Back Issues

Written by John Dobberstein from No-Till Farmer USA and originally published in July 2018

From interseeding to relay cropping to ‘engineering by inventory,’ Loran Steinlage is building a profitable, divergent no-till operation

Several years ago, a trip with friends to look at greenhouses led Loran Steinlage to a Mennonite farm. It was there that he started looking at his farming practices a little differently. The farm owner had a brand new, ice-block construction house and shop and three brand new Massey Ferguson tractors. “And if you understand the Mennonite faith, they don’t borrow money, so he’s making some serious money on 20 acres,” he told attendees at the National No-Tillage Conference in January. “From that time on, I’ve really been trying to focus how we do things on our farm.”

And Steinlage’s farm doesn’t look like most others in his state. Soil tests, crop yields and even infrared videos from his fields are proof enough that no-tilling, cover cropping and alternative planting systems are improving his farm’s soils and profitability.

On the Fringe

Steinlage’s 750-acre farm sits in the northeast corner of Iowa in the Paleozoic plateau, on the edge of the glacial-till line. His area only sees 140 frost-free days, and he estimates his fields have at least two dozen soil types.

Steinlage used to raise continuous corn for many years, but rootworm resistance and weed issues started building up. He began working more closely with the NRCS in 2006 and since has brought soybeans and winter wheat back in the rotation. This year he replaced Roundup Ready corn and soybeans with 100% nonGMO hybrids and varieties. He also raises barley, winter wheat, cereal rye and buckwheat for cash crops, and rye and wheat for seed. Steinlage no-tills corn around April 17 at a rate of 21,000-38,000 seeds an acre, although he saw later planting dates this year with his non-GMO hybrid.

Because Steinlage variable-rates all his seed corn, using a DigiFarm RTK guidance, “we automatically get variable-rate cover crops because the covers thrive when you drop that plant population down to 21,000 to 24,000,” he says. “Where do we need the covers to be better? On the gravel knolls. We’re monitoring and seeing how fast we can gain soil organic matter on our hills.”

Steinlage typically interseeds cover crops into corn when it’s at the V2-V3 stage. He rarely runs the interseeding units any slower than 10 mph, usually shooting for 11-12 mph. He shifts corn planting over 5 inches so no changes are needed for the seeders or his John Deere 8400T tracked tractor. Over the last decade, he’s tried various combinations of interseeded covers, including clover; annual ryegrass, red clover and radish; cereal rye, winter wheat, lentils and sweet clover; dwarf-Essex rapeseed, crimson and balansa clover and oats; phacelia, buckwheat, hairy vetch, flax and winter peas; faba beans and chickling vetch; and meadowfoam.

When growing corn on corn, he interseeds clover or vetch. As his rotation has changed, Steinlage often seeds winter wheat into soybean stubble going to corn and cereal rye into corn stubble going to soybeans.

A Big Shift

Although Steinlage has been known for his interseeding prowess, he’s in the middle of shifting much of his operation to relay cropping, or what some refer to as companion cropping. It’s the practice of planting different crops in proximity for pest control, pollination, providing habitat for beneficial creatures, maximizing use of space, and to otherwise increase crop productivity.

Many of the modern principles of companion planting were present many centuries ago in cottage gardens in England and forest gardens in Asia, as well as thousands of years ago in Mesoamerica.

“The biggest thing I see on companion cropping is productivity. I want my cover crops paying. When I committed to cover crops, that’s where I started and that’s what I’m going to stay with,” he says.

Steinlage is in his fourth year of relay cropping on a field scale. He began investigating synergies between different crops planted together several years ago, noting the productive ‘Three Sisters’ plantings by Native Americans of corn, soybeans and squash. Soybeans he planted in his own greenhouse in this manner that were supposed to be 12 feet tall grew 18 feet high.

This year, due to switching to non GMO corn and soybeans and planting later, Steinlage interseeded about one third of his acres — mostly corn — with cowpeas and is relay-cropping the remaining acres with summer legumes. He typically sidedresses corn with N with his interseeder at V7-V8. The DigiFarm RTK system in the tractor lets Steinlage shift rows over 5 inches to place seeds right next to the old plant into minimal residue.

