our planet, but enhancing it. Surely regeneration feels like the right path for us to be taking in a post-lockdown world with the looming challenges of the climate and biodiversity crises ahead.
These challenges require our system to evolve. The UN warns that we only have until the end of this decade to act against the climate crisis. The World Economic Forum warns that ‘biodiversity is declining globally, faster than at any other time in human history.’ Alongside this soil degradation is rightly causing concern to many, with recent studies finding that 16% of the conventionally managed soils looked at in the research had lifespans of less than a century. This gloomy picture has led influential thinkers within the business and agriculture communities to state that all businesses in the future will need to become regenerative. The key in this is ALL businesses – from the farmer to the retailer – we all need to be part of this progression towards becoming regenerative and to work as partners to make changes. This is why we want to start a conversation with our growers about the future of regenerative agriculture on our farms.
We at Waitrose have long worked closely with our suppliers and our growers to create finely tuned supply chains in order to make sure that food can arrive safely onto our customer’s plates. Over these past twelve months, we have seen an incredible amount of pressure applied to our carefully constructed supply chains. When you consider the possibility that the world may become yet more volatile and uncertain with the impact of environmental degradation and the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, it is difficult not to argue for an even stronger system of supply for the future.
This is one of the areas where regenerative agriculture offers potential for our food system. A healthy soil can be more resilient to environmental shocks, protecting this asset and its yield capacity for years to come, whilst thriving biodiversity on farm provides a wealth of ecosystem services. Underpinning our food supply with healthy, regenerating natural resources ensures a reliable base for food production for the future, benefitting a whole supply system on which it is based. Therefore we must work together to realise these benefits. Working in partnership with our farmers and the wider agriculture system is a key part of the way we work at Waitrose and Partners. T
he vast majority of our growers have been supplying Waitrose for multiple years and, through our suppliers, work in partnership with us to face the challenges ahead. Waitrose was founded over 100 years ago and in 100 years time we still want to be providing healthy food from flourishing farms. This is why as part of our Waitrose Agriculture Strategy we intend to embrace regenerative agriculture and play our part in regenerating the natural resources on which we rely. Through sequestering carbon into the soil and keeping it there, we are sure that regenerative agriculture will also play a key role in helping us to achieve our target of net zero across our UK farming base by 2035.
We recognise the important role that knowledge plays in bringing regenerative agriculture to life and this is why alongside these ambitions, we will aim to lead by example on our own farm, the Leckford Estate, innovating, learning and sharing new ways of farming. Alongside this we will continue to strengthen the partnerships we have built with organisations such as LEAF and Innovative Farmers. These partners work closely with us and our farmers to help us to farm with nature. They help us to ensure the right environmental approaches are in place on farm and bring agricultural research to life practically.
Customers are at the heart of every decision we make at Waitrose and the consideration of regenerative agriculture is no exception. The UK has seen an exponential growth in spending on ethically sourced goods over the past two decades, with figures showing spending by consumers on sustainable products reached £29.7bn in 2018, up from £3.1bn in 1999. It is arguable that the last year will have accelerated this trend. Alongside this, the presence of documentaries such as the inspirational Kiss the Ground on the popular streaming site Netflix demonstrates our customers’ interest in farming to regenerate. This is an opportunity to show farming can be a positive force in the action against environmental crises. Over in the US, regenerative agriculture has been taken up by household names, including Wallmart and General Mills, both of whom have made commitments to advance regenerative agriculture where they farm. Clearly these companies, their farmers and their customers see the benefits of a regenerative system.
Our customers make it clear to us that they want us to act in the face of the climate crisis and those crises facing the natural world. Regenerative agriculture could be the solution we need, offering a stronger system through which to supply food, whilst acting to mitigate climate change, biodiversity loss and soil degradation. As a business with customers at its heart and a mission to ‘do the right thing’, applying regenerative thinking to the way we work feels like the right path to take for a responsible business that cares about our planet. This is a path that requires the support of the whole supply chain to make it a success, from the farmer to the retailer and all the businesses both between and around them. To me it’s clear that this step is in all of our best interests to take and it might just be in our planet’s best interest too.
As a retailer that prides itself on working together with our suppliers, we welcome your thoughts on regenerative agriculture and would love for you to get in touch to share your views. You can contact me via LinkedIn.
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Drill Manufacturers In Focus…
SUBMISSION TO FARM CONTRACTOR & LARGE SCALE FARMER
Customer-first philosophy sustains fifty years of growth
UK agriculture has seen considerable change in the past fifty years, with advances in farm machinery technology arguably one of the greatest examples of progress. Alongside massively increased working widths and capacities, the industry has seen innovation in techniques, significant automation, and new levels of precision application that would have been unimaginable half a century ago. Manufacturers have come and gone within this timeframe, but one that has endured and adapted – going from strength to strength – is KUHN Farm Machinery, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in the UK in 2020.
Founded by Dennis and Cath Hollins in 1970 as the UK subsidiary of the French company KUHN SA, based in Saverne, the business began as a modest operation with limited premises in Wellington, Shropshire. The initial offering to the UK market comprised a small range of grass machinery and some power tillers – a far cry from today’s extensive range that encompasses arable and livestock sectors and includes just about everything from primary cultivations through to crop protection.
The company’s longest standing employee is Peter Morris. He joined as parts manager in 1976 and has been integral to so much of KUHN UK’s progression over his 44 years, holding a variety of roles.
“Supplying spare parts always has been an essential element of the business and this has been transformed over the years,” says Peter. “In the early days, urgent orders would come in by phone to Mrs Hollins’ home, which was about a mile from the depot. We would travel to and from the Hollins’ house, twice a day, to pick up urgent parts orders and then despatch them through ‘weigh and pay’ at the railway station, or on Securicor. Less urgent parts orders came in by post and packages were sent out via the Post Office, using Data Post. As the business grew KUHN was at one point the biggest user of Data Post in Telford.”
Maintaining parts supply efficiency has always been a priority for KUHN, and the company pioneered online ordering in the UK in 2005 with its dealer network. During 2015 and 2016, the department underwent a major refurb, modernising its fully dedicated parts facility at its current seven-acre site in Telford. KUHN UK now has just over 6,500 parts lines in stock, despatching 70-100 orders on average per day to customers with an average annual pick rate of 97% being maintained.
“The system we have today, with the capability of next day and through the night delivery services for a huge range of components, is a long way from the six wooden racks and manually recorded system of the 1970s,” adds Peter. “Nevertheless, the philosophy of delivering what the customer needs, as fast as possible, has remained constant.” KUHN UK parts manager, Daniel Banks adds: “It is now possible for us to supply 95% of parts to KUHN dealerships across the country before 8am, offering dealers and farmers the best possible service.”
Being customer-led is a theme that perpetuates throughout KUHN UK’s history, with landmark developments such as the introduction of power harrows being a good example of how the company has responded to farmer demands. The company sold its first power harrows in 1980 and by 1996 was delivering over 1,000 units per year onto UK farms.
“Power harrows provided a major breakthrough for KUHN through the 1980s and 1990s,” says the company’s national sales manager Duncan McLeish, who joined as an area sales manager in 1985. “The KUHN machine has always been built to last and went a long way to establishing our reputation for strength and reliability.
“There was significant demand for four metre machines in the 1990s, and we developed a transport kit for these wider machines to allow UK farmers to have the working capacity they wanted whilst still being able to comply with road transport regulations. KUHN UK was also directly involved in the development of the first six metre folding power harrow, again being responsive to farmer demand.”
Sales of power harrows continue, with combination units incorporating the Venta pneumatic drill remaining a sector-leading implement, but KUHN has also embraced the move towards minimum tillage. The company now includes a range of minimum tillage cultivators and drills, alongside its more conventional soil preparation and crop establishment range.
Growth of the KUHN UK business over the fifty years has been a combination of organic development, partnerships and acquisitions. Fertiliser spreaders first came into the KUHN UK range in 1985 through the partnership with the German manufacturer Rauch, with this continuing to the present day with the highly successful MDS and Axis machines leading the market. 1987 saw the introduction of KUHN ploughs for the first time, following the acquisition of Huard, and the take-over of Audureau in 1990 further strengthened KUHN’s offering in the livestock sector with the introduction of bedding and feeding equipment. More recently, KUHN has entered the crop protection sector, with the acquisition of the sprayer company Blanchard in 2008. Balers and wrappers entered the range a year later when the company took over the baler division of Kverneland Group, complete with the factory at Geldrop in the Netherlands.
To support its expanding product range, KUHN UK has invested in a high level of support to its dealers and end customers. This took a significant step with the establishment of a technical and service department in 1984, and this has grown significantly in more recent years with the appointment of regionally based product support engineers, product specialists and a dedicated marketing department. Managing director Siân Pritchard instigated the expansion of the product support function around ten years ago as part of a wider recruitment drive that has in the past three years seen a 25% increase in the headcount for KUHN UK.
“We’re continuing with our commitment to deliver the very best technical support back-up to our customers,” she explains. “Our investment in people is consistent with our success in increasing sales and a continuing drive to grow market share in priority product areas.
