Back Issues

If I was ever to write the script for a farming based horror movie I think the title may simply be “2020’’ ! Last time I wrote it was December 2019 and we were only 60% through our autumn drilling campaign. Well behind our usual planned October finish. The new 12m Horsch Avatar had been parked up and our farm workshop Co6 and front hopper tine drill was working in any available dry spell to complete the remaining workload. The Avatar coulter had been impressive in the unusually wet conditions, not blocking in conditions where I’m sure our 750a would have but ultimately its limiting factor was the weight of the seed cart on wet soils.

With a full 12/36m CTF system in place here any soil damage caused by weight on wet, fragile, soils is at least confined to a known and small % of the land which, if necessary, can be targeted to repair. However, repair means soil disturbance I would rather not do so the lightweight and balanced CO, able to run a low tyre pressures seemed the better choice in the extreme conditions. Also of note was the correlation between how long a field had been farmed under conservation agriculture principles and ability to drill, the longer term soils not only able to carry the weight of establishment machinery far better but far less prone to smear against the disc of the avatar or the tine of the C0.

Despite lacking the versatility of a disc when it comes to dealing with huge amounts of green cover and surface trash, on our soils a tine is better when soil is wet, and the less consolidated surface seems to give better establishment later in the season. Over the years of evolution of our tine drill we have experimented with various tine solutions. When first converted we used the Metcalfe points, I was attracted by their narrow profile of just 12mm and low price tag compared to others but quickly found on our stoney soils that the tungsten wear tile would often break off long before the point was worn out and that narrow profile led to very rapid seed tube wear and issues flowing larger seeds like peas and beans.

I set about creating my own modified version, initially this was just a wider version (15mm) using a Ferobibe wear tile that could be replaced with a farm workshop Mig welder. Unlike the tungsten, soil flow still created wear issues with the seed tubes so later protective side plates were added but I was never 100% happy with the design.

In 2019 I had the opportunity to try some Bourgault VOS openers, initially we fitted the twin row 100mm points, the quality was impressive and they worked well but 100mm was too much soil disturbance for my liking so we moved to the 19mm single shot point which seem absolutely perfect, low disturbance yet wide enough to flow even the largest of bean seed and with no seed tube to wear with it being internal to the point. I think this will be the solution we stick with going forward, they were pushed to the limits this year in conditions I hope to never see again, in combination with the Horsch Partner front hopper I think they were the only reason that on February the 15th we finally managed to complete 100% of the “autumn” wheat and bean establishment workload.

Having the right tools for the job and the right soil is only part of the picture, without the commitment, skills and tenacity of good staff no farming system can ever be successful, The herculean effort made by everyone here this season was exceptional, they worked at every available opportunity, safely and efficiently with their usual attention to detail. The sense of achievement by all, against the odds and conditions felt like sweet victory making the second part of this horror story even harder to swallow …

Despite the difficulties of autumn at least our OSR area all looked good, locally a lot of crops had been destroyed by CSFB not long after drilling, yet ours had all made it through winter and although not exceptional looked ‘alright’. As soil temperatures warmed and first nitrogen was applied though it became clear all was not good. Closer inspection revealed stems badly infested with CFSB larvae, there was no way the crop was going to yield, although hard to accept it was a write off and clearly best replaced with a spring crop of linseed creating a significant increase to our spring workload but at least with our low input, low risk approach to OSR the financial impact of losing the crop was minimised with just farm saved seed, a herbicide and 1/3rd of the nitrogen applied we can simply call it a cover crop and move on !

The future of OSR on this farm is doubtful, we seem to have got away without CSFB issues longer than some but it was inevitable it would hit us eventually, pests do not respect farm boundaries or hedgerows so regardless of IPM or soil health on individual farms there is nothing an individual farmer can do to remain immune to this problem.