He’s found relay cropping can be very profitable compared to traditional notilling methods. A projection budget he shared this year showed 30-bushel cereal rye and 30-bushel soybeans, paying at $10 a bushel each, and 400 pounds of buckwheat could make him $660 an acre, which he feels compares favorably to 200-bushel-an-acre corn.

“The scary part is I know we can double those numbers,” he says. “Do I have to farm the world? No, just got to farm smarter.”

This year, Steinlage reduced his corn acres and focused on interseeding and relay seeding more warm-season legumes into his cash crops, taking some inspiration from his friend Chris Teachout, a veteran no-tiller and cover crop experimenter from Shenandoah, Iowa.

Teachout last year managed a warmseason legume interseeding test plot on his farm for Practical Farmers of Iowa where less than 40 units of nitrogen (N) was applied to corn. There were three replications of corn interseeded with cover crops, but in one area there was an early primer of cool-season covers that included brassicas ahead of corn. Corn that followed the primer cover crops and was interseeded with treatments of fava bean, cowpea, corn/ soybean/squash and sunnhemp all yielded 200-213 bushels an acre with just 40 pounds an acre of N applied, the study data shows. A test strip with the primer covers, but nothing interseeded, yielded 190 bushels.

Workshop Creations

Grand plans for interseeding or relay cropping don’t become a reality until no-tillers have a planter or drill outfitted properly to deposit seed accurately and maximize emergence. Steinlage got his start with interseeding systems several years ago when he used a small Agri-Fab spinner box pulled behind an ATV to seed cover crops into corn seedlings. Since then, he’s gone through several different toolbars that he’s modified for interseeding.

An early interseeder model used 7 years ago, while he was still strip-tilling, included a toolbar mounted with a Gandy air seeder. It was used to interseed up 80 acres of corn, but the machine proved to be too small to expand the practice.

He later revived an old 30-foot Hiniker drill that was adapted for twinrow seeding of cash crops and cover crops. It was later sold and he used the money toward his next machine. In 2016, Steinlage worked with Dawn Equipment to build an interseeder comprised of a Dalton toolbar and the company’s DuoSeed Cover Crop InterSeeder row units from Underground Agriculture. Dawn also helped provide some modifications to allow for rowcleaner mounts for Dawn row cleaners, seed firmers and a Precision Planting 20/20 monitor.

Steinlage made further improvements, creating an in-row roller attachment for the DuoSeed units to roll down cover crops and interseed at the same time, saving time and fuel. Steinlage started using it to interseed annual ryegrass, cereal rye, clovers and other cover crop species into corn that’s generally at the V4-V6 stage.

He runs the machine with a Hiniker box to drill soybeans, then switches the box out for a Montag to interseed covers and sidedress nitrogen. The interseeder also includes poly selfadjusting row cleaners.

“With the Montag tank I can dump four totes of seed in there and we go to work. We’re drilling cover crop seed, we’re interseeding with it and we’re doing all our fertilizer application with it,” he says. Adding this advice, “If you want to make a piece of equipment pay, build it with some versatility so you can use it.

“If you want to make a piece of equipment pay, build it with some versatility so you can use it…” — Loran Steinlage

Never one to accept the status quo, Steinlage rolled out yet another seeding device in June, a 12-row Case IH Cyclo Air 900 that he modified to mainly handle relay cropping. But he can also interseed or do conventional planting with the machine. The row units include Dawn row cleaners out front and the Case IH Early Riser row-unit setup on the back.

A big key to the planter’s setup is a Sukup Slide Guide that he modified to shift 15 inches in either direction, allowing the machine to do relay, interseeding or regular no-tilling.

Steinlage also owns a John Deere 1760 corn planter that he’s modified with precision technology, parallel arms with bearings that he built himself and Shoup Mfg. Co. cast-iron row units. Despite the changes in equipment and associated costs, Steinlage says the cover crops are paying their way. He reports an average 15-bushel increase in the current no-tilled corn crops when they’re planted into cover crops.