“Having more people on the ground is being noticed by our dealer network and is becoming an important differentiator for the business. It’s a crucial factor in ensuring we achieve our goal to push UK sales figures to new heights and to provide a more complete, efficient and thorough service to our UK customers.”
Since its humble beginnings in 1970, KUHN UK has been part of a rapidly developing agricultural industry. The company has stayed relevant, and maintained growth, through innovation and continuing product development, and the aim is to continue the upward curve with an ever-improving offer.
“Strength and reliability have been core values for KUHN since the start, and these principles have led to strong relationships with dealers and end customers,” says Siân Pritchard. “Going forward, it’s essential that we maintain these principles and lead the way in electronics and precision agriculture. We also need to continue to offer the best in terms of servicing, warranty and finance, and ensure we maintain the very best customer communications. “I believe that with new initiatives like the MyKUHN customer portal, and innovations like our Click & Collect feature for ordering parts from the dealer, we are fit for the future and ready for the next phase of the agricultural revolution.”
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Monitor Farming And Managing Reduced Cultivations
while listening to Radio 1)
John Aynsley, runs a 1,302ha mixed farm near Saltburn-by-the-Sea in the north east of England. Barn Farm with 566 ha of arable cropping in a predominantly cereals rotation has recently seen a system change to direct drilling. The transition has been followed and directed by the local AHDB Monitor Farm programme group. Read on to hear about this journey and John’s early conclusions…
Looking back through the mists of time to the 1970/80’s, when as a young man, ploughing was just what you did to start to prepare a seed bed to plant a crop. This was followed by double discing, harrowing, drilling and finally if it had not all got too wet, rolling. Radios were blaring out Radio 1 that you could not really hear above the noise of the tractor, while you were bouncing around in basic cabs. Happy days. The soils turned over beautifully, smelled wonderful and earthy, loads of worms and seagulls munching their way through them. Then power harrows appeared, WOW, one pass following the plough then drill and roll. Then we got really clever and put the drill on top of the power harrow, the combination was born. We thought we were really good then, more hp, more weight, better radios and CD`s and cab suspension. The halcyon days.
And it all worked well and still does for many businesses, drilling seeds/sq.m a lot more accurately, with more even crop emergence and establishment, and lower labour and fuel costs. It was only moving from energetic and naïve youthfulness into middle age, that I saw that the very soils that we once turned over so beautifully, that were so fibrous with organic matter and worms, had become depleted into poorer soils that with the first shower of rain became more difficult to work. How had this crept up behind me without really being aware of it? That was the light bulb moment when I knew we had to start to change.
Starting out on the journey to change
Our rotations had become too short and relied too much on OSR to be our saviour, there was no grass or livestock in the rotation. What would previous generations have made of this I wonder, probably already knowing the answer.
So, the journey to direct drilling had started, but like a lot of things in life it is never a straight or smooth road. It was certainly helped by attending a conference at Driffield in 2011 and listening to different people share their knowledge and experience of the move toward min till, direct drilling or regen agriculture, whatever you want to call it. It was at this point that I met Steve Townsend, who started to help us make that transition to better soils and different establishment methods. At first my agronomist David Coates and I had many discussions and brain storming sessions around the kitchen table, to try to understand exactly what Steve was advising us to look at and move towards.
To start with we did more soil sampling looking at a wider analysis, and in our case, it was showing an imbalance between the magnesium and calcium ratios. Once we started to correct this imbalance our soils have become easier to work with, had a bit more tilth in the top few inches and didn’t revert to a plasticine consistency when things get a bit wet. It will always be work in progress, but you have to start somewhere. The transition to min till is fairly easy and straightforward once you figure out which cultivator and drill suits the farm and system you want to adopt. The next stage however is a bit trickier, this is when the mindset and focus are really challenged.
Monitor Farm programme opportunity
I was given the opportunity to become a monitor farmer as part of the AHDB programme. This gave me the chance to move from min till to direct drilling on 260 acres as part of a 3-year project. Once I had committed to that there was no going back, we would find out whether we could make it work or not. As part of the project, I had to form a Steering Group and we agreed our aims would be to include winter beans and cover crops in the rotation, try to control sterile brome which is our biggest grass weed problem, direct drill all beans and cereals, to see whether the effect of these changes starts to improve the soil and ask whether it can all be profitable.
We bought a second hand Horsch CO6 drill to do the direct drilling for £10,500. This has proved to be more than adequate for the job, it only needs 150hp on the front travelling at 7/8kph. One of the things that I have learned since we started min tilling and direct drilling is that the earlier we get the crops in the ground with a higher than normal seed rate the better they are. The one discipline that we try very hard to stick to is if the soil starts sticking to the tractor tyres get out of the field as it is too wet, and we will be doing more damage than good, hence the need to get on early.
We have been benchmarking the whole arable area through AHDB for several years now, so it is interesting to compare the different costs/income from min till and direct drilling. The 3-year Monitor Farm project is not really long enough to come to any firm conclusions about whether we have managed to achieve all our objectives, but we will continue to monitor the changes over the years ahead.
Early conclusions
What I can say with some certainty however is that direct drilling does work, it uses a lot less labour and fuel. First wheat and bean yields are equally as good as min till. The inclusion of winter beans into a wider rotation is helping improve the soil structure, where we have severe brome the use of cover crops and glyphoshate followed by minimal soil disturbance drilling is certainly working. As to the profitability, I think the weather still has probably the biggest influence over both systems. We are doing more direct drilling year on year and I am fairly sure that we are seeing the benefits of this through better tilth, increased worm numbers and soil smelling a lot better, although as it took some time for the soils to become depleted, it will take time for them to repair. We will have to allow mother nature to do her bit unimpeded by poor practice and hopefully this will help accelerate the process.
Moving to direct drilling I feel that we now have a better understanding of our soils and of what we should and should not do to them, but it is and always will be, work in progress. It does require more attention to detail and it certainly does not look as good to the eye until it gets above the stubble, but as long as it delivers profitability then the soils will improve and we will be able to lower our input costs.
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How To Count Earthworms
Importance
Earthworms improve plant productivity, are principally responsible for engineering the soil environment and are an important food source for native birds such as the song thrush. There are up to 10 common earthworm species in agricultural soils and these can be grouped into three ecological types: epigeic, endogeic and anecic earthworms – each group having a unique and important function. Earthworms are an indicator of soil health, being impacted by pH, waterlogging, compaction, tillage, rotation and organic matter management.
How to identify earthworms
Epigeic (litter-dwelling earthworms)
• Dark red-headed worms
• Small (<8cm) in size, typically about the length of a matchstick
• Often fast-moving (most likely to escape from the worm pot!)
Sensitive to: Tillage (detrimental) and organic matter management such as manure applications (beneficial)
Roles: Carbon cycling and prey for native birds
Endogeic (topsoil earthworms)
• Pale-coloured and green worms (not red)
• Small to medium size
• Often curl up when handled, and green worms may emit a yellow fluid
• The most common earthworm group found in arable fields
Sensitive to: Organic matter management (beneficial)
Roles: Soil aggregation and nutrient mobilisation for plants
Anecic (deep burrowing earthworms)
• Dark red or black-headed worms
• Large size (>8cm), typically similar size to a pencil
• Make deep vertical tunnels, up to 2m
• Often found below surface earthworm casts or midden residue piles
• Feed at night, foraging the soil surface around their burrow for litter
• Commonly found in grassland but often absent from ploughed fields and where there is no surface litter
Sensitive to: Tillage (detrimental) and organic matter management such as manure applications and straw return (beneficial)
Roles: Deep burrows that improve aeration, water infiltration and root development
Identifying adults and juveniles
Adult earthworms have a clearly developed saddle (reproductive ring) and juveniles do not. You may need to rinse worms with water to determine if a saddle is present. Size is not a good indicator of maturity as adult earthworms typically range in size from 2cm to 15cm, depending on species.
When is it best to count earthworms?
Spring and autumn are the best times to carry out earthworm assessments. Timing the sampling after warm, wet conditions often provides the best earthworm population estimates.
How to assess the earthworm populations
Tools: Spade, pot, bottle of water, mat and a record sheet
Procedure:
1. Dig out a soil pit (20cm x 20cm x 20cm) and place soil on mat
2. Hand-sort the soil (aiming to spend 5 minutes sorting), placing each whole earthworm into the pot
3. Count and record the total number of earthworms
4. Separate earthworms into adults and juveniles (see above)
5. Return juveniles to the soil pit 6. Count and record the number of each type of adult earthworm (see overleaf)
6. Count and record the number of each type of adult earthworm (see overleaf)
7. Repeat steps 1–7, until 10 soil pits per field have been assessed following a standard W-shape field-sampling pattern.
What does this mean?