Unlike many I believe the ban on neonicotinoids is not entirely responsible for this issue. In fact, I think this is a clear example of how unsustainable modern agriculture has become when an entire crop can seemingly no longer be grown. The blame in my opinion for this loss sits firmly at the feet of poor rotation, agronomy and often blatant, historic, disregard of IPM. Afterall I am certain the Romans who bought this crop to the UK farmed without seed dressings and pyrethroid. Yet in just one generation we seem to have made something possible for thousands of years, impossible. If that doesn’t make you question the overall direction of modern farming and its impact upon our environment, then it should, what crop will we be crossing off the options list next I wonder if we don’t change? Blackgrass problems anyone?

In mid-March the rain that had started on September 20th finally stopped rather ominously on Friday 13th of March. A total of 580mm had fallen through that time and only 8 days had no rainfall at all making it even more remarkable that we had somehow got that autumn workload complete. Soils started to dry, and we were soon able to get the spring crop establishment completed in good time and condition. Grateful to finally get some dryer condition to work in establishment was quick and simple compared to the trials and tribulations of the winter. We joked about a drought …….. and then it happened!

It was 82 days later, on June 3, when we had our next rainfall. At this point the wheat was almost dead. Tillers had been dropped and yield potential irreparably capped, spring crops had emerged and developed slowly, I think in some cases had we cultivated to establish them they maybe never have emerged at all. The farm really did not look great, the only consolation being a country in covid 19 lockdown at least I didn’t have to look at it very often!

I’m the first to criticise farmers for moaning, let’s face it, if you can’t deal with unfavourable weather then farming probably is not the best occupation to choose. I prefer to focus on things we can control as managers rather than things we can’t. I chose to accept this season as a challenge, if you can win a game of poker with a bad hand then surely you can still make a margin growing crops with bad weather?

The simplicity of the low fixed cost structure business I have set out to build suddenly felt more prudent that ever with a small payroll and machinery fleet to finance the next focus was on adjusting the variable costs to fit potential.

Fortunately we had applied 60% of the planned N to our wheat early, as the hot, dry conditions persisted it was fear of scorch and damage that led the decision to apply no more but ultimately as tillers aborted it was yield potential finally made the 60% into 100% of planned application. It was a similar story for other inputs, a cheap fungicide application made at T1 timing became all that was needed to keep wheat clean until the rain finally returned in mid-June. Spring crops needed just fertiliser and herbicides; I don’t think we have ever had a year where our usually very busy sprayer has been parked in the yard quite so much.

The result has been an extremely cheap year, ultimately a very simple year. Although we are unavoidably heading into a lower output harvest than we have seen here for many years I think this could be one of the best farm management years I have had, there is not a single decision I think I would change this year, not a single opportunity missed and I don’t think I have ever been able to say that before. I’m looking forward to harvest and remain hopeful that this farming horror story could just have a happy, ie. profitable, ending!

Thoughts and lessons learned from the season. Where to start???

Well the earth on the farm went from very wet over winter to very dry. April was the sunniest it’s been since 1929 I believe, with the drought being broken towards the end of the month by some very welcome rain. We have been treated to the clearest air and the bluest skies that anyone has seen for many decades. It’s a shame that it’s taken a global pandemic and shutdown of industrial operations and carefree travel to make the change to the environment that we have been aware is needed for a while now.

May continued dry and we start to think that we need some vapour trails and upper air pollution to create conditions for rain to happen again! Whilst we do all we can to improve soil heath and structure and increase SOM to improve drought resistance still on light land the effect of insufficient precipitation combined with high temperatures and high winds have drained yield potential. So thoughts turn to combating drought and coincidentally on the internet popped up an article The Drought Myth, An Absence of Water is Not the Problem by William Albrecht.

www.appropedia.org/Drought_Myth

which discusses the role of nutrition in combating drought. I have been adding trace elements to spray applications at every opportunity but have still found that the absence of water is a big problem. More work needed here. Even the more specialist bio extracts appears to have made no difference. Soil structure and subsoil is no doubt very important and I’m always reminded of this by the route of a pipeline which crossed a field well over twenty years ago. The crop is always stunted and looks hungry (see pic) but the same soil was replaced in the trench that was removed, just in a different order.