‘FLIR’ry of Data

Steinlage says he’s gathered some interesting data on the impact his no-till system is having on his soils and popular assumptions made about cover crops by farmers and experts in his northern climate. On one field he’s been interseeding for several years, soil tests show the percentage of water-stable macroaggregates in the soil is at 70% on a 5-year basis, on par with restored prairie and up 30 percentage points from levels typically seen in fields with continuous corn. Pasture grasses and prairie remnants score in the 90% range. Soil organic matter levels range from as low as 1.7% in gravel knolls to 6% in his better soils. He’s found through soil biology tests that recovery of organic carbon on his farm has been slower than with recovery of soil aggregates, he says.

Soil Temperature Measurements

One of the myths often repeated about no-till and cover crops in the Upper Midwest is that residue left in fields in the spring before planting makes soils colder and wetter, requiring tillage to warm soils up. Wanting to find out for himself, in 2016 Steinlage bought a forwardlooking infrared (FLIR) camera for his iPhone to take heat measurements in his fields, even doing side-by-side comparisons with his farm and a neighbor’s. Steinlage has infrared video from March 2016 of a field on his farm with cereal rye and soybean stubble next to a neighbor’s tilled, ripped soybean stubble. The video shows soil temperatures as high as 47 F on Steinlage’s field vs. temperatures as low as 37 F in his neighbor’s field where the soil is more bare.

Another experiment where Steinlage raked residue away from a 10-by-10- foot plot in one field showed soil that was no-tilled and cover cropped were as high as 46-50 F, and as low as 36-42 F in the uncovered plot. Steinlage says no-till residue and cover crops provide a beneficial insulating effect. Data from soil probes he inserted at a 4-inch depth has also shown soils were warmer in areas with covers in spring than uncovered soils, until equipment passes made temperatures spike cooler, he says. As warm weather arrived, the canopy kept soils cooler and the soil got warmer again after harvest.

“We make people scratch their heads pretty hard, with the results” he says

Is Wider Better?

Steinlage is also looking for a way to get livestock back on his operation. But as you might expect it won’t be the conventional way. A couple of years ago he was invited to visit some farms in Ireland. While there he noticed the large amount of sheep used in grazing systems, with corn planted to 40-inch spacings so the animals could fit between the rows. Hoping livestock will allow his daughters to help manage the farm when they return, Steinlage started working with consultant Bob Recker of Waterloo, Iowa-based Cedar Valley Innovation on experimenting with different corn populations and row configurations that could lead to livestock grazing in living corn.

Recker is working with 14 growers in Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio on wide-row concept test plots for 60-inch rows. The wide-row system is defined as omitting one row to provide added sunlight to corn and interseeded cover crops. No-tillers turn off every other row on a traditional 30-inch row corn planter and double the perrow population in the other rows.

Plot work last year showed either a small or no yield penalty for 60-inch corn if populations were doubled in the 60-inch rows with the number of seeds per acre remaining the same. Where cover crops were used, the 60-inch rows significantly increased growth of the cover crops compared to 30-inch rows. On his plot last year, Steinlage planted two rows of 30-inch corn at populations of about 34,000 seeds per acre, skipped a row and then planted two rows of 60- inch corn with populations over 50,000 seeds an acre. His corn yields for 60-inch rows were 230 and 223 bushels an acre, but 213 bushels for 30-inch rows. Steinlage says those numbers compared favorably to 30-inch corn with or without cover crops on other farm plots Recker studied.

Recker also oversaw experiments with 60-inch monocrop corn and the resulting yields of 221 to 238 bushels an acre also exceeded expectations.

One goal of the wider rows is to allow access to the field any time of the year, which would be beneficial for high-clearance equipment, companion cropping or possibly grazing.

“If you can grow 60-inch corn and equal 30-inch corn and eventually have a grazing opportunity, isn’t that something you’d look at?” he says.

A healthy soil is vital to ensure both high yields and future high yields, as well as environmental protection – there are no negative consequences on the ecosystem from having a healthy soil! But what is a healthy soil?

Soil health can be defined as a soil’s ability to function and sustain plants, animals and humans as part of the ecosystem.

However, due to the opacity of the soil and the fact that (most of the time) plants grow, the health of the soil is often over-looked. There are five main factors that impact the health of the soil and can have a large influence over its capability and resilience to function, they are:

1. Soil structure

2. Soil chemistry

3. Organic matter content

4. Soil biology

5. Water infiltration, retention and movement through the profile 

A healthy soil will have a good combination of all these factors, whilst an unhealthy soil will have a problem with at least one of these. Whether there are structural problems – compaction, plough pans; or waterlogging; these issues will have a cascade effect until all the other factors are impacted. A healthy soil will provide a buffer to extremes in temperature and rainfall – reducing the impact of extreme weather events; it will also be able to maintain productivity and function within an agricultural system. A healthy soil has plenty of air spaces within it, maintaining aerobic conditions.