• RED = If 3 or fewer of the ten pits have 16 or more worms, this suggests suboptimal earthworm populations, which can indicate problems with the soil’s physical or chemical properties
• YELLOW = If 16 or more worms are found in 4 to 6 pits, this suggests a patchy presence of earthworms. With this number, you could make improvements in the parts of the field where earthworms are not currently present
• GREEN = If you have 7-10 pits containing 16 or more earthworms (of any type). The most significant benefits to plant productivity are more likely in fields where you find high numbers of earthworms
• If you are unlikely to find epigeic, endogeic or anecic earthworms, you are unlikely to be benefiting from their specific actions
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Hampshire Farmer Reaps Regen Rewards
Last autumn, the annual Agri-TechE REAP conference was held virtually, sharing technological ideas from people and companies innovating at the frontier of agriculture. The keynote speaker, supported by AHDB, at the event was David R. Montgomery, whose remit was to discuss how soil linked into the conference theme of “From micro-scape to landscape – innovating at the frontier”. David’s talk showcased how, when thinking about soils, we need to be looking at both of these scales.
An author and professor of geomorphology at the University of Washington, David has travelled the world to hear how farmers have reversed the fortunes of their soils. Numerous conversations later, he now believes soil-health nirvana can be achieved through the adoption of three general principles of conservation agriculture:
1. No or minimal soil disturbance to help soil life flourish
2. Growing ground cover to lock in nutrients and protect the land
3. Using a diverse rotation (three or more crops) to promote life and avoid nutrient over-extraction
The approach, alongside integrated pest management (IPM), provides an opportunity for farmers. However, as David concluded: “There is no ‘easy button’, when it comes to implementing regenerative farming”. Those who use their independence, intelligence and ingenuity to learn from their own experiences and those of others are most likely to thrive. One such farmer, David Miller of the Wheatsheaf Farming Company near Basingstoke, has worked with the three regenerative agricultural principles for decades – long before the term gained traction. A recent AHDB podcast featured machinery expert Harry Henderson, who discussed these principles with David and unearthed the secrets of the company’s success.
Regenerative agriculture in Hampshire
In the early 2000s, the company’s land was plagued with plateauing yields and rising costs. In 2010, the mission was to regain control of the soil and help it look after itself with minimum inputs. By working closer with nature, David wanted to bring back the feel-good element of farming. The 700 farmed hectares is situated mainly on grade 3 land, with drainage occurring naturally through the dominant chalky, stony and flinty soils.
Use of cover
They experimented with cover crops, starting with a single species (crimson clover), followed by a trial-and-error approach that now sees fairly diverse mixtures deployed. The mix is tailored to the situation (e.g. larger seed mixes used toward the end of autumn) with brassica species avoided – due to their bridging potential for slugs and diseases. They use species that succumb to frost, so the standing cover is not too thick and sucking up all the nutrition. They roll after any frost to tackle the remaining cover, although glyphosate is still needed for complete kill. By around 2014, all spring cereal crops followed an over-winter cover..
Minimal soil disturbance
The on-farm default for cultivation and establishment is minimal disturbance methods. However, the use of more disruptive forms of cultivation are used, when the situation demands it. For establishment, a cross-slot drill was purchased in 2015. Since then, the land has become easier to work – and the heavier cross-slot has gone, replaced by a more nimble disc-drill system. It is important to get the drill right at the start, David says. In the last five years, the choice and experience has exploded in the UK. It is important to explore the options and make the right choice for your system. Most straw on the farm is chopped at harvest and raked to even the distribution. As the soils are fairly resilient to compaction, self-restructuring, and all effort is made to avoid working the soil in suboptimal conditions, there is never the need to mechanically restructure them.
David has found that weeds now only tend to come up where the soil has been disturbed and what’s on the surface lose viability or are eaten by birds. However, the weed population has changed. Now there is less black-grass and more brome.
Rotational diversity
In addition to the use of cover crops, the cash crops in the rotation add diversity and flexibility, with a third of the land down to spring crops (barley and wheat). The winter crops include wheat, barley, oilseed rape, rye and, crucially, beans. Livestock are not a part of the system. Although they bring many benefits, they also bring risks, such as compaction in a bad winter.
Yielding success
With no blueprint available for regenerative agriculture in the UK, the sharing of locally relevant experiences is essential – and this is where our AHDB Monitor Farm and Strategic Farm networks come in. We are delighted to announce that David has been selected as AHDB’s fourth Strategic Cereal Farm, with the official launch in June 2021. The Strategic Farms promote the uptake of knowledge and provide a platform for farmers to explore new ideas that can have an impact on their business. David will represent the South, with Strategic Cereal Farms already established in Scotland, East and West.
David’s aim for the programme is to find a responsible pathway to reduce inputs. He said: “We are very pleased to have been chosen as the 4th AHDB Strategic Farm. Our vision for the next 6 years is to trial and prove various scenarios to ease the journey into regenerative agriculture. We aim to look at ways of quantifying the results of our actions in growing crops in a more biological way with less reliance on chemicals and inorganic fertilisers. The end result will, hopefully, give a reliable path of principles for others to follow.
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Agri-Environment Subsidies Provide More Stable Farm Incomes Than Direct Payments
Full Paper published by Caroline Harkness, Francisco J. Areal. Mikhail A. Semeno, Nimai Senapati, Ian F. Shield, Jacob Bishop
Subsidies paid to farmers for protecting the environment lead to more stable incomes compared with payments based purely on the number of hectares being farmed, according to a new study of farms in England and Wales. The findings are of great relevance as, post-Brexit, the UK moves to the new Environmental Land Management subsidy system. The research, from Rothamsted Research, the University of Reading and Newcastle University, also shows that farmers shouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket, as those diversifying into a wider variety of crops or livestock receive more consistent year-to-year incomes – as do those who reduce their use of fertiliser and pesticides.
Lead author and PhD student, Caroline Harkness said: “Farmers are facing increasing pressures due to changes in climate, government policy and prices. Instability in farm income can be a real challenge. It was interesting, and encouraging, to find that farms adopting environmentally friendly practices also had more stable incomes.
“Farmers may be benefiting financially from their environmental management, while in contrast an increase in direct payments per hectare was associated with less stable farm income. “Environmentally friendly farming practices including engaging in agrienvironment schemes, diversifying outputs, and reducing the use of chemical inputs such as fertiliser and pesticides, are associated with ecological and environmental benefits and importantly could also increase the stability of farm income.”
The researchers examined data from the Farm Business Survey for 2333 farms in England and Wales, between 2007-2015, for a range of different farm types. Using statistical models, the team examined the effect of farming practices and subsidies on the stability of farm income, and their relative importance over the nine-year period.
An increase in direct subsidies paid to farmers based on the area farmed was associated with less stable farm income, across most farm types. In contrast, dairy, general cropping and mixed farms that received more agri-environmental payments had more stable incomes in the short and medium-term. However, farms in the so called Less Favoured Areas – predominantly upland farms who graze sheep or cattle, do not see the same stability benefits from agrienvironmental payments. Ms Harkness said: “Farms in the uplands are already operating in challenging environments and many of the options in agri-environment schemes may not be available or well suited to deliver ecosystem service benefits in these landscapes.”
The results also showed that greater diversity in crop and livestock activities increased the stability of farm income, in dairy, general cropping, cereal and mixed farms – but this was not an important factor for farms that primarily graze livestock. “Increasing diversity of outputs could make farm businesses more resilient to economic shocks or price fluctuations,” says Ms Harkness. Reducing the input intensity also seems to be an important factor increasing the stability of income for all farm types, she added.
“With rising input prices, a concern of many farmers is to control the use of expensive inputs. Whilst farms with higher input costs are more likely to have higher outputs this does not always translate to a higher farm business income, and these farms also saw larger fluctuations in income.”
Dr Jake Bishop, Lecturer in Crop Science and Production from the University of Reading’s School of Agriculture, Policy & Development said: “Our latest research is interesting as it shows that farms that were adopting environmental management actually benefitted financially from their stewardship. This is encouraging news for farmers as the UK moves to the Environmental Land Management scheme.
“Diversifying outputs and more efficient use of agrochemicals is also associated with environmental and ecological benefits, including for soils and pollinators, these benefits may have translated into more stable farm incomes over the nine years we examined.”
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Drill Manufacturers In Focus…
ANOTHER EXCEPTIONALLY WET WINTER HIGHLIGHTS THE BENEFITS OF GOOD SOIL STRUCTURE AND DRAINAGE.
Following another extremely wet winter Jeff Claydon, a Suffolk farmer and inventor of the Opti-Till® direct strip seeding system, talks about the importance of good soil structure and drainage. He also discusses the initial results of stubble management and cover crop trials on E. T. Claydon & Sons’ arable enterprise.
20 February 2021
Following the extremes of weather and associated challenges which most farmers had to deal with during 2019/20, one might have hoped that the law of averages would mean that this season was easier. So far at least, that has not been the case. With such extremes becoming increasingly frequent, clearly, we must position ourselves to deal with them by ensuring that our soils are in optimum condition and that we use an establishment system which significantly reduces our exposure to weather risk.
