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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 [email protected] or 07778877514.
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Nitrogen in Plants and Soil: A Regen View
Written by Mike Harrington from Edaphos
I have written articles for DD magazine on phosphorus and potassium so it’s time to complete the set and take a look at nitrogen. Nitrogen inputs are generally framed as merely a commodity input in agriculture — something to be bought, applied and managed. However, nitrogen is far more than that. It is a ‘living element of the ecosystem’, tightly woven into the biology of our soils, plants and climate. Understanding its role within natural cycles is fundamental to transitioning away from extractive models of farming and towards systems that regenerate soil health, build resilience and biodiversity, and improve long-term productivity.
Whilst over 90% of the nutritional content of a plant is the holy trinity of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, nitrogen is the next biggest number and the nutrient we spend the most time and money on. Healthy plants typically contain 3–4% nitrogen in their above-ground tissues — far more than most other essential nutrients and this is because nitrogen is central to some of the most vital biological processes in a plant:
- It’s a key component of chlorophyll, enabling photosynthesis — converting sunlight, water and carbon dioxide into sugars.
- It forms amino acids, which make up proteins. These proteins are the machinery and structure of plant cells.
- It’s critical in energy transfer and genetic material (DNA and RNA).
In short, without nitrogen, plants cannot grow, reproduce or survive. However, more is not always better and there is a weak link between nitrogen applied and yield.
Figure 1. The weak relationship between wheat yield and total inorganic nitrogen applied. Based on 405 Farmbench results (2018–21) for conventional first winter feed wheat on clay loam soils
https://ahdb.org.uk/news/does-it-pay-to-cut-nitrogen-fertiliser – Source
In the soil, nitrogen exists in three main forms: organic nitrogen (found in decomposing residues, soil organic matter and microbes), ammonium (NH₄⁺) and nitrate (NO₃⁻). Most of the nitrogen in our soils, up to 95 to 99%, is in organic forms, locked up in humus and microbial biomass. This nitrogen isn’t immediately available to plants but becomes plant-accessible through microbial activity, especially under warm, moist, aerobic conditions. In conventional systems, synthetic fertilisers bypass this cycle, supplying nitrate or ammonium directly. In regenerative systems, our goal is to stimulate and feed the soil food web so it can mineralise nitrogen naturally and cycle it efficiently, supporting this process with limited, yet highly efficient, inputs.
There are two primary natural sources of nitrogen, atmospheric nitrogen (N₂) that, while inert in its gaseous form, becomes bioavailable through fixation either by lightning or biological nitrogen-fixing organisms. In UK climates, lightning contributes little, typically under 10 kg N/ha/year. However, in a well-structured soil you should have 25% air and that air is 78% N, so you can have nearly 20% N in the soil but not in the right form… So, it’s back to the microbes again. Biological nitrogen fixation is far more significant in regen systems. Rhizobia bacteria, in symbiosis with legumes like clover, vetch and lucerne, can fix over 150 kg N/ha/year under ideal conditions. There are a range of other nitrogen-fixing bacteria including Azotobacter, Azospirillum and Pseudomonas (in Bioplus T, one of Aiva’s own N fixing solutions), and there is now a plethora of other biological nitrogen options in the marketplace, which although once much misunderstood, are now rapidly gaining evidential study support.
In regenerative farming, we view the nitrogen cycle as a living, biological process, not a chemical one. Microbes play the starring role in immobilisation (soil microbes absorb ammonium and nitrate to build their own bodies), mineralisation (when microbes die or digest high-nitrogen residues, like manures or legumes, they release ammonium back into the soil) and nitrification (in well-aerated soils, ammonium is converted to nitrate by bacteria [Nitrosomonas and Nitrobacter]. Nitrate is highly mobile in the soil and vulnerable to leaching). In the UK, with our frequent rain and heavy soils, nitrate leaching and denitrification are major pathways of nitrogen loss, especially in winter and on compacted or waterlogged soils; our rules for applying nitrogen reflect this.
Understanding how nitrogen is lost from the system is crucial for regenerative fertility management. This could be via leaching (nitrate is water-soluble and easily washed beyond the root zone. This not only wastes nutrients but contributes to water pollution (eg, nitrate-sensitive zones in England), denitrification (in saturated soils, microbes convert nitrate into gases like N₂ and N₂O, a potent greenhouse gas), volatilisation (ammonia gas can be lost from surface-applied manures and urea, especially on high pH soils or during warm, windy weather) or crop removal (harvested crops take nitrogen off-farm).
Plants absorb nitrogen primarily as nitrate (NO₃⁻) and ammonium (NH₄⁺). However, it is now understood that plants can take up nitrogen in various ways including amino acids, peptides (chain of aminos), proteins (chains of peptides) and, amazingly, biology directly in the form of rhizophagy, where the plant takes in whole microbes, squeezes the N out and spits them out again to repeat the cycle!
The diagram above shows nitrogen uptake pathways into the plant. It’s a bit busy and I’m not going to try and explain it in detail, but the yellow flashes at the top show that the plants are capable of taking up the various forms of N, so to put all your N on in one form makes for a very lopsided diagram. We want diversity in nitrogen as well, so making sure that you are adding various forms (AN, Urea, UAN, foliar, biological) at the right times can make a huge difference to crop responses and NUE.
The rhizophagy cycle is fascinating when you get your head around it, and the John Kempfs of this world are saying that this alone could supply 100% of your crops need for nitrogen if managed correctly. I’m not that brave yet, but it shows what an important part the microbes play. As we understand more about how they work I think they will become a much larger part of the system. The way the world is going with NVZs, carbon footprints and nitrogen taxes, it’s only going to drive more R&D in this area.
In regen systems, our aim is to enhance root mass and root health, which leads to biological associations and access to nitrogen, rather than simply dosing with synthetic fertiliser, which can switch these magnificent microbes off — the last thing that we want! As ever, it’s all about balance.
In regenerative agriculture, nitrogen isn’t something just to be bought, it’s something to be built and there are some simple, yet effective key principles to bear in mind when trying to do so:
- 1. Build Organic Matter: Organic matter is the nitrogen (and carbon) bank of the soil.
- 2. Feed the Soil Biology: Use compost, cover crops and reduced tillage to support microbial life. Stimulate with fermented molasses and humic / fulvic substances.
- 3. Legume Integration: Diverse legume species in pasture and cover crops fix free nitrogen from the air.
- 4. Avoid Over Application: Excess N disrupts soil biology, drives carbon loss and increases pest pressure.
- 5. Use Compost and Manure Wisely: These should be fully composted and applied at the right time to minimise losses.
- 6. Utilise Foliar Nitrogen: Once the canopy is built, it’s a much more efficient way to apply, bypassing the soil-based issues.
Soil and tissue tests should look beyond just NPK and should include but not be limited to organic matter levels, active carbon, soil respiration (CO₂ burst), microbial biomass, tissue analysis, sap analysis, SNS and N sensor. All of these will give you a reading for N in one form or another — there might be bit of conversion/and or blind faith required! But they are all giving you information. If we can’t measure it, we can’t manage it, and reducing your N too much could cause a cascade of issues. Staying on top of the data is critical as these all start to build a picture of the limiting factors in your system.