On the worst field I have for “hot spots” (see pic) the difference in crop changes dramatically in just a few inches. You would not think it was possible as we expect roots to roam for moisture and nutrition on top of their increased efficiency through association with Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Fungi. I will taking soil samples from 0-300mm and 300-600 analysed to see what differences can be found.

On top of how we physically farm the soil we are trying to reduce crop inputs, jump off the treadmill of nannying crops with insurance PPPs and let crops on our healthier soils with an increased number of beneficials stand up for themselves.

I have had success with this approach again this year with insecticide free crops of wheat and rape but less success with reducing fungicides. Learning where we can successfully cut back is still a work in progress. I refuse to be persuaded to apply a T0 to wheat preferring it to stand on its own feet but it’s surprising how quickly patches of yellow rust started to appear on my varieties of GP1 wheats. These being Zyatt, Solstice or Skyfall or a blend of the three. A T1 needed to be applied very swiftly, and to keep on top of the problem a well timed T2. Nothing saved there then! 

Autumn insecticides are avoided when ever possible but we do need to be aware of the risks from the green bridge between crops, and on one field of wheat the aphid population that inhabited the volunteer oats and possibly were living in the excessive amount of wet chopped straw has infected the wheat fairly badly despite a poorly timed (with hindsight) insecticide application. As part of our IPM we really need to be able to get aphids tested to see what disease they are carrying and have regional data on this.

Spring seedbeds were a challenge following the excessive amount of winter rainfall but as a rule better (dryer) where the cover crops had been left growing until early February than sprayed off before Christmas, in this case to get a second flush of Blackgrass. The ground does need to be dry enough to crumble into the slot or at least not mush back together again after the seed is placed and in the early sprayed off field it was not. With hindsight again I should have moved this a couple of inches deep to let it dry but had no machine for the job other than going over it with the Horsch tine drill. To that end I’ve found and purchased a super cheap new 3mt disc and packer machine which I’m fitting a seeder box to. This will perform three tasks, 1. covercrop establishment, 2. light movement of any seedbed to dry it if necessary and 3. mechanical covercrop destruction to reduce reliance of, or number of lts/ha required, in producing a clean environment to drill into of glyphosate. This is something I trialed in late autumn 2018 with a very lovely but expensive Lemken Rubin machine with some success.

Headlands. I’m surely not the only one that has headlands that look better than the field! I haven’t quite worked out why this is but on a traditional cultivation system headlands were always the poor relation, especially in a wet year.  

Thoughts around this are, better consolidation, in a no-till system is this possible? Fewer slugs due to consolidation. An effect of some type from the surrounding flora. Extra nitrogen due to me not cutting back the rate enough on the headland setting, but half of the N is applied as liquid! Drilling more slowly, or something else. Thoughts appreciated via Twitter or Farming Forum/BASE UK forum if you can please.

So to sum up. The farm doesn’t look too bad and with a well timed rain and a little less heat and wind in May it would have looked very good. I can’t blame the no-till system, now it it’s fifth year here, for any crops that look less than perfect other than some spring barley and that was down to poor judgement on the day by me. The better well bodied land has the better crops due to holding more moisture than the land with sand under it. The ability to chose either the disc or tine drill depending on circumstances has been invaluable with the JD750a doing a fabulous job in green catch crops and the Horsch Dutch conversion likewise into wet chopped straw on wheat after oats or second wheats. In fact the no-till system afforded me the ability to drill 130% of planned wheat area in what was one of the most difficult autumns we can remember.

Finally the desire to farm using many fewer artificial inputs is very laudable but there are risks when we back to rein back too far. 

What is holding us back at the moment is the risk/reward balance, something organic farmers have much better sorted and to help progress Regenerative Agriculture more quickly premiums that support the way that we are farming would be helpful.

What a season we have had! Its years like this when we can really learn a lot about our farming system and what we are trying to do.