Statistically, Suffolk is one of the driest counties in the UK, but even here, after a scorching summer when temperatures peaked at 36°C, we still ended 2020 with 700mm of rain. Of that, over 400mm fell between harvest and the end of December, which has been a challenge on our very heavy Hanslope series chalky boulder clay soils that are notoriously difficult to manage. When wet, they can become impossibly sticky, unfriendly, and slow to drain, but when dry set like concrete. At either extreme they are impossible to work, so all field operations must be carried out within a very narrow time window and when conditions are exactly right.
Until mid-October, our soils remained dry enough to absorb the persistent and often heavy rainfall, but the wet weather continued throughout the autumn and winter. Our weather station next to the Claydon offices recorded another 146mm during January and 46mm in the first two weeks of February, making this one of the wettest winters on record. Driving around the area over the last few weeks I have passed many fields that are in poor condition after being over-worked, or where inappropriate machinery was used at the wrong time. Some were waterlogged, slumped, and capped, worm activity was minimal, crops which had been drilled were stressed and even weeds refused to grow in some areas. Elsewhere, topsoil had been washed off fields, causing crop loss and polluting water courses.
As I write this during the third week of February, we have experienced two weeks of extremely cold weather. The plume of Arctic air that the media dubbed ‘The Beast From The East’ caused temperatures to plummet to a low of -15°C with the windchill factor. The cold snap may have passed, but the wet weather shows no signs of abating and our crops are at their most depressed point in the growing cycle. However, unlike many, they are all set to flourish once the mercury starts to rise.
Every week I talk to existing and prospective Claydon customers throughout the UK and overseas, so I know that many of you also operate in extremely challenging situations and need a robust establishment system. Because of the Claydon Opti-Till® System’s ability to establish any seed that can be air-sown, in all soils and conditions, using around 16l/ha of diesel even on our heavy clay soils – about 10% of that required for a plough-based system – it is now being adopted not just by arable producers but increasingly those in the dairy sector for crops like grass, maize and stubble turnips. With the current talks of reducing CO2 to much lower levels and increasing carbon capture, we are ahead in this field.
When you next have a few minutes to spare you might like to watch ‘The first year of Claydon direct drilling on a UK dairy farm’, an excellent video which Charlie Eaton, Claydon’s Territory Manager for the South and West of England, made over several months on a farm in the Cotswolds. Visit the Wiltshire section of the UK video gallery on our website www.claydondrill.com – it’s well worth a look. Our website video galleries also have numerous videos on soil health and resilience, as well as of the Claydon OptiTill® System being used to establish all types of crops, in all situations, both in the UK and overseas. You can also keep up with the latest posts, photographs, and videos from Claydon and our customers through the Claydon Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Claydondrill). It’s also a great place to share, discuss and question what you are seeing on your farm with other like-minded individuals.
Time to check soils
Extremes of weather such as we have experienced during the last two seasons highlight the importance of having resilient soils with excellent structure, supported by an effective drainage system to take water away. Spring is the ideal time to take stock of your soils, test how good they are, look for signs of compaction, and check that the drainage system is operating correctly. This can be done easily and cheaply using nothing more complicated than a fork, penetrometer, water infiltration tray and a couple of jam jars if you really feel like pushing the boat out to do a Slake Test! With this information you can then plan to correct any deficiencies.
When assessing soil condition, the first thing I do is to carry out several penetrometer tests across the field to check there are no soil pans, as these will severely limit drainage and root development. If they are present, the probe becomes much more difficult to push into the ground and the indicator needle swings into the red. Pans are not caused solely by compaction from heavy machinery or working when conditions are unfavourable but can result from the sedimentation of soils that have been over-cultivated and ‘settled out’ over the winter.
This is clearly demonstrated with the Slake Test, which provides an excellent indication of a soil’s resilience and health, is easy to do and costs nothing. Briefly, it assesses the stability of soil aggregates when exposed to rapid wetting, as in the case of heavy or prolonged rainfall. The slower the soil breaks up the better as this indicates that it contains a high degree of organic matter which helps to bind it together. You can see this simple yet important test being carried out on the Claydon farm by Dick Neale, Technical Manager for Hutchinsons, in a short video on the ‘Soil’ page of our website.
Good drainage is essential
One cannot talk about soil health and resilience without discussing drainage, an area of soil management that is fundamental to good soil structure but often neglected. You don’t need me to tell you that well-drained soils go hand in hand with healthy soils and high yields. The key is to ensure that drains are adequate to cope with the highest flows and well maintained so they don’t become blocked or have their capacity reduced and become overwhelmed during periods of heavy, prolonged rain.
Since land drainage grants finished in the 1970s many farms have been unwilling or unable to invest in new schemes. Four decades on, many existing ones have become obsolete and ineffective, which is a major blow because effective drainage helps soils to dry out and improves timeliness. It also makes them easier to manage, enables fertilisers and ag-chems to work most efficiently and minimises leaching, not forgetting that it also typically leads to yield improvements of 25%-30%. Recent studies have confirmed that new land drainage systems on average can start to pay for themselves after eight years.
If, after heavy rainfall, the water flowing from field drains is dirty this indicates that it is full of sediment, so your valuable soils are literally going down the drain, increasing the risks of soil erosion and flooding. This sediment will also block worm holes and capillaries, killing worms, starving the crop’s roots of essential air and nutrients, reducing yield potential, and ultimately increasing the cost-pertonne of production. Most of the Claydon farm is drained and after two decades of using OptiTill® our soils are very well structured, so water permeates freely. Nevertheless, the drainage system has been pushed to its limits this season. In January, for example, we had one day when over 35mm of rain fell, which overburdened the field drains and water coming out of the pipes ran cloudy. A small amount of overnight surface ponding was also evident in a couple of areas, so I will want to address this in the months ahead by installing additional laterals.
Some have the fear that well drained land increases the flow rates, which to a point it does, but they do not consider the sponge effect of well drained land, where the water is gently filtered through the soil and released steadily, unlike waterlogged soil which washes off the top at a time when we need to achieve clean water to drain and a healthy environment. Healthy soil copes better with these extremes due to the increased presence of soil biota, and our high organic scores on the farm have certainly proved their worth in recent weeks. Driving past some fields where conventional full cultivations and mintill systems have been used, you can see the results of overworked soil which has had its structure destroyed and worm populations adversely affected. It can easily be seen in the last two years where the wrong equipment has been used in wet, adverse conditions. Degrading the soil in this way also reduces its ability to drain water away during extended periods of wet weather and increases capillary action moisture losses in dry conditions.
Given increasing public interest in countryside and environmental issues, including soil erosion, Defra would do well to reinstate drainage grants and fund attenuation ponds to catch sedimentation, as well as to control the release/flow of water. This could be a base for future management strategies considering the weather patterns of the last couple of years. Their work should also address both the capacity and condition of river systems, the need for adequate maintenance of ditches, and give more recognition to the role of correctly structured and managed farmland in holding water and releasing it gradually to prevent water courses from being overwhelmed, leading to flooding.
Stubble management and cover crops
In the last issue of Direct Driller, I outlined the trials we are conducting to evaluate different approaches to stubble management and cover crops, in the same field, under the same conditions. Even at this early stage they have provided plenty of food for thought. The field next to the Claydon factory which we allocated for this is part of 55ha destined for sowing with WPB Elyann (KWS) spring oats, a crop which is easy and relatively inexpensive to grow but often produces a margin on a par with winter wheat. Some of the area was straw harrowed up to four times then left, while on 10ha we drilled a cover crop using different methods to see if, and by how much, it improves the yield and overall margin from following crops. The yield from each area will be measured so we can assess the agronomic and financial impact.
Cover crops are still relatively new in the UK, with most farmers and agronomists still learning about what does and does not work. The trials have been very revealing, but as the lockdowns, sadly, have greatly restricted travel and prevented us all from holding public events you can watch a video of Dick Neale, Technical Manager for Hutchinsons, discussing our cover crops on the video gallery of the Claydon website at www.claydondrill.com
We used Hutchinsons MaxiCover, a general-purpose over-winter cover crop mix containing linseed, buckwheat, phacelia, daikon radish, fodder radish, brown mustard, hairy vetch, and crimson clover. Costing £35/ha, it was drilled at 12.5kg/ha on 9 August using three seeding options on our 3m Claydon Hybrid test drill. With a few simple, quick, low-cost modifications any new or existing Hybrid drill can be used for conventional sowing, lower disturbance establishment and zero-till seeding, with or without fertiliser placement between or in the seeded rows, directly into stubbles, chopped straw, cover crops and grassland. This makes it a versatile, costeffective solution.
In one area we used the standard Claydon Opti-Till® set-up comprising the leading tine which relieves compaction and aerates the soil, followed by a seeding tine with a 20cm A-share. In another we used the leading tine followed by our twin-tine kit. The third was drilled with the new lower-disturbance ‘LD’ twin-tine kit preceded by double front cutting discs which reduce power requirement and minimise soil disturbance. In all cases the cover crop produced a mass of roots. The diversity of species in these mixes means that, regardless of weather, soil conditions, field aspect and establishment methods, it produces a viable cover crop, because even if a couple of species do not thrive because conditions are not right for them in that situation others will grow. Having various plant canopy profiles provides good soil armour and weather protection which has a positive effect in terms of controlling grassweeds, as well as further improving soil condition.