As part of the industrial move towards climate change mitigation, we are now expected to minimise the negative by-products of synthetic N and the introduction of chemical stabilisers has been a recent step towards this. It’s worth understanding how these work but that’s for another article. However, a few examples of these would be Advance Shield (an NBPT-reducing volatilisation from urea), N-Serve® (nitrapyrin inhibiting nitrification to reduce losses), and ESN® and Instinct® (slow-release coatings and inhibitors). These products are often promoted as insurance policies against losses and legal prosecution — but they’re still treating the symptoms, not the cause. Our focus should be on the living soil structure, cover crops and water management to reduce losses naturally.
We like to apply partner products too when we are applying high rates of nitrogen, but normally carbon-based inputs, such as molasses, fermented molasses, humic and fulvic acids. These all have the potential to improve uptake efficiency of the applied synthetic fertiliser. I have sold these types of products for 20 plus years and there is a big difference using some straight molasses compared to a true humic acid. Some of it is down to the complexity of the materials: Molasses is full of simple sugars which the bacteria will love and consume very quickly but this will be very boom and bust and will also feed up some of the soil borne pathogens. More complex materials like fermented molasses (where many of the sugars have been converted to alcohol and removed), will feed a wider range of the soil food web and give you a better partnership. Even more complex materials like humic acids are more likely to be feeding the fungi in the soil and that is the key. Most conventionally farmed soils will be bacterially dominated and, again, it’s balance we need, so any help we can give to the fungi will be positive one. We have run independent trials on Nurture N as a partner to UAN and they have shown that you could cut back your N by up to 20% and maintain/improve yield from increased NUE. Well worth looking into if you are not already using one.
Finally, regenerating nitrogen cycles is about restoring balance — not forcing yields through chemical intervention. In the UK, with our temperate climate, diverse soils and mixed farming heritage, we have the ideal conditions to farm regeneratively. Rather than seeing nitrogen as a product, let’s start seeing it as a function of healthy, living soil.
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Pasture farming boosts soil health and biodiversity
A low input, grass-based approach to sheep and dairy farming is producing delicious food and benefitting the soil and wildlife on two Pasture for Life farms. Former Pasture for Life director Sara Gregson paid them a visit
Sheep farming in Kent
Fidelity Weston has run her family’s 82-hectare mixed farm near Sevenoaks since the early 1980s. As new entrants then to farming, they took on a derelict holding, which had no fences or gates.
The advice she was given was to buy 450 Mule and Masham ewes, lamb them and sell them as store lambs for other farmers to finish.
In 1998 she gave another local farmer 12 hectares of the land for set aside and stopped applying fertiliser or spraying against weeds in these fields.
“We were amazed when leaving these set aside fields alone, much of the original wildlife bounced back,” says Fidelity. “After that, we converted to organic in the year 2000.”
To start, four traditional Hereford cattle were bought in, along with a couple of sows and pastured chickens producing eggs and meat. Over the years the herd has grown to 30 cows and the sheep breed changed to Lleyn.
Fidelity then became involved with Pasture for Life, which champions the rearing and finishing of cattle and sheep solely on pasture.
Fidelity Weston Flock changes
Fidelity found it relatively easy to produce beef cattle just on grazed grass in the summer and supplemented with high quality, species-rich hay in winter. Changing the sheep enterprise did not prove so easy.
“First, we had to change the lambing date,” she says. “We used to lamb 180 ewes indoors in two batches in February and mid-March, outside, if possible, but weather dependent. Now we lamb at the start of April so we can be sure that the grass is growing well for the ewes to produce milk.
“Next, and the hardest thing to do, was to stop feeding ewes that had scanned with twins or triplets in the six weeks before lambing. The Pasture for Life standards allowed us to transition to zero concentrates over three years – but lambing percentage did drop from 1.8 down to 1.4.
“However, our hardy outdoor ewes are very good mothers and our post-birth lamb losses are extremely low, well below 5%, compared to the industry average of 20%.
“It works out that the total number of live lambs for both systems is almost equal. But in our system now, this comes with no cost of feed or labour to feed them and less cost of dead lamb disposal.”
Jesery cows and calf 
Rebecca Mayhew Grazing
The ewes and lambs move between the fields based on grass growth and animal needs. Most of the fields are between two and four hectares and sometimes these are split into two by an electric fence. The fields are rested for as long as possible before being grazed again and where possible, rotated with the cattle.
The lambs are finished off grass and any not reaching their target liveweight by the end of the autumn are taken through the winter on neighbouring farmers’ fields and sold the following year as hogget at 20 to 25kg deadweight.
Fifty lambs are sold from the farm each year and the remainder are sold for good prices as lamb or hogget through Kent-based Abraham’s Meats.
“The move to 100% pasture-fed lamb has had its ups and downs,” Fidelity admits.
“But the system is working now and we will not go back to feeding the sheep. I think it comes down to getting the right breed of ewe to cope with the conditions and making the most of lower lambing percentages.
“I feel we are there now and reaping the rewards, producing high-quality meat at a very low cost, whilst also boosting soil health, biodiversity and wildlife across the farm.”
The cows and calves graze together Dairying in Norfolk
Stuart Mayhew and his family have farmed in Woodton, 12 miles southeast of Norwich since the mid-1940s — mainly arable and pig farming on 204 hectares (504 acres) across two farms. However, increasing health problems with the pigs led to a complete re-think of enterprises in an attempt to escape the never-ending boom-and-bust pig cycle.
“We were on a family holiday in Scotland in 2016 when I fell in love with the idea of having Jersey cows, producing the highest possible quality of milk and selling this direct to consumers,” recalls Stuart’s wife Rebecca. “We came back home already having bought one in-calf cow and three heifers.”
The Mayhews were complete dairy novices and started out with a portable mini milker and learning how to milk from YouTube. Moving the dairy to the current site at Old Hall Farm in 2020, they refurbished some of the farm buildings. The herd now has 55 cows, predominantly Jerseys.
“Our core objective has always been to produce high quality, nutrient-dense food at a sustainable price.
“The second important element is that the animals have an almost 100% grass and pasture diet, because this is what ruminants are designed to eat and is what produces the most nutrient-rich milk. We do not believe in importing protein from around the world or feeding human-grade ingredients to ruminants.
“Finally, and most importantly, is that the calves are kept at foot with their mothers for the first six to nine months of their lives. This is non-negotiable for me. The herd lives together, whatever stage of lactation, even the dry cows.”
Grazing pasture
Old Hall Farm is on heavy clay ground and continuous arable crops were grown for many years, which degraded the soil. When the cows arrived, there was no water and no stockproof fencing. In 2019 the fields were sown to herbal leys with seven grass species, several legumes, including clovers, lucerne and sainfoin, and other herbs under a Countryside Stewardship Scheme. The fields are now in the second year of a second five-year scheme.
Each field is divided into small day paddocks with electric fencing and grazed, then rested for as long as weather conditions allow from 30 when it rains, to more than 70 in drought. No artificial fertiliser is applied.
“We use adaptive multi-paddock (AMP or mob) grazing as this gives us flexibility to ‘adapt’ to the current soil, grass and weather conditions,” Rebecca explains.
“We take a holistic approach to managing our land and our animals and it seems to be working: our soil is improving – organic matter has gone up from 2% to 6% in just six years. And there is a noticeable increase in biodiversity including birds, invertebrates, dung beetles and other insects.
“We have been members of Pasture for Life for many years and I work as a regional facilitator for them. We are working towards Pasture for Life certification for all our beef and lamb and the dairy will follow in due course.”