When a soil has limited air spaces, anaerobic conditions dominate, leading to waterlogging and stagnation of roots and the proliferation of anaerobic microbes and denitrification (the loss of nitrogen from the system). A healthy soil will filter water slowly, retaining the nutrients and plant protection products (PPP) applied to the crop. If rainfall moves through the soil profile too quickly or if it is prevented from entering the soil through compaction or soil sealing, surface runoff increases, taking soil, nutrients and PPP with it, increasing the risk of flooding.

The potential of cover crops and no-till

At the Allerton Project we have been involved in investigating the sustainable intensification of agriculture through different experiments. Some researchers have investigated cover crops – which have been suggested to be the answer to everything; reducing soil erosion and leaching, whilst increasing water retention, soil organic matter and improving soil structure, as well as potentially suppressing weeds – although our results at this time do not confirm all of this. Other research has focused on moving away from conventional agricultural practice, with greater emphasis on no-till.

One of the fields at the Allerton Project has not been ploughed for the last 14 years and the soil structure is visibly different compared to other soils on the farm. No-till systems can help improve soil fertility, create changes to the structure and properties of the soil due to the stability of the environment, and enhance soil biology. Over time the no-till field has had the highest yields compared to the conventional field equivalent on the farm. Soil compaction is easily created – one pass of farm machinery at the wrong time (when the soil is waterlogged) can create a compacted layer, which can take many years to remediate. Understanding the mechanisms of compaction and how to alleviate it is another experiment occurring at the Allerton Project this year.

Overall, crop choice, rotation, and management, as well as establishment practice and maintenance can all greatly affect the “health” of the soil.

Dr Felicity Crotty is the Game and Wildlife Trust Allerton Project’s resident soil scientist. She writes:

“I have been researching soil biology and soil health for the last ten years. Firstly, I studied the soil food web during my PhD at Rothamsted Research (North Wyke) and subsequently as a post-doc at Aberystwyth University working on the PROSOIL project, which investigated maintaining healthy soil on livestock farms in Wales; and the SUREROOT project, that studied the effects of festuloliums as a forage crop. I joined the Allerton Project in 2015. My research covers all aspects of soil science – biology, physics and chemistry; although my main areas of expertise are soil biology, earthworm, mesofauna and nematode identification. Understanding how different management strategies and cropping systems effects the environment is key to sustainable farming and through my work I investigate these changes over time. The main projects I have been working on have been the Sustainable Intensification Research Platform and the EU Horizon 2020 project SOILCARE.

Written by James Warne, Soil First Farming

Social media can be a useful source and tool for knowledge transfer, discussion around various topics etc. But far too often it can also be the source of misinformation or confirmation of prejudice, particularly where the discussion deviates from received wisdom. I am referring here to agriculturally based discussions around the topics of Conservation Agriculture (CA), soil nutrition, agronomy etc. There are some common recurring themes which need addressing because all too often much of the advice given is in my opinion flawed for many and various reasons. In this article I will touch on a few of these questions…

‘My soil is not ready’

‘My soil is not ready’ is a common retort. When will your soil be ready? Next year, in two years or five years? By what criteria are you assessing your soil to make this statement? To paraphrase Morrissey, my normal response to this question is how soon is now? The point being that while you continue to cultivate you are slowly, but surely, moving your soil further away from that point of ‘being ready’, whatever that is. Cultivation, while undoubtably bringing some short-term benefits, also brings about its own set of problems; reduced porosity over the longer term; oxidation of organic matter; decimation of worm populations; increased risk of run-off and soil erosion with the consequential issues of diffuse water pollution from fertiliser and pesticides, to name a few.

The path towards Conservation Agriculture can start now if you want it to. Every year of dither and delay is another harvest where you didn’t try something new, and maybe didn’t benefit from the potential to reduce establishment cost. One certainty is that agricultural production in the UK is sliding down the political agenda which will result in reducing financial support. What is apparent from the last few months is that food security is not on the current governments agenda unless it is by means of food import. Whichever way you look at it farming is going to have to work hard to cut its production costs to remain profitable.