The heavy calcareous clay soil on the Claydon farm has a high calcium base which attracts phosphate and locks it up, so crop roots can have difficulty in accessing this vital nutrient. Buckwheat, one of the species in the MaxiCover mix, produces acids which help to release phosphate and so it plays a valuable role in achieving a correct soil nutrient balance. Ideally, we want the cover crop to be in the ground long enough to gain maximum advantage from the rooting structures, but not so long so that it generates excessive stick-like biomass. The original idea was that cover crops would be sprayed off at the end of November and those areas left until spring, when we will drill spring oats directly as soon as conditions allow. However, we decided instead to graze some off with a neighbour’s small flock of sheep and then rolled the cover crop area with our 12m Cambridge rolls around Christmas on a small frost.
The cold weather of recent weeks has broken down almost all the top biomass, so we will have no issues with it shielding grass weeds from an application of glyphosate applied before drilling. Neither will we have any problems sowing spring oats into the heavy soil, which can be very wet and cold with too much green cover, and this should allow a perfect seedbed environment. The cover rooting has been retained with high levels of worms, so it will be interesting to see how the different areas behave in the following crop.
Obvious differences
With our rotation having changed from wheat and oilseed rape to include more spring-sown and break crops, the aim is to use land destined for spring drilling to help reduce the weed burden and seed bank using Opti-Till® stubble management techniques which move no more than 2cm of topsoil. This will enable us to control weed seeds and volunteers without herbicides, other than one fullrate application of glyphosate just prior to drilling. Effective stubble management has become particularly important following the loss of neonicotinoid seed treatments and some products to control grassweeds as there is a fear that the aphid vectors of Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus (BYDV) will increase significantly. This can be reduced considerably by using Opti-Till® to manage stubbles and eliminate the green bridge effect. It also enables drilling to be delayed, but to do that with any degree of certainty you must be able to get the crop in the ground quickly, which means not having too many operations before sowing.
It has been fascinating to compare the effects of two, three and four passes with the Straw Harrow, a fast, low-cost operation, under identical conditions. This has highlighted the effectiveness of this technique and the significant benefit of using more passes. The differences are as clear as day, as can be seen from the accompanying photographs. We also have numerous videos about stubble management on the Claydon website.
In the next issue of Direct Driller, I will look at how each of the trial areas drilled in the spring and talk through any differences that were apparent at that time.
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Farmer Focus – Clive Bailye
A global pandemic has few positives, but if I were asked for any I would say the rise of the webinar. As soon as the first lockdown was imposed physical farm events were ended. Participation and involvement in farm shows, auctions and meetings could only be done by farmers and others using software applications such as Zoom, Teams and other programs they had never used before. Over the time they have become so familiar even grandparents are using them to keep in touch with friends and family. While it may be a poor substitute for face-to-face human contact provides, online has become remarkably popular.
Lockdown was as if someone had pressed ‘fast forward’ on the internet. Websites like The Farming Forum, Farm Marketplace and Farm Classifieds with which I’m involved suddenly saw a big increase in traffic. Farmers and others who previously were not interested in digital coms were forced to try – and liked the experience. Meeting online has its problems – broadband connections which let users down at a critical moment; people talking over one another; or that funny moment when a meeting participant speaks up… with microphone still on mute! But these downsides are heavily outweighed by the accessibility that the almost limitless geography of the internet offers.
Attending a meeting or event prior to Covid Lockdown often involved a full day, travelling (with environmental impact of course), small talk before and after, lunch and multiple coffee breaks. All reduce the efficient uptake of the information you had really come to digest. In contrast an online event allows you to turn up just moments before proceedings start. There’s no travel time and cost. But most importantly the internet allows an infinitely wide range of both speakers and participants. As a BASE UK committee member, I have been involved in helping organise speakers for the group over several years, and our choices have often been limited by both the speaker’s diary and more often geography.
Flying in speakers from New Zealand, Australia or the Americas is simply just too expensive, yet these are some of the most knowledgeable soil and No-till people in the world and ones which BASE members want to learn from. Online meetings have made such speakers accessible. In a year when BASE and others might be expected to struggle to do its work, it has in fact done more than ever and membership has grown to new highs as a result. Hopefully we will not abandon Zoom when lockdown and travel restrictions become distant memory.
Farming and carbon trading
Some of the most exciting meetings I have attended have been based around carbon sequestration and storage, and how farmers will be able to sell this and other ecosystem capital benefits in the future. While DEFRA’s ELMS scheme (now known as the Sustainable Farming Incentive “SFI”) has bold vision to pivot production-based subsidies to natural capital and public goods payments, the complexities of creating trading systems for Carbon seems now to be a step too far for them to get involved in. This has created an opportunity for the private sector to provide certification and trading of this farming asset.
The first point of difficulty when selling Carbon is working out how much (if any) you have available for sale. This is anything but easy. The current debate involves the way carbon is accounted. It’s been suggested that a farmer using synthetic fertiliser should have all the Carbon produced in its manufacturer on his balance sheet. To me this is an utter nonsense. Are we really suggesting that Yara, Europe’s biggest user of natural gas, is carbon neutral? If a fertiliser manufacturer is going to push its carbon footprint onto me then I’m going to push mine on to my grain customers, and logically they then will pass it to theirs’. So the entire carbon footprint of everything ends up with the consumer, who can do little about it. Far more logical and consistent is for each part of the chain to take responsibility for the carbon they directly produce. Removing the crazy idea that a farmer is responsible for carbon involved in the production of synthetic fertilisers makes UK agriculture suddenly look a lot more like a net zero, and those of us in regenerative farming have a new product to sell.
So far the official focus is on the sequestration of carbon, – its removal from the atmosphere is what we all want. But of equal yet often neglected importance is the storage service that farmers and land managers provide. A scheme that currently pays to plant a tree is only positive while the tree is growing. Cut it down, use it for fuel, and the saving is all lost! How do we sell and guarantee both future storage as well as the tools for carbon removal?
Measuring carbon quantities
Then there is measurement – how much carbon do you have in your soil? Soil sampling is a huge can of worms (pun intended) with so many different opinions and issues around consistency. Right now soil sampling has very little to offer to quantification. Then there are the “desktop” assessments. Back in 2016 when I won the Farm Carbon Toolkit Soil farmer of the year, I used their excellent carbon calculator tool (an exercise I would recommend to all). It gives an excellent value for an individual impact and indicates where improvements can be made. These simple tools sadly lack the ISO accreditation that buyers of carbon require to have confidence to purchase. More complex ISO certified desktop quantification models exist, but are expensive and complex to use. Currently I am trailing and helping adapt a system already in use in other countries.
If successful it will become the backbone of the Gentle Farming programme which aims to sell ISO certified carbon as a premium brand. It recognises the ecosystem gains of regenerative agriculture, and not simply the carbon sequestration and storage. My fear is that carbon trading may ultimately become a race to the bottom with carbon brands that fit well with buyers’ corporate responsibility but which provide farmers with a poor return for the valuable environmental service they provide. Carbon markets are simply not going to grow until credible assurance exists that makes purchase possible now or in the future when incentivised through offsetting taxation.
Following 20 years of Red Tractor’s complete failure to make the UK food assurance scheme into anything which provides UK farmers with a premium, ‘assurance’ is a word that fills me and many other UK farmers with fear. Food assurance has instead just become another unwelcome cost that places us at a competitive disadvantage to imports with no farm level assurance at all. As well as being at the centre of various food safety scandals itself, Red Tractor often confuses consumers with its inconsistent and complex standards, and, as the logo is rarely if ever used on bakery and cereal products, Red Tractor is of no value whatsoever to grain producers. Another positive of the pandemic surfaced when farmers put their new found use of social media and online meetings to use in making their feelings clear. I have no doubt that changes originally intended will now be very difficult to make, and the entire value of keeping the scheme is now under question. It has been fantastic to see farmers represent themselves in this way.
If Carbon has the potential to be farming’s ‘gold rush’ we must vigorously resist those with such a proven track record of failure getting involved. It was alarming to hear Red Tractor CEO Jim Mosley talk about their ambition to become a condition of, or the ‘assurance’ behind, ELMS. Carbon storage and sequestration will be inevitably be linked to future environmental schemes and farmers should develop this new product themselves and let markets decide its value. The last thing we need is more costly assurance that comes without securing a premium.
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Hardwood Intercropping Systems
Authors: David Rivest, Ing. F., Ph.D., Université Laval, Olivier, Ph.D., Université Laval and Andrew M. Gordon, B.Sc.F., Ph.D., R.P.F., University of Guelph. Published under licence from Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada and the Government of Canada. Combining wood and agricultural production while delivering environmental services
Introduction
The evolution of agriculture in eastern Canada over the past half-century has been characterized by a spectacular gain in productivity with, in many cases, a concurrent but gradual exclusion of trees from croplands, particularly because of large farm mechanization. Combined with the intensifi cation of agriculture, this decrease in forest area has resulted in a variety of environmental problems, including decreases in soil fertility, soil erosion, an increase in diffuse pollution and a reduction in biodiversity, all of which has resulted in an overall loss in terms of the quality of the rural landscape.