Rebecca estimates the calves drink around seven to ten litres of milk each day, leaving another ten litres to be taken into the dairy to be bottled or made into a wide variety of added value raw milk products, including milkshakes and ice-cream. People can buy online or come to the shop to purchase.
“The long-term plan is to farm without taking any subsidy, so we are not beholden to people who do not understand what we are trying to do. Our cows are at the very heart of our business, and in return for producing delicious, high-quality milk, they have long, healthy, well-lived lives.”
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“Growing movement” of farmers seek benefits of trees
Over a thousand attend Agroforestry Show after record-breaking drought
A “growing movement” is recognising that trees can offer farm resilience and business opportunities in the face of extreme weather with more than a thousand people joining the Agroforestry Show.
The Soil Association and Woodland Trust event brought farmers, foresters and environmentalists together at Woodoaks Farm in Hertfordshire to share knowledge and inspiration on the economic benefits of agroforestry – farming in harmony with trees.
After record-breaking temperatures and drought this year, many discussions at the show highlighted how trees are “urgently” needed to provide shelter for livestock and crops while also providing fodder when grass availability is limited.
Farmers also shared insights on how trees boost milk yields and fix nitrogen, plus ideas around new crops that are becoming more viable as temperatures rise, such as like almonds, walnuts, persimmons, and even olives.
Talks and farm walks provided advice on everything from alley cropping with trees within fields to better maintenance of hedgerows and farm woodland, including timber opportunities.
Soil Association Head of Agroforestry Ben Raskin said: “The second Agroforestry Show has been another roaring success and the discussions of the benefits of trees have never felt more relevant after such a challengingly dry year. A growing movement of farmers and foresters are realising how much our farmed landscape needs to incorporate more trees to protect our food security. There are challenges ahead but it’s not all doom and gloom – there are huge opportunities with tree crops that weren’t viable here before. Every farmer has trees they could be making better use of, or areas where they could plant new ones. But the situation is urgent and the time to get moving on agroforestry is now.”
Helen Chessire, Lead Policy Advocate for the Woodland Trust, said: “We’ve had another fantastic Agroforestry Show and what’s been brilliant this year is that we’ve seen discussions evolve from last time. There has been a new depth to discussions. We have moved past exploring what agroforestry is and why it’s important – now we are onto how to get it done at scale. The advice hub, training hub and demonstration area have been popular which really shows the appetite that farmers have to lead the charge on getting more trees into our farmed landscape, which we desperately need to protect both UK food production and nature.”
Farmers urged not to delay on agroforestry
A key theme of the show was also the uncertainty around government support with the Sustainable Farming Incentives on pause, and both charities are offering advice beyond the show for what funding streams are still available.
Leading a talk on climate adaptation, Martin Crawford, founder of the forest garden at the Dartington Estate and the Agroforestry Research Trust, urged farmers not to wait for government funding.
He said: “We need to do the right thing now whether or not the grant system pays us for it. We have to take action if we want our farms and businesses to survive. There are risks whatever we do or don’t do, but I do actually think the risks of not doing something are much greater now. Doing nothing is not really an option anymore. I don’t think we can use the past climate as a guide to the future of growing after a year like this where everything has gone haywire. There’s an urgency to this because trees and perennial crops take some time to establish so I would just say don’t delay, get something started.”
Farmers across the event shared knowledge on how to get started and what pitfalls to avoid, with lessons also shared by the host farm which is managed by the Soil Association and farmed by tenant farmers.
As part of conversion of most of the land to organic, the farm has introduced alley cropping to a 70-acre field and used hedgerows to divide fields to support longer rotation periods.
Information around the advice given at sessions, including advice on private and public funding streams available, is available on the Agroforestry Show website where more detail will be added in the coming weeks.
Find out more at www.agroforestryshow.com
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Farmer Focus – John Cherry
Ocotber 2025
I mentioned a couple of months ago that we’re dividing the farm into two so that my brother Paul and I can do our own things. It’s been an interesting year with some tricky weather, but pleasingly, we spent very little on any of the crops, so yields of 5 to 6 t/ha of wheat paid off. This is particularly true of the Wildfarmed crops. They had a pre-drilling glyphosate, no other sprays and only 80kg of N (it got so dry, it wasn’t worth adding any more), and came in at 14% protein, which should make quite a good premium on top of their generous wheat price.
I’ve talked to a few farmers who aren’t planning on sowing much (if any) wheat this autumn. As a result of the split, I now find myself with most of the cattle, a Massey 135 (1967 pedigree) and not much else and no labour beyond my long-suffering son, Matthew. So, my fixed costs are low, and I can’t get very enthusiastic about paying contractors’ rates to grow crops which will break even at best, when I could fallow the land and clean it up, restore some fertility and possibly graze the cattle.
We’ve therefore planted a load of cover crops from seed that was knocking about in the shed, giving us the option to slot in a spring crop if things look more positive then or cash in on the SFI if that ever reappears. Meanwhile, the cattle are getting a few more herbal leys, which will enable us to cut the one expensive facet of our current system, which is housing the animals. I say housing, but most of them spend the month or two when it’s too wet safely grazing in a corral.
I’m converting a Victorian walled garden into a corral for them this year. It’s got a rubble floor, dating back to when Grandad let the yard to a dodgy builder 45 years ago. It’s been a dumping ground ever since, but it’ll make a good draught-free home for when the beasts need it. We’ll put a layer of tree surgeon’s woodchip on the bottom and add straw as required, which makes for top-grade compost once the animals have made their contributions.
We are sowing some wheat as, apart from anything else, we’ll want to have a bit of straw baled up for this job. We pulled out one herbal ley last year and had a crop of beans off it this year (not a great success), so I felt that we should go for the wheat option. I’m eyeing up some others which are five or six years into a four-year planned ley. They keep producing, so there’s not a great temptation to spray them off.
This is one time when the lure of the plough (which doesn’t spend much time in my breast) looms. When getting rid of a medium-term ley, it’s hard to destroy satisfactorily with glyphosate, although you do get to keep a nice living mulch of clovers. I’ve been advised many times that the plough is your friend here, but I can’t quite bring myself to dig the old thing out of the Groundswell carpark. There is some debate as to whether extreme soil disturbance hits the leatherjackets and wireworms enough to make a difference to the following wheat crop, which would be useful in terms of skipping the requirement for plonking beans in this point of the rotation. I suppose there’s only one way to find out…
Our min-till potatoes are ready for harvest. We’ve had problems getting anyone with a potato harvester interested in trying to lift them in a no-till situation, as all the tubers are lying on the surface of the soil under a blanket of straw and the mainstream equipment all needs some soil to make the lifting work. So, this year we min-tilled the ground first, planted the spuds in the three inches of disturbed soil and then laid the straw on top. They’ve grown very well considering what a dry year it was, so, fingers crossed, we’re hoping they’ll be machine harvestable. Meanwhile, if there’s anyone out there who fancies designing a simple lifter that would pick spuds off the ground, flick the straw away and fit on a Massey 135, then please get in touch. I think the no-till method is best suited to old-fashioned acre plots fit for supplying your local community.
In other news, we’re preparing for next year’s Groundswell event. A request for applications for sessions has just gone out, so if anyone reading feels that they have something useful to present, now is the time to fill in the form on our website and see if it hits the mark with our judging committee. Be warned though, competition is strong and unfortunately we have to be ruthless — if we had three times the number of tents, we’d still need to cull a lot of the applications. Sad for those declined, but terrific news for the movement itself that there is so much enthusiasm out there.