So, back to the original question when will the soil be ready? The questions you need to ask yourself are; how did the field in question yield at the last harvest? If the answer is ‘as well as could be expected and comparable to other fields’ that’s a good starting point. Have you trafficked said field with harvest operations or post-harvest operations such as muck spreading or baling? And finally, have you taken a spade out and looked at the soil structure? If you are happy with all the above questions then now is a good time to start changing the system. If you at all uncertain then call in a third-party opinion.

This soil probably isn’t ready for no-till.

You can of course reduce the risk by not converting the whole farm in one year, consider implementing the system across a whole rotation or maybe two rotations. But do not fall into the trap of opportunistic direct drilling as a way of reducing establishment cost because you will never realise the full benefits of the system. Each subsequent cultivation effectively resets the clock and you end up having to travel through the troublesome early years of soil cultivation ‘cold turkey’ (see below) each time. You haven’t reduced the fixed cost structure of the business because you have been holding onto cultivation equipment that could be sold.

‘I have the wrong type of soil’, (it’s too heavy, too light or contains too much silt etc, etc)

Any soil type can be successfully managed through a CA system but it’s true some demand a lot more attention than perhaps others. Light sandy soils with very low organic matter will have a tendency to quickly slump and consolidate, this also applies to soils with a high silt content. Much care has to be applied to field operations only happening when the soil is able to carry the machinery.

Cover crops and cash crops with good rooting characteristics should be grown in the early years as this is what is going to give the soil structural and physical stability. I cannot stress this enough, it’s so important to avoid any performance drop which is one of the main obstacles to adoption. As far as plant growth is concerned the important factor is the pore space characteristics are strongly influenced by the stability of the soil structure when wetted. The presence of earthworms, plant exudates, humus and plant roots themselves all act to encourage the formations of soil structures stable in water.

Clay based soils will have a degree of natural structure provided by the clay colloid, whereas the silts and sands will not have much clay and little organic colloid to help with structure. These soils are often easier to manage in the earlier years, especially where they are calcareous and therefore will have a good calcium carbonate content. As alluded to above the key to success is the early introduction of large amounts of carbon either by chopping residues, spreading manures and compost etc, and by growing cover crops. Doing all of these in the early years is necessary to stabilise the soil structure, to encourage natural porosity and fertility.

‘I am looking at buying a disc drill’

Many seem to be obsessed with moving the minimal amount of soil and consequently are looking at disc drills because they are all over social media. Yes, this is true, disc drills can move very little soil and that can be a good function in some circumstances, but not always and certainly not at the beginning. In the early years the soil will be in a state of cultivation ‘cold turkey’. Take away the cycle of annual cultivation and the soil will start to slump, consolidate and loose porosity before the biology and chemistry starts to sort out the physical stability of the soil and increase the porosity once again. This can reduce crop performance in the early years, this is cultivation cold turkey. Tine drills by their very action will create a little tilth and give a better result more often than not especially when soils are dryer or wetter than ideal.

Tine drills can also drill through green cover if judiciously managed, and they will certainly drill through chopped straw better than any disc drill. The fallacy of only using a disc drill has been shown time and again over the winter months. Poorly established or failed wheat crops resulting from using disc drills on over-wet soil can be seen all over the country. Where tine drills have been used the results are considerably better, but still not perfect. Even this spring it is very easy to spot crops which have been disc drilled where the slots are opening as the soil dries revealing the plant roots to the air and increasing the rate of soil moisture loss. When I mention tine drills I am not referring to those with any form of leading leg, these are strip-till drills and should not be confused with a genuine no-till tine drill. Leading leg strip-till drill designs move too much soil to be ever considered for a genuine CA system.