In this context, the re-establishment of the tree as a fundamental element of the agricultural agro-ecosystem seems like one judicious solution to mitigating the impacts of intensive agriculture. Experiments conducted in eastern Canada and other temperate regions of the world have shown that intercropping systems (ICS) constitute a promising avenue for strategically reintroducing the ecological functions of the tree into an agricultural environment (Photo 1). Planting hardwood trees in such systems can also meet the need to increase the production of quality wood that is indispensable to the wood-processing and furniture-manufacturing industries, while at the same time delivering a variety of positive environmental services.
This factsheet provides an overview of various types of temperate ICS observed in Canada and around the world and an account of current knowledge with respect to their productivity and associated environmental benefi ts. The technical itinerary necessary for the development of a successful intercropping system is then discussed: choice of tree species, their spacing, maintenance, and choice of crops and their management.
Modernization of traditional types of association between trees and crops
In temperate regions of the world, various traditional types of tree-crop associations have remained very much alive. In some countries, such as Italy, France and Greece, intercropping extends over several tens of thousands of hectares. Generally, ‘intercropped’ crops are cereal crops (e.g. corn, wheat, barley) and oilseed crops (e.g. soybean, sunfl ower); these crops are grown in the ‘alleys’ between the tree rows while the trees (e.g. walnut) are cultivated in linear hard-wood plantations. Crops and plantations can share the same physical space until shade production from the tree inhibits crop growth (up to 15 to 20 years (Photo 2)), although in some systems (e.g. winter wheat – Paulownia in China (Wu and Zhu, 1997); cot-ton – pecan in southern United States (Zamora et al., 2008)), this is not a major problem.
Recently, various initiatives aimed at increasing hard-wood production while maintaining farming activity on rural lands have enabled new systems to be de-veloped. In Europe, and especially in France, trees such as walnut and hybrid poplar have been grown in association with crops such as wheat, colza and various forage species (Photo 3). In Canada, the first experimental trials were established almost 25 years ago at Guelph, Ontario. A variety of hardwood trees (red oak, silver maple, sugar maple, American ash, black walnut, hybrid poplar) continue to be grown with a variety of crops (e.g. corn, beans, wheat) (Photo 4). In Quebec, the fi rst experimental fi eld plots were established six years ago. Soybeans, canola, buckwheat and a variety of cereal plants such as bar-ley, oats, rye and wheat have been intercropped in mixed.
Trees and intercrops: do they work well together?
The effect of intercropping on tree growth
For foresters, associating crop production with tree production is not a common custom. Can trees take advantage of their proximity to intercrops and benefi t indirectly from the care (e.g. weeding, fertilization) that these crops receive? Although focused only on young trees, recent experiments conducted in Quebec seem to indicate that this is the case. It was observed that after three to four years of growth, above-ground biomass of various hybrid poplar clones associated with various annual intercrops was, on average, 40% greater than that observed when repeated harrowing was undertaken between tree rows, a practice commonly used in intensive poplar monoculture (Rivest et al., 2009) (Photo 6). According to this study, improved tree growth comes notably: i) from stimulating the soil microbial biomass and mineralizing nitrogen through intercropping; and ii) from recovery by the tree roots of a significant proportion of fertilizer residues used in intercropping, which improves their mineral nutrition. Similar results have been found in France (Chiffl ot et al., 2006).
The type of crop associated with the trees is very significant, however. For example, research conducted in Ontario showed that young trees were taller in the presence of corn or soybeans than in that of barley, a crop that creates competition for water early in the growing season (Williams and Gordon, 1992). Nevertheless, when associated plants are well chosen, all indications are that trees planted in ICS generally have somewhat shorter rotations than those in forest stands. As they are planted in large competition-free zones, trees planted in an ICS develop more extended canopies, which accelerates their stem radial growth. If they are not pruned regularly, butt logs at fi nal harvest could therefore be shorter, but of greater volume than those harvested in natural forests (Cabanettes et al. 1999).
The effect of trees on intercrop yield Farmers are often more familiar than foresters with tree-crop associations (e.g. shelterbelts and wind-breaks). However, to date, the development of ICS whereby rows of trees are ‘inserted’ into crop production areas remains a rare practice in the agriculture sector. It is a well-known fact that young hardwoods generally cause only a negligible loss of productivity in associated crops; this effect could even be benefi cial in some cases. However, as time passes, intercrops could suffer from competition with trees for light, water and nutrients in the soil. In Quebec and Ontario, studies have shown that the yield losses of crops such as soybeans and corn are generally a result of tree shade (Reynolds et al. 2007; Rivest et al. 2009). Several options can help to control competition for light. These include: i) giving preference, from the planting stage onward, to wide spacing between trees and within and between rows; ii) opting for tree species and clones that minimize shade (high porosity and low canopy width); iii) giving preference to thinning and continued pruning; and iv) positioning the tree rows along a northsouth axis.
The effect of shade is not always a decrease in the yield of the associated crop. Some forage plants (e.g. tall fescue) can, under partial shade (i.e. 50%), produce a total biomass and protein content greater than those observed in full light (Lin et al. 1999). In Ontario, Clinch et al. (2009) also observed improved performance of a willow crop under moderate shade compared with the same crop grown in monoculture (Photo 7).
In the United States, some research has shown that tree competition for water can become critical to the point of signifi cantly decreasing the productivity of the associated crops (Jose et al., 2004). However, it is possible to neutralize this competition by undertaking tree root-pruning; i.e. by mechanically control-ling tree roots to prevent them from extending into the crop area (Photo 8). The few trials that have studied competition for nutrients in the soil have proven this competition to be generally negligible in that the nu-tritional requirements of intercrops are normally met through standard fertilization practices (Miller and Pallardy, 2001).
Are intercropping systems profitable?
Because they are new, limited data is available about the actual profitability of ICS. Various economic studies, including those of a modelling nature, have shown that ICS compare favourably with monocultures and conventional plantations (Graves et al., 2007). The choice of tree species and the associated crop have a great influence on the profitability of ICS, however. Generally, profitability is favoured by:
i) low interest rates (such as those that exist today);
ii) choice of sites with a high fertility;
iii) use of silvi-culture management and spacings that maximize crop yield and tree growth;
iv) production of quality rotary-cut veneer wood, sold when market prices are at their highest;
v) choice of tree species that also yield an annual product (e.g. berry, nut, maple syrup) of some value; and
vi) contribution of fi nancial incen-tives recognizing the positive externalities of trees from an environmental perspective (e.g. sequestra-tion of carbon, lowered soil erosion)
Trees serving the environment
ICS are agro-ecosystems that address numerous environmental issues. Their particular structure, halfway between that of intensive monoculture agri-cultural systems and complex natural ecosystems, enables better exploitation of resources because of the complementarity of trees and crops in using water, nutrients and light as well as their benefi cial impacts on the physical, chemical and biological properties of the soil.
Trees improve soil fertility
ICS, in comparison with agricultural systems, can contribute substantially to increasing the return of organic matter to the soil as a result of residues (litterfall) from aboveground tree biomass and in situ decomposition of tree roots, especially those of the fi ne root fraction. Humus from hardwood litters is often of excellent quality and can therefore be managed like a true fertilizer, which could translate into a decreased reliance on commercial inorganic fertilizer. Organic matter from trees generally results in an increase in soil microbial biomass and earthworm populations (Price et al., 1999), contributing to the improvement of soil fertility.
Trees stop soil erosion and diffuse pollution
In ICS, the presence of tree roots limits surface run-off and soil erosion. Deep tree roots can also recover soil nutrients, especially nitrates that escape the crop through leaching, which mitigates groundwater pollution. This is the aptly-named ‘safety net hypothesis’ (Allen et al., 2004). This was illustrated in a Quebec study in a hybrid poplar ICS: from May to mid-October there was a decrease of close to 80% of the quantity of nitrates leached in the ground-water, as a result of the buffering capacity of the tree roots (Lacombe, 2007). A study in Ontario suggested that ICS can also mitigate migration of some bacteria that are hazardous to human health, such as Escherichia coli (Dougherty et al., 2009).
Trees fix atmospheric carbon
As trees fi x CO2 and generally tend to increase the quantity of organic matter in the soil, ICS can also play a major role in the sequestering of carbon and the offsetting of other greenhouse gas emissions such as N2O. Use of fastgrowing tree species such as hybrid poplar can increase the potential for atmos-pheric carbon fi xation in ICS. In Ontario, Peichl et al. (2006) estimated that in the 13th year of tree growth, the net annual carbon fl ux in an ICS (hybrid poplar – barley) was 13 tons C per hectare, compared with 1 ton C per hectare in an alternative ICS (Norway spruce – barley) and –3 tons per hectare in a barley monoculture system.