Our Groundschool project is delayed by bats in the barn but come next April we hope to get building, and the pause has given us a chance to finesse exactly what we’ll do and how we’ll do it. Which is another way of saying, like so much of the regenerative story, we’re still making it up as we go along.
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The Groundswell Sessions
No one can attend or probably even watch the replays of all the Groundswell Sessions. That’s what Mike Abram’s new Substack newsletter The Regenerative Farmer is promising to help with, but first Mike explains why he started the newsletter
Change is coming.
“It’s made farming exciting again.”
Over and over that’s the phrase I’m hearing about those farmers who have made the jump into farming regeneratively. And if it is not exciting, then it is making farming “interesting” again.
For the past generation, farming had become relatively easy, particularly in the arable sector. Excellent research and development from chemical and plant breeders had led farmers to be able to grow crops in the UK where a seed or a can would solve most, if not all of the problems one would face.
But nature fought back…while suffering at the same time. Resistance to chemicals decreased their efficacy, while the perceived damage to the environment has led to drastic changes in how easy it is to register pesticides.
The result is many farmers are now beginning to believe a change in approach is needed.
Enter regenerative agriculture.
Five years’ ago, I wrote the above intro to my new Substack newsletter called The Regenerative Farmer. Reading it now, nothing much has changed per se. I don’t have to tell readers of Direct Driller about how many farmers are still excited about trying to farm in a different way, although, I’m sure some of you will think the term regenerative farming has become vaguely meaningless and overused.
Techniques like cover cropping, reduced cultivations and direct drilling are much more commonplace. Some are integrating livestock into arable rotations very successfully, while the first regenerative premiums have come on stream from the likes of Wildfarmed and Green Farm Collective. The Groundswell Festival has become a beacon for regenerative farming and goes from strength to strength.
But that success has brought challenges too. Regenerative farming has definitely reached the attention of corporates. In some ways that is good — without corporate buy-in, regenerative farming will never scale to a place where it really changes the way we produce food, but equally the risk is regenerative farming becomes just another marketing slogan co-opted by big companies for their own benefit, sometimes at the expense of the farmer’s best interests.
And make no mistake, for regenerative farming to really change the world, commercial success is necessary, and in the UK that’s being hampered by a government seemingly hell-bent on making farmers’ lives as difficult as possible with its changes in policy on inheritance tax, changes to National Insurance contributions and slow decision-making on future iterations of the Sustainable Farming Incentive.
My world has changed a little in the past five years too.
In 2020 I was at the beginning of my freelance career, slightly concerned in the middle of COVID whether I was doing the right thing and whether I would have enough work. The Substack newsletter was a little side project designed to keep me busy when times were slow. But the slow times never came, which is why I published a grand total of about six articles — all slight variations of articles I had sold to a farming magazine in the UK — before my workload and a general acceptance that writing for magazines was going to be much better for the bank balance, brought the Substack to a halt.
But it has always been at the back of my mind, and I remain intrigued whether I can build an audience for my content on Substack. It is a site that offers writers the chance to showcase their work. New articles are emailed to subscribers when published, which you can also read on Substack’s app or website. It can be free or paid for, just like you would buy a magazine.
Ideally, I would be using The Regenerative Farmer to produce original content, but it’s a bit chicken and egg. It’s difficult for me to justify the time to produce original content without paying subscribers, but without original content I’m not likely to get many people to subscribe!
And while I’m continuing to attract enough work through my freelance journalism endeavours, I have less incentive or need to build the Substack.
But I am willing to invest a little bit of time again — not with completely original journalism, but with something that I think could be of value — and you, my readers, will soon tell me through your subscriptions (free or otherwise) whether that is the case.
That brings me back to Groundswell and in general to the rise in content on podcasts and YouTube about regenerative farming. There’s so much that it is impossible for one person to have enough time to consume it all, and I want to see if I can help.
So, my idea is to use some AI tools to help summarise every Groundswell Session as they come online on YouTube. Quick to read and digest, and if one tweaks your interest, a link will take you back to the source material to watch or listen.
Direct Driller has kindly agreed to publish one or two with a link to my Substack to help me build an audience.
Here’s a couple of examples to show you what it looks like.
To subscribe to the Groundswell Sessions at the Regenerative Farmer Substack: https://regenerativefarmer.substack.com/
The Groundswell Sessions 2025: Inside the room – can British Farming be saved?
A debate about government policy, food systems and supermarket power involving three men with an inside track. What does it mean for regenerative farming?
Sep 18, 2025
Location: Groundswell Festival, 2 & 3 July 2025
Seminar: Inside the room: Can British Farming Be Saved?
Published: 2025-08-03
Length: 59:15Summary
This seminar brought together Henry Dimbleby, George Eustice (former Secretary of State for DEFRA), and Justin King (former CEO of Sainsbury’s) to explore the state of British farming and whether it can be “saved” in its current form. The discussion opened with the paradox that the UK food system is both a miracle — providing cheap, abundant food — and a disaster, being a leading driver of ill health, biodiversity loss and greenhouse gas emissions. Eustice stressed the need for long-term policy consistency and for farmers to gain financial resilience through regenerative practices, while King highlighted the importance of consumer demand and trust, urging retailers and policymakers to better anticipate consumer concerns.
The panel examined deep structural challenges: political churn and short-termism in government, supermarket power and farmgate prices, and the difficulty of shifting consumer behaviour towards healthier and more sustainable choices. Ideas discussed included advertising campaigns for fruit and vegetables, levies on junk food marketing, and new regulatory or incentive mechanisms to reward environmental delivery. Both speakers agreed that change must be long-term, systemic and collaborative, requiring alignment of government, retailers, farmers and consumers.
Key takeaways
- Long-term policy stability is essential for farmers to invest in regenerative agriculture and nature-friendly practices.
- Farmers need structural increases in farmgate prices (5–10%) to be profitable without relying on subsidies.
- Retailers must anticipate and lead consumer concerns, not simply follow, while maintaining trust.
- Government intervention should focus more on incentives and consistency than bans and short-term fixes.
- Public health and sustainability goals could be advanced by redirecting food advertising spend towards fruit, veg and healthier diets.
Want to know more?
Regenerative farming and policy stability
George Eustice argued that the future of farming lies in rediscovering traditional husbandry combined with modern technology. He stressed that policy must remain consistent for at least a decade to allow regenerative approaches to take root, citing projects such as Knepp and Hope Farm that only showed ecological results after many years. Political churn, Treasury short-termism and changes of government were identified as major obstacles to progress.
“Unless you… stick to things that work and not endlessly chop and change policy… you’re never going to get anywhere.”
— George Eustice, former DEFRA Secretary of StateConsumer power and retail responsibility
Justin King highlighted that consumer decisions are rarely about abstract sustainability but about pleasure, convenience and trust. He argued that while retailers must respect consumer choice, they should also lead — anticipating future concerns and ensuring transparency. Supermarkets, he suggested, could do more to promote healthier diets, but must frame choices positively rather than simply banning or taxing products.
“The beating heart… of great supermarket retailing should be informed choice.”