So, it went stupidly wet stupidly quickly. We have had some really easy seasons in the past 5 years where we have been able to drill later for blackgrass control. Can we start drilling earlier again with low disturbance drills now we are on top of the problem? I hope so. Should we be growing catch crops in front of winter crops? I think this can really help mitigate some of the issues with heavy rain, catch crops will pump water in the autumn. It is often claimed they do this in the spring however from personal experience this is not true. For the autumn I think it is far more plausible as the plants are generally growing pretty fast.

Soil structure, of course is at the forefront. Better soils infiltrate more water and hold machinery (even big heavy stuff) far better than fluffy cultivated stuff. Good soil structure is at the core of what we are all trying to do and a season like this highlights that even more. There were many horror pictures of soils washing away due to poor soil management on social media. It gets dismissed as the “weathers fault”. Not a good enough excuse for me I’m afraid. Seeing these kinds of pictures and the excuses that went with them were frankly worrying and highlighted the lack of ownership UK farmers have of their problems. 

Drainage is something that has come up again with a season like this. With no tilling on hanslope clay soils I think good drainage can be the difference between success and failure. We do a lot of mole draining, often in the spring and the better drained fields look so much better for it in both winter and spring crops. Some of the old drainage systems are starting to really show their age now so we will be looking at ways to either repair or replace them. I have an appointment to view a tractor mounted trencher next week. Afterall, there is loads of free time when you aren’t making dust with cultivators for months on end!

The spring as we all know, was equally ridiculous. There is no way a soil should go from being absolutely sodden to being too dry to germinate a crop in 5 days as some were reporting. Soils just aren’t working properly in many places around the country, including some of my own. These extremes of weather do appear to be becoming more regular. We need more resilient soils in order to deal with them. I discussed with a friend the other day about the regen journey we are both on. He pointed out as farmers we are so used to be able to instantly buy a piece of kit, a chemical or a fertiliser that gets us out of muddle or solves a problem, or it has in the past. What we are doing now is a much longer game. We need to focus on the core principles and not revert in panic if something goes wrong. Over time as we build our soils, gain a better understanding of the soil biology and the intricate ecology we are working with and share knowledge. Our soils will improve and shelter us from these extremes of weather and volatility of the industry. 

What is the solution to all this? Keep learning, keep pushing, keep trying. There are no magic bullets!

A quick update on crops. OSR, this looks okay and will be ready for harvest in about 7-10 days (its 28th June today). I don’t expect it to break any records but has been grown very cheaply, it should offer a reasonable margin with minimal capital risked. Wheat looks average to poor. Spring crops are a mixed bag but generally pretty good. Winter barley looks well and will be harvest next week. I am looking forward to getting this years crop out the way, chasing the combine with the muck spreaders and drill planting OSR and cover crops.

UK agriculture is at somewhat of a cross roads. A red blue pill, blue pill moment. Whilst it used to be “conventional vs organic”, the regenerative group has formed. I have started to try and view the way we farm as treating causes not symptoms, conventional farming has always been about treating symptoms. This has worked well for a long time and done its job. However, we are on a treadmill in which we externalize all of our problem solving. This exports a lot of money from farm businesses. Gene editing is now being pushed by many farmers and the farming lobby groups as some kind of saviour to post Brexit farming.

They promise amazing advances such as nitrogen fixing wheat, disease resistant crops, drought tolerant crops (why we need drought tolerant crops in the UK proves how bad our soil management is!), gluten free etc. These are supposed to be provided by small UK companies. This is all well and good, but how will those companies avoid the clutches of bio-tech giants they could theoretically put out of business? It is a lovely thought that small UK seed breeders will provide wonderful traits for the benefit of the population, but I fear they will be bought out very quickly by corporate power of the bio-tech companies. What GE (and GM) are essentially trying to do is fix problems from our reductionist approach to agriculture.

The Green Revolution was touted as a scientific marvel but here we are, with the same problems and awaiting more answers to be provided to us. GE is just a continuation of the treadmill, the treatment of symptoms rather than causes, how long until GE traits get resistance? Not long if you look at what’s happened to chemicals and GM. I will be called a luddite and anti-science for saying all of this, however was it not Albert Einsetin who defined insanity as, “doing the same thing over and over expecting different results”? We are also constantly told we need to ‘feed the world’, this is one of the biggest marketing ploys pushing conventional reductionist agriculture and farmers fall for it day in day out, thus staying on the treadmill. The problem of feeding the world is not one of production, it is of distribution, politics and economics.