Trees improve landscape quality and biodiversity
Studies conducted in eastern North America have shown that the diversity and abundance of predators of agricultural pests was higher in ICS than in agri-cultural monocultures, which could ultimately reduce dependence on pesticides (Stamps and Linit, 1998; Howell, 2001). In Quebec, a greater diversity of mi-crobial populations, especially those of arbuscular mycorrhizae, has been observed in the soil of an ICS (hybrid poplar – soybeans), in comparison with soybean and hybrid poplar monocultures (Chiffl ot et al. 2009; Lacombe et al. 2009). Since they form a more complex and diversifi ed mosaic of habitats than conventional agricultural systems, ICS also attract a greater quantity and variety of birds, as observed in Ontario (Thevathasan and Gordon, 2004). They can also foster the ease with which wildlife can migrate to connecting forest patches. ICS therefore constitute an obvious alternative to the normal spatial separa-tion of agriculture and forestry practices. They can create original, attractive landscapes that are favour-able to recreational activities. For that reason, their adoption appears especially advisable in areas where the landscape quality has been strongly influenced by historical agricultural practices (Photo 9).
Implementation and maintenance of intercropping systems
What to choose for tree species?
In planning ICS, the tree species is generally chosen in accordance with: i) its growth rate; ii) its com-mercial or environmental value; iii) its adaptation to the site’s ecological conditions (soil and climate); iv) its resistance to disturbance; and v) its interaction with the intercrop. Agroforestry plantations may fail because the choice of tree species is inappropriate for the planting site. Table 1 illustrates the ideal soil conditions for planting valuable hardwoods adapted to the St. Lawrence Plain in Quebec and for which there is high demand from the forest industry (especially sawtimber and rotary cutting). In the table, the various texture, drainage and soil pH conditions were ranked according to their potential for accommodating these tree species. Several local experts are of the opinion that on good sites, these tree species can produce quality wood for rotary cutting in 50 or 60 years, whereas projections for natural forests are more often in the range of 80 to 100 years.
It can also be beneficial to combine valuable hard-woods with fast-growing hybrid poplars, as studied in some trials in Quebec and Ontario (Photo 10). Such an association, inspired by the natural succession of some forest ecosystems where poplar dominates the more shade-tolerant and long-lived hardwoods that succeed it, specifi cally offers the following ad-vantages: i) creation of a microclimate favourable to hardwood growth; ii) availability of short-term income from harvesting hybrid poplar (removal age must be 15 to 20 years for the production of high-quality veneer wood); iii) rapid improvement of the agro-environment and landscape quality; and iv) restitution of some open areas when and where the hybrid poplar is harvested, which is favourable to a variety of crops..
Although intercropping conifers with crops is possible, this type of ICS is not widely employed in temperate regions. Generally, the quality of hard-wood litter is better than that of conifers, which can result in higher nitrogen mineralization rates, and faster incorporation of nitrogen into the soil profile.
How far apart should trees be planted?
Contrary to hardwood forest plantations on farmlands, which are planted at densities of 800 to 1,500 trees per hectare, trees planted in ICS take up only a small proportion of the utilized space (40 to 160 trees per hectare), which corresponds roughly to a distance of 12 to 50 meters between rows, with trees spaced at 5 meters within rows. Generally, the density of the trees is adjusted in accordance with the balance sought between trees and crops. With a low tree density, sustained intercrop production is as-sured. With higher densities, priority is given to wood production. Between trees in the same row, spacing is generally from 3 to 6 meters to enable thinning, whereas between rows, where crop mechanization, and especially spray booms, must be accommodat-ed, it is often wider (Photo 11). Experience in France shows that the best compromise between wood and crop production is often obtained with an alley of 25 to 35 meters for hardwoods that reach 15 to 20 meters in height after the final harvest.
Must a strip of untilled land be maintained?
In associations with annual intercrops, a strip of untilled land 1 to 3 meters in width is normally maintained under the tree rows (Photo 12). If the strip of untilled land is too narrow, the risk of mechanical damage to the trees is increased, as are the effects of competition for light, water and mineral elements between trees and crops. On the other hand, the wider the strip of untilled land, the greater the loss of area for crops. Several methods for controlling weeds in the tree rows may be used, including the application of herbicides or the use of plastic mulch. In the research plots at Guelph, Ontario, weeds were only controlled for the fi rst decade; studies indi-cated that weed populations in the untilled land did not contribute to weed problems in the crop alleys, and that they could be used by small mammals for habitat (Kotey, 1996).
How to care for trees in order to obtain quality wood: pruning and thinning
Trees planted with wide spacing tend to develop large, dense canopies, with branches low on their trunks, and this may compromise the quality of the wood production. Consequently, pruning remains es-sential to favouring formation of a straight, knot-free stem, enabling passage of machinery through the al-leys, and reducing shading to intercrops. As for row thinning, it stimulates future tree growth for quality wood production and increases luminosity for the intercrop (Photo 13). Generally, thinning once or twice in the 25 to 30 years following planting will bring the stand to a fi nal density of 20 to 80 trees per hectare. The thinning time and intensity can be adjusted in accordance with the intercrop’s need for light. Early thinning is recommended for demanding crops such as corn, whereas later thinning will suffi ce for more shade-tolerant crops.
Intercrop choice and behaviour
The choice of crops depends fi rst and foremost on the producer’s needs and knowhow. In general, any type of intercrop (tall crops, forage crops, vegetable crops, other small fruits, ornamental plants, etc.) is possible (Photo 14). In general, annual crops pose more constraints than perennial crops: a greater frequency of more expensive mechanical operations, a greater risk of harming trees, incompatibility of some herbicide treatments with the trees, the obligation to remove or chip debris from tree pruning, and irregu-larity (usually delayed) in crop development in the proximity of the tree. Nevertheless, annual crops, especially those with a slower growth cycle than that of trees (e.g. winter cereal crops) may prove to be less competitive than perennial crops.
In low-density planting systems (30 to 50 trees per hectare), it is possible to continue intercropping until the tree harvest. At higher densities, agricultural plant yields will probably diminish to the point that they are no longer profi table as trees approach maturity, and it will therefore be necessary to choose crops that are adapted to shade. In such a case, two options are possible: gradually introduce shade-tolerant crops (e.g. forage crops and pastures) as trees age or reduce the planted area between tree rows so that the associated crop will still benefit from the necessary resources to obtain an acceptable yield.
Conclusion
Over the past several decades, research conducted in North America and Europe has demonstrated the performance of ICS from a productivity perspective and for their environmental benefi ts. Several tree-crop associations are possible as long as species are adapted to the conditions of the site and products (from both crops and trees) can be readily marketed or offer a potential for niche market development. It must also be considered that trees and crops have an influence on each other. Interventions must therefore be judiciously positioned to optimize positive interactions while minimizing those that are negative. For example, as trees age, owner-operators may need to opt for crop production that develops well in a semi-shaded environment, or resort to a regular regimen of pruning. In the Canadian agricultural context, adopting ICSs nevertheless requires a signifi cant adaptation effort from producers, the industry and governments.
A recent survey of Quebec landowners showed that very few of them are familiar with these systems; the same is true of producers (Marchand and Masse, 2008). According to the survey, the lack of technical and financial incentives and a regulatory framework specific to ICS constitute a major roadblock to their development. In France for example, over 2,000 hectares of new ICS fi eld plots have been established by producers in the past few years, in large part due to the improvement of agricultural, agri-environmental and forestry regulations. Intercropping systems therefore represent sustainable agricultural production models that require both practices and programs to be adapted. Because they contribute to the revitalization of marginal cropland and to the improvement of the agri-environmental performance of more fertile land, they are a prime solution for maintaining agricultural land capability for future generations.
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Water Focus – Affinity Water Feature We’ve Got It Covered
Written by Shaun Dowman, Agricultural Advisor at Affinity Water
Cover crops are very popular at the moment and for good reason. As readers of Direct Driller you will be more likely than most to grow cover crops on your farm and may well be convinced to invest the time and money needed to grow them successfully. Cover crops can do many good things for your soil and the range of species available is almost endless, each one doing something a little different for the biological, chemical and structural health of the soil. Coupled with other regenerative methods such as direct drilling and grazing, cover crops really can be restorative for soils and can form an essential part of a regenerative farming system.
So why are some water companies like Affinity Water jumping on the bandwagon and extolling the virtues of cover crops as well? Talk to a water company Catchment Advisor about cover crops and very soon you will be talking about nitrogen, specifically its soluble form: nitrate. Nitrate is a big issue for some water companies including Affinity Water. Nitrate occurs naturally in water but, as a result of human activity such as agriculture and wastewater effluent, concentrations of nitrate in many rivers and groundwaters are much higher than they should be. This is a problem for both the ecology of freshwater environments, causing algal blooms that can suffocate river systems, and for the supply of drinking water. There is a drinking water standard for nitrate which stands at 50 mg/l and it is the responsibility of water companies to ensure that the drinking water they supply does not contain more nitrate than the permitted standard.