— Justin King, former CEO of Sainsbury’sSupermarkets, farmers and pricing
The debate over supermarket power revealed contrasting views. Eustice supported regulatory mechanisms to ensure fair contracts and raise farmgate prices structurally, while King warned that interventions risked raising processor margins rather than helping farmers. Instead, he promoted retailer-farmer partnerships, such as Sainsbury’s dairy development group, which paid a premium for agreed practices and enabled valuable peer learning among farmers.
Public health and food advertising
The panel agreed that obesity and diet-related disease impose a massive economic and social burden. Both speakers supported redirecting a portion of junk food advertising budgets into high-quality campaigns promoting fruit, vegetables and healthy eating. They pointed to past successes, such as Sainsbury’s nutrition labelling and fish sourcing policies, as evidence that supermarkets can shift consumer behaviour when they take a lead.
Trade, environment and political trust
Eustice reflected candidly on trade negotiations, criticising concessions made in the Australia deal and highlighting how poor political processes undermined farmers. Both he and King linked public scepticism and the rise of right-wing populism to failures by political and business leaders to get ahead of public concerns. They argued that greater honesty, transparency and shared long-term vision are essential to rebuilding trust.
NOTE: Link for digital version: Watch the whole seminar session on YouTube
The Groundswell Sessions 2025: “Silvohorticulture — integrating trees into vegetable production”
A much more technical session, with Soil Association’s Ben Raskin and grower Andy Dibben explaining why agroforestry can help with vegetable production
Oct 02, 2025
Location: Groundswell Festival, 2 & 3 July 2025
Seminar: Silvohorticulture —integrating trees into vegetable production
Published: 2025-09-26
Length: 55:57Summary
In this seminar, Ben Raskin (Soil Association) and Andy Dibben from Abbey Home Farm share over 20 years of experience combining horticulture with agroforestry. They explain how integrating trees into vegetable systems can deliver multiple benefits, from shade and wind protection to improved soil health and water management. Their central message is that trees are not a luxury in horticulture but a vital tool for building climate resilience.
Through practical examples from their farms, they show how trees can stabilise yields, enhance product quality and extend growing seasons. They also highlight the commercial opportunities of silvohorticulture, where trees provide not only environmental services but also products, such as fruit, woodchip, timber or even specialist crops for floristry and medicine. The discussion stresses that diversity — both of crops and tree species — is key to adapting to uncertain weather and future climates.
Key takeaways
- Shade from trees reduces heat stress, improves vegetable quality and extends shelf life.
- Shelterbelts cut wind damage, conserve soil and boost pollinator activity.
- Trees aid water management by acting as natural soakaways in floods and reducing evaporation in drought.
- Agroforestry systems provide organic matter and fertility, lowering reliance on external inputs.
- Tree species choices should balance productivity, biodiversity and climate resilience, with diversity central to reducing risk.
Digging deeper
Shade as a tool
Andy explained how crops such as lettuces, brassicas, potatoes and even tomatoes suffer under prolonged heat. Integrating trees creates dappled shade, which improves visual quality and yield, while also extending shelf life. In glasshouses, nectarines and apricots have been used to create natural shading that regulates growth and prevents disorders like tomato ripening issues or pepper sunburn.
“The trees cost £10 each, and nature does the rest of the work.” — Andy Dibben, head grower, Abbey Home Farm
Wind protection and microclimate
Ben emphasised that shelterbelts not only prevent physical crop damage but also create warmer, more stable microclimates. This allows earlier planting and extends the season for marginal crops such as courgettes and sweetcorn. Reduced wind also retains soil on farms and encourages pollinator activity. Pollinators are more effective in calmer conditions, boosting both biodiversity and yields.
Water management
Trees play a dual role in handling excess rain and drought. Their roots fracture soil, improving infiltration, while organic matter from leaves and root decay increases water retention. Andy noted that with abstraction licences under increasing scrutiny, reducing evaporation and transpiration losses is vital for future viability.
Soil, fertility and added outputs
Ben described how coppiced alleys and woodchip can improve nutrient retention and soil biology. By mimicking natural cycles, farmers can reduce reliance on fertilisers and pesticides. Trees also offer saleable products: fruit, nuts, floristry stems, timber, coppice poles and even materials for biodegradable products. These outputs add diversity and resilience to farm income.
Species choice and future resilience
When asked about tree selection, both speakers highlighted aligning species to farm objectives. Apples, coppice species like hazel and alder, and hedgerow trees for biodiversity were all used. At the same time, trialling less conventional crops such as almonds or figs is seen as necessary experimentation in an unpredictable climate. Diversity in genetics and provenance is essential to guard against disease and climate risks.
“Diversity is absolutely key… you wouldn’t just go in and plant one species from one provenance all over the farm because that’s inherently risky.” — Ben Raskin, Soil Association
Note: Link for digital: Watch the whole seminar on YouTube
To subscribe to the Groundswell Sessions at the Regenerative Farmer Substack: https://regenerativefarmer.substack.com/
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New Updates for Agrii’s Contour Platform Help Manage SFI Changes to Rotations
By Ben Foster, RHIZA Product Manager
Rotations are changing, and farm management systems need to change with them to help farmers manage their data effectively. According to the latest DEFRA figures on the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) actions uptake, there are 32,200 active SFI agreements, taking 3.4% of England’s utilised agricultural area out of food production. That is a lot of flower-rich margins, grassy field corners and winter bird food.
Additionally, an unprecedented 3,270,000 Ha of agricultural land is signed up to the ‘Assess soil, produce a soil management plan and test soil organic matter’ (SAM1 and CSAM1) actions. This covers 38% of England’s agricultural area. Combined with the most popular action from the expanded SFI offer, which is ‘Variable rate application of nutrients’, there is a much greater emphasis on farm management systems to adapt to the increasing complexity farmers are facing.
That is why Agrii’s RHIZA team is developing two new additions to its Contour digital platform: flexible cropping and the land use mapping tool.
Ben Foster Flexible cropping
Flexible cropping has just been released. It allows users to split fields, merge areas and edit boundaries. The process of entering cropping into fields is also much quicker, and it will enable crop sequencing — for example, a cover crop into a spring cereal.
Further developments to the crop sequencing functionality will also make Contour the most usable digital system for grassland management. Farmers will be able to log each cut of silage or hay for a field and manage the nutrient requirements after each.
For SFI to deliver the maximum value for a farm’s bottom line, it needs to be as easy to manage as possible, and the Contour platform allows that. These changes will allow farmers to proactively manage the integration of SFI actions alongside their farm production and have the data all in the same space.
Flexible crop management forms one of the key pillars that support the ongoing integration project with the new TELUS Crop Management (TCM) platform. Once Contour and TCM are synchronised, changes made in either platform to fields or cropping can be passed between the two platforms, meaning no double data entries, which is a huge frustration for many farmers.
LU – focus SFI action 
LU – add SFI action 
FC – field page split cropping 
FC – allocate cropping Land use mapping
An ongoing development within Contour, the land use mapping tool can be used to manage any land on a farm or estate that is not in production. That could be hedgerows, ponds, woodland, wetlands or field corners in environmental stewardship. It is designed to go hand-in-hand with the crop management functions already in Contour, and, when launched, farmers will be able to easily manage the SFI actions involving land not in food production.
For example, the CHRW3 ‘Maintain or establish hedgerow trees’ action is worth £10 per 100m of an eligible hedgerow, which can add up to a decent amount for many farms. However, it requires detailed mapping to ensure compliance. Contour’s land use mapping tool will enable this without requiring farmers to adopt yet another digital platform.