On the other side we have regenerative agriculture. I view this as a systems-based approach harnessing nature and understanding soil biology and plant nutrition. We all know farming has been based around the physical and chemical since the green revolution, the biological side of things has been completely forgotten until recently. Great in-roads are now being made by farmers around the world and in the UK. The problem many have with this is the simple trials we are so used to, for example X fungicide works better than Y fungicide on this variety do not work on the highly complicated ecology and biology of the soils we are trying to harness.

If a trial does not say ‘do this’ we don’t do it, its not scientifically proven right? By taking this route we begin to understand how to solve problems. Why does this crop of wheat need five fungicide sprays? Because it is nutritionally unbalanced because the soil biology is not working, because we have pumped it full of ammonium nitrate. Why do we get this weed? Because we have made the growing environment perfect for it because of our agricultural systems. Of course, none of this is quick fix, as said before there are no magic bullets. But an approach to farming that revolves around harnessing the resources we have, soil, air, water and sun in a sensitive manner for me is the only way forward. We need to be using less chemicals.

They are expensive and have unknown side effects, especially to the soil biology and nutrition we are trying to work with. We need to use less soluble fertiliser. Nitrogen use efficiency is very poor on UK farms and it has consequences for the environment. Most importantly for me, as a professional farmer running a business, all this stuff is very expensive. If we can even reduce the amount of bought in inputs by a quarter to half that we use over the next five years imagine how different financial results will look?

Which pill to take? The red pill is a continuation of the treadmill of reductionist 20th century farming where we buy in our solutions which only treat symptoms. Year in year out we do the same thing until resistance or revocation stops us. We then hope we can buy something new to replace the previous failed solution. Great for the people selling the gear, not so much for the farm finances.

The blue pill revolves around finding out the how to solve the causes of problems ourselves. It requires study and knowledge exchange, a degree of bravery and a totally different mindset. It is taking ownership of our production system. It is a mixture of art, science and gut feeling. It is a slow burner and you will not instantly see dramatic results. Over time, as proved by a growing number of farmers in the UK it does work.

The future is incredibly exciting for us. Things like BPS going become trivial when you really start to change your mindset into a regenerative one. If only the industry as a whole spent as much time and money on researching how to harness and improve soil and biology as we do moaning about the loss of neonics and demanding GE, just imagine where we could reach as a collective.

Bring it on, lets make our own luck and reclaim ownership of our agriculture.

Some useful extra reading

‘Chasing the Red Queen’ Andy Dyer

Altered Genes, Twisted Truths’ Steven M Druker

A lot learned from a tough year!

Our farm in the South Lincs fens is partially above and partially below sea level. Last winter certainly had its challenges, we had flooding on some fields, flooding in my parent’s house and no winter crops on the farm. It was a long winter to ponder decisions for this spring. But in times of despair its often a good point to reflect on how to make changes and adapt for the season ahead. Drainage is something we will be looking ever closer at, but not in the form of all new plastic pipes. We have fantastic drainage systems in the Fens and I can only feel for the farms in the west with the floods. 

Our wheat harvest was pleasing and disappointing in many ways. I have realised how important timing is on spraying, having only farmed 2 years I must admit to being a little blasé on timings. All of our wheat was no-till after forage Maize or Beet and we did have Septoria and Fusarium issues which I believe cost us 1-2T/Ha overall. It had potential to be one of our best yields. As a machine maker and Farmer I should tell everyone its all perfect, but we all know that is not true!

Our Sugar Beet and Maize proved to be a big success in terms of margin. Maize for us is a crop that we are using to try and supercharge soil health. As hard as that is to believe we utilise August until end of April to grow big cover crops, maize being a fast growing C4 plant means we can almost have the best part of the year doing soil improvement work but still make the return we need. Using strip till we keep harvest damage to a minimum and usually don’t require any herbicides, insecticides or fungicides other than Roundup at 3L. If we can drop the Nitrogen its organic electricity!