But nutrient management on farms is much better these days, right? Yes, it certainly is. Greater regulation, better understanding of nutritional need, and precision farming have all contributed towards a reduction in nitrate leaching on farms when compared to the postwar period up to the 1980’s when we reached our peak for nitrogen usage in the UK. Unfortunately, as a legacy of the excessive leaching over the past half century, some of our groundwaters today, specifically those in chalk areas, store high concentrations of nitrate. This means for some of these water sources, Affinity Water have had to install nitrate treatment plants, or blend the water with a source that contains lower nitrate or, in the worst-case scenario, we lose the water source altogether. Treatment and blending cost time, money and energy which, when added to the high carbon footprint of producing and using nitrogen fertiliser, is deeply concerning from a climate change perspective.
Autumn and winter are the high-risk periods of the year when it comes to nitrate leaching; residual nitrate left in the soil after harvest is at risk of being lost to groundwater. Even with the best nutrient management planning there will always be some nitrate left in the soil after a cash crop which, if not managed correctly, can leach. One of the best ways of retaining this residual nitrate is to plant a cover crop, especially species such as oil radish or turnip rape which are particularly hungry for nitrate, although any cover crop is better than none. When I walk in a cover crop in the autumn, it always amazes me how well the Brassica cover crop species respond to areas of the field with excess nitrate perhaps from an overlap of the sprayer or on headlands.
You could argue that we should focus our resources into building treatment works for these high nitrate waters but, as I explained earlier, this is energy intensive, comes with an additional carbon footprint and furthermore we are challenged by our regulators, the Environment Agency, to think of and fund other solutions that do not require water treatment. It is much better to invest in catchment solutions that involve working with farmers to encourage practices such as cover crops, to both reduce nitrate loses at source and provide a whole host of other benefits without the concrete and carbon footprint that comes with grey infrastructure. Each cover crop plant is a natural mini water treatment works that actually captures carbon from, rather than adding carbon to, the atmosphere. The aim is to encourage more cover crops in our target catchments to complement our existing water treatment and hopefully delay, or reduce the need altogether, installation of further water treatment works.
So, with all this enthusiasm towards cover crops, we need to put our money where our mouth is, and that is exactly what we’re doing. Since 2019 we have been running a scheme, in collaboration with Cambridge Water, to encourage more cover cropping across a target area that covers several groundwater catchments. We have used the online environmental trading platform EnTrade to run a reverse auction asking farmers to bid their price for growing cover crops. The farmer chooses from a predefined list which species of cover crops to grow and when to drill them. Earlier drilling dates and certain species, such as oil radish, typically retain more nitrogen in the field and prevent it being lost to groundwater. The auction format means farmers have to consider the cost and value of a cover crop and price competitively for their farm business. At the same time they are rewarded for cover crops which optimise nutrient retention in the areas water companies need it. The scheme has worked well and last year we supported over 800 ha of cover crops and estimated that nearly 40 tonnes of nitrogen was retained in fields. We plan to repeat the scheme this year in areas of North Hertfordshire and South Cambridgeshire around Royston.
We are not the only ones at it either. Other water companies such as United Utilities, Southern Water, Yorkshire Water, South-East Water and Portsmouth Water have their own funding schemes for cover crops. Each water company area has its own specifics of geography, geology, soils and surrounding land-use so funding cover crops might not be appropriate for every company; involvement in these schemes will depend on where your farm is located. It is also worth noting that funding for cover crops is also available through Countryside Stewardship and it will be interesting to see what support ELMs will give towards cover cropping in the future.
I have focused on nitrogen, and touched on carbon, but cover crops do so much more for the environment and soil health as well. Covering the soil over winter will slow overland flow of water and reduce soil run-off, subsequently protecting our water courses. They can also help increase infiltration and also benefit overall farm biodiversity. I would argue that few water company investments deliver so many benefits for a such a modest spend.
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Farmer Focus – Ed White
We are the Slow Farming Company, a fifth generation farming family outside Castle Cary in South Somerset. The farm is run by my stepfather Rob and mother Sally, and I work here part time along with my wife Camilla – our three young children like to get involved too! We are on a regenerative journey with the aim of creating nutrient rich food from diverse cropping, with the added benefit of carbon capture. The farm is on medium to heavy clay, and runs to approximately 160 acres.
We have a herd of 180 head of beef cattle, running an Aberdeen Angus bull on mainly Hereford cross British Friesian cows with a few Limosian and Belgian blue crosses for good measure. Our oldest cow is 16 years old and still producing a calf a year. We deliberately moved over to a spring calving regime in 2017 to take advantage of the spring grass and milder weather.
Our move into regenerative farming has been gradual, over the last seven years or so. We reduced and then dropped artificial fertilizer on our pasture ground five years ago, and ceased the pure arable rotation four years ago. We were driven to do this by the lack of life in our soil and the loss in wildlife in our fields.
We were spurred on by Tim, a neighbouring farmer, who introduced us to the likes of Gabe Brown and Joel Salatin. Between Rob and me many hours of YouTube talks were consumed. Regenerative farming was probably the most talked about subject around our kitchen tables between 2013 and 2016 – also the period in which our two of our three children were born and we obtained planning permission to convert a traditional barn into a home for our family. We were lucky enough to hear a talk by Joel at Bristol University in 2016 and for us both it was a bit of an epiphany moment.
If he could do it in America, why couldn’t we do it here?
A couple of years before, Rob had ploughed up two small fields and planted a herbal ley mix undersown with spring barley. When we cut off the barley for wholecrop, the herbal ley carried on with gusto. Following on from those initial trial plots, we Min Tilled 30 acres of former arable land and seeded in the crop with a Wox GreenMaster. Later that year we were mob grazing through the herbal ley with Chicory at up to ten foot tall. Driving the buggy through it to set the fences was a particular skill. The cattle did very well on it and showed good growth rates. In 2016 we stopped adding any cereal to the diet, although we had only been feeding the equivalent of a pound a head. We wanted to move to a pure grass fed diet, not least for the emerging nutritional benefits of 100% pasture fed beef, but we also just felt it was the right thing to do.
Alongside the beef, in July 2017 we converted a mobile home into a pastured egg-mobile with 300 laying hens. These eggs were initially sold through a local pack house, under the brand Birds and Herds. The hens followed the cows scratching through and spreading the dung, as well as producing their own source of nitrogen. Unfortunately, this partnership came to an end when the packer went into administration. We had a hectic six weeks of building a packing room, getting an egg packing licence and finding customers for all the eggs. However now, most weeks, we have more customers than we have eggs.
In 2017 we took the decision not to use the plough on the farm again. Again, this was a course of action that just made sense to us. We were looking to build our soil and prevent erosion, not least because on our clay soils we’re at risk of significant poaching. Since then we have changed to Min Til to terminate grass in the spring prior to sowing or direct drilling.
In 2018 we carried out several experiments, direct drilling a mix of oats, beans and vetch straight into permanent grassland after the last grazing in the autumn. By this time, the grass has gone into senescence and so doesn’t compete against the winter sown cereals. We both grazed and silaged this successfully. This year we did 25 acres of oats and vetch for grazing.
In spring 2019 we entered the Mid-Tier scheme, as well as going into organic conversion via Organic Farmers and Growers. We have planted five hectares of wild bird seed mix and Bumble Bird mix. We have seen a big boost in the number of birds on the farm as a result, including a big group of gold finches that seem to hang around all year. We have planted an additional 30 acres of herbal ley that fits in well to our mob grazing rotation, providing high quality food for finishing the cattle. The fact that the herbal leys are almost always in a stage of flowering has led to a tie up with a local honey company to put their hives here, which we’re really excited about.
Organic conversion led us to even greater consideration of our soil and what we are doing with it. Rob got caught in a tremendous rain storm one afternoon when moving the cattle fences. He was amazed to see that, whilst the rain initially travelled across the ground, as soon as it stopped raining the water disappeared into the soil, not sitting on the surface. When I moved the fences that weekend, you wouldn’t have realised we had had been one and a half inches in an hour. Our manure handling has also taken a turn, quite literally. We now empty the sheds in the spring into windrows in the fields, where we turn it with the telehandler to encourage composting. The volume that we then get to spread is much reduced, but is readily available to the plant. It also means fewer wheelings on the field, as spread rates are down to approx 2 tons per acre.
Alongside our Pasture for Life, Red Tractor and Organic certification we also wanted to find a marque that would reflect the regenerative aspect of the way that we farm. On our local Regen Ag WhatsApp group, the Greener World Regenerative certified pilot scheme came up. We were lucky to be accepted at the beginning of the year, and are well on the way to finishing drawing up our 5 year plan for improvements to farm operations, biodiversity and the general environment in which we live. In conjunction with this we are also working towards certification for Grass Fed Beef, Non GMO Eggs and High Animal Welfare as part of the Greener World system.
We have big plans for 2021/22 – we are clearing out old ponds on the farm and looking to replace some of our mob grazing paddock fences with new hedgerows and fruit trees in some fields. Along with hopefully moving in to our barn conversion!
We look forward to sharing this journey with you.