Don’t believe everything you read on social media (unless it’s about government hypocrisy), get a second opinion, or visit someone who’s already doing it. No-till is part of the solution, not part of the problem. 

by Nick Woodyatt, Soil Fertility Consultant at Aiva Fertiliser

Normally when starting an article there is much gnashing of teeth and wandering around the garden, or pub in my case, deciding on how to help and enlighten our industry (hopefully). But seeing as it did not stop raining during the autumn/winter, on this occasion the decision was somewhat easier. My town should have been re-named Upton under Severn. On my rounds I saw two four-wheel-drive tractors tied together pulling a plough through the field which looked like toothpaste and all eight wheels were spinning as they pulled themselves down onto their axles: really. Funnily enough the managers of this farming area were having a heated debate at the same time on whether to use a direct or strip till drill which simply amazed me.

We all know that if we lose Glyphosate then getting to a good position [soil wise] for direct drilling is going to be so much more difficult, but not impossible. What is perhaps now becoming obvious, is the effect that climate change will have on this method of growing, with longer and wetter periods, and yes, I do realise now we’ve gone from one extreme of constant rain to the next which is as dry as a party in a nunnery, but that still has the same effects.

On my farm walks I saw the relentless tapping of billions of raindrops on the soil surface produced an 80-100mm cap that has the consistency of wet play-dough which, is either going to cap over growing crops or produce an airless situation in to which seeds will be put. Indeed, I watched seeds direct and strip drilled (on good soils) and I have had to ask the question, ‘Why’? The direct seeds are firmly encased in a solid wall of mud so as they chit, they will more than likely rot. The strip tilled seeds are more of a surprise.

I tripped over this problem in the wet autumn when I was told that my bacterial application had stopped having the desired effect on clubroot in cauliflower. When I visited the problem it was plain to see that the soil wasn’t ready for this method of drilling and the drill had in effect formed shallow drains across the field, therefore producing an anaerobic environment for the soil life hence allowing the harmful anaerobic pathogens to run amuck. Now if it had stayed like that I wouldn’t have been too alarmed, but since then, I have noticed that the lifted rows left by the strip till are overtly wet compared with the surrounding soil regardless of how good the surrounding soil is. The phrase that we earn the right to use any specific piece of machinery is oh so right.

The importance of air

This is leading me to suggest we need to see that there are times when sowing isn’t going to work (difficult to say the least) and we need to stick to the rule that the soil needs what the soil needs, to get air into it. If you can’t find it in you to see that I may have a point then get a friend to strangle you and see how long you can last and no, there is no difference (only in time). We discuss soil, nutrients and where unenlightened, agrichemicals, but how often do we look at air and its importance. Without a free and open soil structure everything else starts to fall apart and your inputs will rapidly rise whist your profits rapidly fall. A perfect soil contains 50% air, and this impinges on so many plant processes and as farmers who are or considering min/no till we really need to understand that this allows:

• Fresh air into the soil where bacteria such as Azotobacter can convert gaseous N into a plant available form saving you money.

• Better penetration of applied nutrients in whatever form they are applied to avoid this surface rooting that we see in many crops.

• Carbon Dioxide from bacteria from the soil up into the leaf increasing photosynthesis and increasing your yield (Why do you think the stoma are on the underside of the leaf?) • Roots to penetrate deeper to get to more nutrients allowing you to reduce your inputs and this increases drought resistance.

• Better roots which allows more sugar release into the soil which feeds the soil life which in turn feeds your crop and resists disease therefore less inputs (the circle of life).

• Better penetration of earth worms who do so much for you free of charge that it is one of the wonders of the world why we try to kill so many (oh, I remember, it’s the profits of the chemical companies, silly me)

I could go on and on, but I think you get the message, start with air and work out from there as against start with Nitrogen and work for the chemical companies. However, as we have to work with excessive wet and excessive dry periods is there anything that we can do to alleviate the situation and of course the answer as always is yes.

Many farmers who are going down the min/no till route are doing it because they feel a moral duty to improve their soils for future generations and those like me, fancy making a profit occasionally. Those who are doing it just as a Black Grass control have stopped reading ages ago.

It’s more than the right products

Firstly, let’s make it clear that to improve a soil for both dry/wet periods isn’t just a case of buying the right products as some want us to believe. One farmer has been told that by applying a good soil wetting agent excess water will drain away; this was said to a farmer whose soil was under water so we did have to wonder where the water would go. There are any number of ways of moving forward and I am going to mention my friend Tim Parton who was `Soil Farmer of the Year 2017’, `Arable Innovator of the year 2019’ and is `Sustainable Farmer of the Year 2020’ and has transformed his soils over the last 10 years just by judicious use of cover crops which absolutely amazes me on two fronts. The first is that Tim is a farm manager so has treated soils with a loving care even though they are not his. How can you not respect a man like that?