Running a multitude of businesses has its stresses and strains and I have certainly realised how stressful farming can be. In 2-3 years having the hottest summer ever, longest drought, biggest flood etc etc. But we are very lucky to be working in nature.

Clover Companions with row crops – can it replace synthetic nitrogen? Ongoing work…

We have finished a 2 year cycle with clover in row crops. Starting with Rape, then maize and we will now try some wide spaced winter cereals. We used a broad leaf white clover. We established it in June (after forage triticale) then drilled rape 25cm left or right of it, then harvested the rape. We then grazed with sheep hard. Then established Maize into it after trying various chemical and mechanical suppression techniques. Im really encouraged by it, we have seen some rather unexpected positives and negatives. But we will keep this 2 hectare trial running for 7-10 years in the hope we will find a system that can work long term. (photos of clover in rape and maize)

AGROFORESTRY: decision made!

After a long dreary damp winter, I looked at various options for our farm to plan it from now until 2060 when I hope to hand it on to my son. I am 34 years old, and such a decision takes a lot of thought. After many deliberations and a lot of research I have decided to put the farm into an Agroforestry system, incorporating Perennials (Trees and shrubs) with Annual crops. This will be implemented starting in Winter 2020-2021 with the first 30 hectares, and we aim to complete the planting by 2027.  The system design for agroforestry has taken me almost 5 years to plan, initially having being inspired by Stephen Briggs farm nearby and a lot of inspiration from Martin Crawford and the late Martin Wolfe. I was lucky to be able to visit some farms practicing agroforestry in the UK,  France and the USA to gain some experience and learn about some pitfalls to avoid.

Many people have said to me, George that sounds very risky. But I look at what we do now as reasonably high risk. Another interesting fact when planning the Agroforestry, big is not necessarily better. It would work better if we had maybe 200 acres less for my system. May this be an opportunity for farm sizes to decrease again? Probably not… but it was interesting to come to the thought of reducing in size.  

Our system will involve 24 metre alleys of annual crops or rotated pasture with 4 metre under strips. We will lose around 9-11% of our land in total to the tree strips and grass strips. When I say lose… they are far from a financial loss. When the planting is complete we will be growing I believe 3-4X the human consumable calories/nutrition per hectare compared to our current system, we aim to be energy positive and carbon negative (meaning we will sequester more carbon than we emit and we will generate more energy than we consume). We will produce fruit (for drying and fresh), nuts (whole, cracked, oil, flour), berries (dried), medicinal extracts, cereals, meat, energy and building materials. We will monitor the nutritional output per hectare, calorific output per hectare and hopefully link all of that to some metrics/tracking/indices.

Protein… There is a lot of talk about Veganism, anti-meat etc. One reason we will plant nearly 2000 nut trees is that I want some of my customers to be vegan. I am not vegan, I will never be, but I want to embrace veganism and produce products to welcome them. At the same time we will turn our most successful crop (grass) that we cant digest into meat. We hope to integrate poultry in 2026 and rotate them around the agroforestry lanes.

People have said to me, what would that do to the value of our farm? For one I have decided I wont move (even if the sea comes over the wall in 2050) I am here to stay for my life. When you realise that, the value of the farm is irrelevant, and decisions get a bit easier. It will be my son’s issue. Secondly, a diverse, rich, balanced eco system is a very saleable asset and its value will grow in the future. The fens is a funny old place, flat, drained, to a certain extent man made. But it has its charm!

We plan to market the above ground carbon privately to industry as-well as offsetting our emissions from other businesses we own.

In future articles I hope to write more about the tree species we have chosen, why and how we plan to market them and in what form.  Anything I have learned and will learn on our farm is available to others and always will be. We have such exciting fortunate possibilities in UK farming for the next 50 years and we should be excited and smiling even if it’s a bit tough at the minute.