It is aimed at not just being an SFI tool, but also for estate management. We want farmers to use it for overall land management, capital grant schemes and health and safety, such as mapping pipelines, pylons and other hazards on the farm.
Existing environmental tools
There is an environmental module already available within Contour. This allows farmers to complete an integrated pest management plan or a soil management plan, which are compliant with SFI. Alongside these tools is the Nutrient Management module, where nutrient management plans and variable-rate nutrition plans can be created.
Telus Crop Management integration with Contour
Earlier this year, TELUS Agriculture, the global telecoms business that acquired Gatekeeper and Muddy Boots, announced the development of TELUS Crop Management, which will eventually succeed its existing platforms. Ben Hatton, TELUS Agriculture sales manager, explains the move.
“We view farm management software as a specific function. It’s all about workflow: keeping farm records, traceability, compliance, assurance records, connecting with agronomy advice and tools for agronomists, and providing insight into gross margin and costs. It also needs to deliver this down to the farm, field, crop and variety level.
“Our partnership with Agrii and RHIZA is fantastic because we aren’t specialists in agronomy advice. There are numerous firms that deliver exceptional levels of insight and advice, such as RHIZA, but there’s also a need to do the audit trail, compliance and cost analysis, which is what we take great pleasure in doing.”
“It’s about making better use of the tools available. We want them to be more connected and easier to use, while still doing what they should be doing, which is farm management.”
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Farmer Focus – Tom Martin
I should begin with a declaration: I’m a fan of Groundswell. (I cheered the Cherry family when the event won the Food Innovation Award at the BBC Food & Farming Awards last December.) I’ve attended since it was little more than two blokes and a spaniel (OK, a few hundred people in year one), and over time I’ve graduated from a one-day guest to full-on festival devotee. I roll in on Tuesday evening before the first day to bag a camping spot and stay until breakfast on Friday morning. I pore over the programme; highlighting talks I want to attend and exhibitors I want to meet. I count the event as the annual highlight of my regenerative-farming journey.
Over the years, I’ve picked up a few tricks: showering mid-afternoon; hitting food vans in quiet windows; nibbling, Hobbit-style, four times a day; packing sunscreen (no mistaking the sunburn) and a wind cheater for cold evenings. And yes, I love it.
This year, I had extra buzz. I was hosting the final Big Top slot: the Groundswell 2025 Cheat Code Session, turning the mic to the audience to share their takeaways. I invited rural commentator Rob Yorke and vet-turned-farmer Claire Whittle to reflect from the stage, and then coaxed (encouraged, cajoled) the audience to share their highlights, lightbulb moments and even camping woes (spoiler: an invasion of earwigs!). Some were first-timers, others, seasoned pilgrims. Everyone reflected differently, from headliner talks to food van tips.
Yes, people came for the headliners — but left talking about the side shows. Dirt to Soil author, Gabe Brown, was deeply inspiring; the then-DEFRA secretary, Steve Reed, was bold in showing up (if at times delusional); and Prince William’s appearance remained a delightful surprise. But for me, the small conversations and fringe sessions lingered longest.
One such session in the Soil Tent — a more modest space — was on Measuring Food Quality, Nutrition & Health. Dr David Unwin spoke passionately about the outcomes of prioritising diet vs medical intervention. He told the audience that the average taxpayer carries a £7,000 burden for the health costs of junk food:
“Cheap food is actually expensive when you take account of health.”
I left feeling a bit alarmed — but also inspired to tend not just my fields, but my own health. It struck me that farms are, in many ways, expressions of ourselves: they reflect our ethos, our sense of worth and our commitments to community and land.
Another unexpected highlight was a session called Couples Therapy, in which two farming couples unpacked their highs and woes, offering practical advice on navigating work and life together. In a world that puts so much emphasis on technical solutions, it felt refreshing (and essential) to talk about relational foundations.
On the bigger stage, I also caught a panel hosted by The Food Programme’s Sheila Dillon with Hodmedod’s Josiah Meldrum and, in his unvarnished manner, Henry Dimbleby talking excitedly about beans and pulses as a tonic for the national diet and agricultural rotation alike:
“We need to invent a pill to make people fall in love with beans.”
Meanwhile, Professor Tim Lang’s talk on the looming possibility of “polycrisis”— the idea that multiple system failures may cascade — was a wake-up call. The takeaway: other nations are better prepared; we’ll have to catch up fast.
A quick scan of the programme reinforces what Groundswell has always promised: soil health and regenerative principles are central, but the event also embraces nature integration (biodiversity, habitats), innovation and tech, supply chains and market structures, policy and land use, resilience and adaptation — and this year especially, narrative, culture and wellbeing.
What’s interesting is how the festival itself mirrors this: it’s not simply a technical expo but a holistic gathering that bridges ecology, farming, economics, social change, culture, health —and the everyday lives of people who farm. It speaks to transition — not just in methods, but in worldview.
I was especially pleased to see a thread — shared by Steve Holloway in his critique Groundswell Isn’t Perfect — But It’s Asking the Right Questions — that resonated deeply with what I saw. He writes:
“One of the main jabs is that Groundswell isn’t based on hard science…Actually, it’s ahead of the science. What we are seeing, time and again, is farmers sharing consistent improvements: better structure, better water retention, reduced inputs and more resilient crops.” SFS
He acknowledges that some cynics seize on the lack of neat trials and label the movement “unscientific”, but counters forcefully that complex ecological systems don’t always yield simple variables. He argues that farmers today are often ahead of the science — testing, observing, iterating — and that seeing biological and structural improvement repeatedly across farms is hard evidence in its own right. Some will critique that view; I believe it’s a vital and true perspective. Groundswell may not be perfect, but it’s a space where experimentation, critique, and curiosity are alive — and that is more essential than having every answer tomorrow.
With over 200 sessions representing perhaps 150+ hours of teaching, conversations, demonstrations and panels, the festival feels like many conferences in one compressed two-day span. And yet, what stays with me isn’t just the content — it’s the space between sessions: the bar chats, the queues at food vans, the serendipitous meetings and the shared energy of ten thousand regenerative-minded farmers, thinkers, tinkerers.
If only the bar hadn’t blurred some late-night memories with cider haze. Still — I’ll be back, and next year I expect I’ll sweat, muse, plot and dream more than ever.
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Farmer Focus – Ben Martin
October 2025
I am sat here writing this and it’s raining; raining for what feels like the first time this autumn! But I am sat here content. Land work here in East Anglia is generally all up to date, and it’s finally a quieter week for most of the arable farming network.
2022 was the only time in my farm management career that I got all operations finished in October. Potatoes lifted ✓ Cereals all drilled ✓ Land all rolled ✓ Herbicides all sprayed ✓ Now, after a couple of hell-like autumns, 2025 has taken 2022’s title of being the most straightforward autumn (and all summer, if we are being honest) that I have experienced in farming.
It would be remiss of me not to mention how dry it’s been. We are just over half the average amount of rainfall to date this year.
It has been two years since I last wrote for Direct Driller. I was then one year post-leaving full-time employment and still exploring paths to take. I can now confidently say I have found a balance where I am happier than I have been for a long time.