Secondly there are many salesmen, sorry, agronomists, who claim cover crops are a waste of time. Tim now uses a low input system so that a bad season doesn’t throw him into pits of despair and he can afford to wait to sow until conditions are right, like me believing that a well planted spring crop will outperform a badly planted winter one. If you get chance to hear Tim speak it is well worth the effort as he explains how regenerative farming starts and ends with looking after the soil, as well as drastically reducing Nitrogen inputs which then allows everything else to work. I have enjoyed working with Tim again this year to make sure that we keep Nitrogen levels low to remove the need for PGR’s or fungicides so smiles all around, well apart from a few obviously but they have had their pound of flesh many times over.

– Please note that I am not making light of this as depression is a major part of our industry so let’s keep an eye on neighbours and colleagues –

Along with cover crops we are seeing an increase in digestate use and any number of other manure wastes, although we do need to look at those to protect our soils for the future and to make sure they don’t become toxic in drier conditions.

My point here is that for every 1% of organic matter that we can increase in the soil we will get an extra 17,000lts of water available to the plants plus drainage is improved as airspaces remain airspaces, except that is in severe flooding. I know that sounds stupid as we were under the damn stuff but as soon as it goes dry, we will all be saying, ‘Why don’t we store more of the water that is around in the winter?’, won’t we? Also, organic carbon, not matter, allows the soil to breathe even when it is very wet (not flooded unfortunately).​​​​​​​​​​​​

Getting better roots

I have never believed that there is a time when you can’t learn something which is why I don’t like the term ‘expert’ which denotes a closed mind. On my travels I have seen things starting to change on regenerative farms where limited tillage is the name of the game:

• Far better plants where no seed treatment was used allowing better germination and faster and better root penetration.

• An amazing root explosion where natural microbial counts were augmented with added brews of bacteria. In one trial, noted at the end of January, the seed in the normal field was on its third leaf but only had a poor shallow root. On the adjacent field under the same conditions but with my added seed drench (bacteria, humate and Silicon), we had similar tops to the plants, but the roots were over 300mm deep (that’s a foot to my dad!)

• Superb root systems where digestate and slurries are buffered with a Humate such as AF Nurture N from Aiva Fertiliser (see, I told you I was a salesman). I have digestates that kill seeds if applied directly to the seed but work wonderfully when added to a Humate. 

As far as a way forward is concerned, we need to feed what we have in the ground growing as it has very little in the way of available nutrients although I do not agree with flying around with Nitrogen as that is just meat with no gravy, leading to empty calories and the need for fungicides. Try spraying with Phosphorous, micronutrients and Silicon to prepare the plant for the Nitrogen otherwise you will have to use agrichemicals. I would say not to go onto the ground before it can take you, but I know a waste of breath when I see one.

Apply the N with AF Nurture N (me again) so that you can reduce the amount you use by 30% with no visible signs of a yield difference but a major step on the way to better soils and higher profits. With Boron being an issue I believe that we should use less but more often otherwise it can get a bit toxic. I have put Boron on this year in lower levels but more often as little and often always seems to pay dividends for me.

Controlling disease

Amongst regen farmers we are starting to see that getting the soil healthy and balancing and reducing nutrient input can have a huge difference on disease control.

Where we use a biological seed drench and a microbial package as a foliar programme along with micronutrients in low/no till systems, we use no PGR’s or fungicides which is a major target of all my farmers. The overuse of chemicals has left us with monsters such as Fusarium and Cabbage Stem Flea Beetle which now we must deal with. Our biological system has had a dramatic effect of Fusarium and other diseases with really low rates in the seed when tested so, there is another way. Following the wet period, I noted huge amounts of Phytophthora on farm which could be the next monster to attack us, although luckily the healthy biological system used by many regen farmers actually stops this problem so we will be able to explain this to more conventional farmers when they are scratching their heads so try not to look too smug.

So, do we have to treat our soils like dirt? Of course not, we just have to grow well and work with nature and not fight it!