My working time is split nicely between building my business, Thrive In Farming, and carrying out operations on a 3,300ha arable business in West Suffolk — a split that works for me perfectly. I have always enjoyed hands-on farming, which I am still able to do, but having my own business as well gives me the flexibility I crave. There is no ceiling to what I can earn or achieve with it, and that is the most exciting element for me, compared to my previous employed life.
Farming-wise, over the past few months, it has been busy but relatively straightforward. Spring drilling was completed in perfect conditions in late February. I established 400ha of oats and barley with the 12m Condor drill into land that was cultivated the previous summer and sown with an over-winter cover crop. Doing that cultivation well ahead of winter is the key to this system and allows us to then direct drill in the spring and conserve moisture in the seedbed.
Combinable harvest started on the 26th of June, this being the earliest start to a harvest that I have ever been involved in. With land being cleared early, this gave us a fantastic window to get summer catch crops drilled. The 12m Avatar did this with ease into extremely dry seedbeds; however, it was several weeks and well into August before these catch crops got going.
OSR was sown for the first time in a few years; this was all mixed with some companions. Fifty per cent found some moisture and got away. A quick decision was made not to persevere with the very poorly emerged crop, and this was turned around and drilled with WC triticale.
Autumn drilling was carried out with three drills: the Condor, Avatar and a new Horsch Finer, the latter doing most of the drilling into cultivated ground. Having the large tine drill and disc drill, complemented with the mounted tine drill, meant we were always on top of drilling and could do 200ha days when needed — which was not that often this autumn, if truth be told! But it’s reassuring that the capacity is there when needed!
The Claydon drill made an appearance towards the end of drilling, to establish 70ha of wheat following sugar beet. A quick pass with the carrier to level things and then straight in with the Claydon was all that was needed after the beet was lifted in fantastic early conditions.
So now that field work is nearly all wrapped up (there is about 60ha of wheat to do after the next beet lift), my focus turns to my recruitment and retainment work. I have worked with some fantastic farm businesses over the past two years, finding them good people to fill important roles and helping them to keep great people.
I am very bullish about the fact that I firmly believe there are lots of amazing jobs on farms around the UK AND there are lots of very skilled and exciting people out there that want to have careers on farms. What I am trying hard to do is connect these people and businesses — something which I think has been needed for a while now.
Staying with the theme of this publication, over the past 18 months, I’ve helped fill two roles centred around supporting farm businesses as they transition to regenerative farming systems. Both were taken on by highly talented and driven women who are already making a huge impact on their farms. It’s brilliant to see forward-thinking farms investing in people who can help drive change from the soil up!
Other exciting things on the timeline for this winter…
- Attending my first OFC. I have been kindly invited to be part of a panel which will discuss Skills & Opportunities in the Food & Farming Sector.
- Launching a brand-new network aimed specifically at farm staff. My goals are to bring people together and build a community where farm staff can develop, learn and lean on each other (and me!).
- Building on the fun I had over summer with sharing recipes and meal ideas from my tractor cab — look out for a recipe ebook that will bring together my (and invited others’) ideas for simple, high-protein recipes.
Despite the dry weather making things feel straightforward for operations this summer and autumn, it has still felt like a very drawn-out affair. The early harvest and lack of wet days have meant working hours haven’t been crazy, but at the same time things seem to have just carried on ticking over — if that makes sense?! R&R should now be at the forefront of most people’s minds. I, for one, am looking forward to getting back into my winter routine: more dog walks, more family time and more time focused on doing the things I love outside of farming!
Take care
Ben
IG – @thriveinfarming
Linkedin – Ben Martin
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The four weaknesses of ergot
Jason Pole, AHDB Technical Content Manager, explains how knowing what makes the ergot pathogen tick can help target management to reduce disease pressure, limit crop infection and keep clean grain clean.
Ergot (Claviceps purpurea) grows in and replaces grain with its own fungal tissues, which eventually form a hard, purple-black sclerotium (with a white interior) known as an ergot. They grow up to 2 cm long and can be easily spotted in infected ears and grain.
Although the disease has little impact on cereal yields, ergots are associated with large amounts of mycotoxins (alkaloids) that are highly toxic when ingested (by humans and livestock). This is why there are contractual limits in place for ergot by weight for feed grain and zero tolerance for all other grain in GB.
In 2022, the EU implemented stricter levels for specific cereals and products traded in the EU (which also covers Northern Ireland). It introduced maximum levels (MLs) for ergot alkaloids for the first time, which can be detected in grain with no visible ergot symptoms and provide a tougher test for grain quality. With potential for further restrictions in GB, we need to keep ahead of the challenge.
As for any crop disease, seasonal pressures ebb and flow. Harvest 2024 crops contended with some very cool and wet periods that promoted spore production and prolonged the flowering period (making infection more likely) with numerous reports of ergot in grain. In contrast, the widespread hot and dry conditions have helped keep ergot infection down this year. Ergot’s impact on harvest 2025 crops will be assessed as part of our long-term project, which has monitored key contaminants in post-intake grain samples (wheat, barley and oats) and co-products (wheatfeed and oatfeed) since the mid-1980s.
Last autumn, we commissioned a rapid review of ergot management evidence (AHDB Research Review 102) to fine-tune our guidance for farmers. The ADAS-led project identified four key management strategies targeted at various points in the ergot life cycle.
Ergot life cycle
- Over the winter, ergots stay dormant in the soil or on crop debris (ergots may also be in drilled seed).
- In the spring and summer (after a period of cool/vernalisation), ergots near the soil surface (<5 cm deep) germinate and produce mushroom-shaped, spore-bearing structures (called stroma).
- The stroma heads feature asci-containing perithecia, which contain (sexual) ascospores.
- The structure ejects the ascospores, which are carried on the wind (most travel less than 20m from the spore source).
- When these primary spores land on open flowers of susceptible cereals and grasses, they germinate and penetrate the stigma hairs.
- Fungal hyphae grow down into the ovary.
- In the ovary, the fungus produces a soft, white hyphal mass and secondary (asexual) spores (conidia) encased in a sweet-smelling, sticky secretion – commonly referred to as honeydew (which can promote the development of moulds).
- Honeydew attracts insects that carry conidia to other open flowers, where further infection can occur (rain-splash and physical contact can also spread spores).
- Infected seed is replaced by a relatively large, protruding ergot (the process takes about two weeks), which may fall to the ground (and become dormant over the winter) or be retained in the ear and harvested with healthy grain.
The four ergot management strategies
1. Reduce initial inoculum
The first step is to monitor fields and margins for ergots to determine the initial risk level. The second step is to reduce the amount of ergot and its viability to limit the production of primary spores.
You may need to be prepared to use metal in high-risk fields to bury ergots to a depth of at least 5 cm. Although ploughing is best, minimum tillage is more effective than direct drilling. Once ergots have been driven down the soil profile, you should avoid cultivation in the following year to avoid them resurfacing. Typically, ergots remain viable in the soil for one to three years.
To avoid introducing new ergots to the field, it is important to clean machinery after working in infected fields and to use high quality, clean seed. Either use certified seed or clean, home-saved seed. Although there are some seed treatments that cite ergot suppression on their labels, they do not provide complete control. Additionally, there are no sprays authorised for ergot management in the UK.
2. Reduce infection risk
With primary spores minimised, the next step is to adapt the rotation to reduce infection events. In the highest-risk situations, consider growing a non-cereal crop or a less susceptible cereal crop. From least to most susceptible: oats (infection is rare), barley, wheat, triticale and rye. As for any crop, the usual techniques to get it off to a strong (and uniform) start and to maximise crop health are essential (eg appropriate crop protection and nutrition programmes).
Compared with some of the potentially yield-reducing foliar diseases, breeding for ergot avoidance or resistance has not been a key target for plant breeders and information on varietal risk is extremely limited. However, selecting varieties that have a short flowering period (note: late tillering and secondary tillering can extend the flowering period), a more closed flowering habit and a high pollen-shedding ability could help contribute to a reduction in ergot infection. Crops become resistant to infection a few days after fertilisation.
3. Reduce secondary spread
Grasses in your margins or grass weeds in your fields may become a source of secondary spores and spread of ergot. The full review report includes excellent details on the ergot risk associated with various grass species – either as weeds or components of margin seed mixtures. Of course, mowing or topping grasses regularly (if permitted) will also drive down ergot pressures, especially to prevent the infection of late cereal tillers at field edges. As black-grass flowers earlier than cereals, it is a key weed target for ergot management.
4. Reduce contamination
The final step is to know where ergot is in your fields (including margins) and to manage infected grain to keep clean crops clean:
- Harvest infected areas separately
- Segregate infected grain from other grain
- Clean equipment after harvesting infected grain
- Clean contaminated grain
- Update records to track higher-risk fields/areas
Field headlands and tramlines are often higher-risk areas (which tend to have plants with more susceptible late and secondary tillers).
Several methods can clean grain to some degree, including gravity separation (with or without an air screen cleaner) and mechanical sieves that remove foreign bodies. Grain colour sorting systems are also available, which are used mainly by processors and within central stores. As ergot fragments can be relatively small, it means cleaning may be only partially effective.
Further information
The ergot review was funded via a levy-payer-led commissioning process and developed with input from the Ergot Working Group, which is chaired by UK Flour Millers (UKFM). The full ergot guidance includes an assessment of the potential impact of each intervention, highlights areas of uncertainty and cites key research gaps.
Access the management strategies and review at ahdb.org.uk/ergot
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An Inversion Conversion?
Written by James Warne from Soil First Farming
Some of you may be aware that Steve has taken a small step back from running Soil First Farming in recent years. I have been left to steer the ship and try to keep the business true to its original aims. More recently, Paul has joined us, and between our relative youth, and inexperience, he and I have been pondering whether we are doing the right thing. Our research has led us to alternatives to no-till and Conservation Agriculture. In this brave new world, we have discovered cultivation and, in particular, ploughing. So much so, I decided to have a crack at it and enter our local ploughing match. This didn’t end well, with the tractor breaking down that morning before I had turned a furrow. Maybe this was the hand of our illustrious leader trying to tell me something…
Ploughing is the agricultural equivalent of a confident handshake: decisive, noisy and impossible to ignore. It demonstrates commitment to the soil, asserts human mastery over unruly nature and produces an unmistakable pattern of furrows that signal competence to neighbours, funding bodies and passing drones. Ploughing solves problems the moment they are named by creating a spectacularly obvious solution: turn everything over, bury the past and make the land look as if something significant has been done.
The first practical virtue of ploughing is its theatricality. Nothing raises spirits like a field transformed from disorderly green chaos or uncertain mud into neat, repetitive rows. That aesthetic clarity is essential in a world that values visible action over quiet, long-term repair. A ploughed field reads as progress in any weather. It is proof that someone showed up with heavy machinery and made a deliberate intervention, which comforts investors, satisfies inspectors and reassures anyone whose mental model of farming begins and ends with a tractor.
Ploughing is also wonderfully egalitarian in its approach to problems. If weeds exist, ploughing buries them. If crop residues linger, ploughing buries them. If soil has the audacity to be compacted or mixed with inconvenient stones, ploughing buries the memory of that problem under a new layer of rearranged dirt. Ploughing spares no one: weeds, pests, residue and historical evidence of neglect — all receive the same treatment. This wholesale erasure simplifies decision-making; there is no need to debate subtle soil chemistry when you can simply bury it and start again.
There is also a persuasive comfort in returning the soil to a predictable structure. The plough imposes a geometry that transforms an indecipherable ecosystem into a grid that humans can read, measure and sell. Once the field has been disciplined into straight lines, the rest of agricultural technology can perform without awkward improvisation. Efficiency is not just achieved, it is staged.
Ploughing excels at producing immediate, measurable outcomes. You can measure the depth of inversion, the area covered per hour by the tractor and the number of clods larger than your fist. Those metrics translate into quarterly reports and grant applications that celebrate measurable change. Ploughing makes success visible and auditable. It is the kind of activity for which photographs can be taken and drone footage commissioned, which is crucial for an era that rewards the spectacle of intervention as much as the long-term resilience it purports to create.
Ploughing is an excellent teacher of humility for soil. It communicates that humans can and will alter landscapes, that ancient organic layers are temporary and that the past can be rearranged with a hydraulically assisted shrug. For those who prefer solutions that do not require patience, ploughing offers the intoxicating satisfaction of immediate alteration. It is the fast-food option in a world of slow-cooked soils: convenient, efficient and undeniably filling in the short term.
Economically, ploughing makes a robust case. It allows predictable seed placement which, in turn, permits predictable yields under favourable conditions. Predictability is the currency of markets, and when yields can be confidently forecasted thanks to a disciplined seedbed, the farmer’s financial statements look neat. Ploughing also simplifies labour scheduling; it concentrates heavy work into a window where specialists can be hired, machines deployed, and the entire operation planned with military-like precision. Ploughing turns farming into a series of tasks with clear starts and ends, which financiers find comforting.
Critics will invoke slow processes, microbial communities and long-term carbon stocks, but ploughing offers a counterargument grounded in pragmatism. If the immediate goal is to establish an economic crop, suppress a problematic weed flush or satisfy contractual obligations, ploughing provides a reliable route to those ends. Long-term soil health is a worthy conversation, but it is one we can politely schedule after the harvest. Ploughing ensures the harvest happens at all.
Ploughing also has a philosophical charm. It treats the earth as a partner that sometimes needs firm direction. It is a visible negotiation between human intention and natural variability where human will, expressed through steel and horsepower, imposes order. This interplay is satisfying for those who prefer decisive gestures to diffuse stewardship. Ploughing affirms that humans can leave a mark that is both functional and unmistakably human-made.
Finally, ploughing is a story-maker. Furrowed fields are cinematic. They feature in literature, advertising and political rhetoric as metaphors for diligence, productivity and the moral clarity of turning the earth for food. Ploughing supplies images and language; it helps to build narratives of care, labour and continuity. The symbolic value of a freshly ploughed field often outweighs the slow accrual of intangible benefits that cannot be photographed for social media.
Ploughing is a great idea because it acts fast, looks decisive and provides measurable outcomes in a world that values visible proof of action. It flattens complexity into a manageable problem set, delivers immediate utility and satisfies both economic and cultural expectations. It honours a tradition with dramatic gestures and leaves behind a field that reads like a promise. Ploughing is not always the only option, but it is the one that makes the loudest, clearest statement: we worked the land, we prepared for tomorrow and we prefer certainty to nuance. Maybe we’re not onto something after all.
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The Fungus That Fights Back: Harnessing Soil Biology to Tackle Crop Disease
Based on a paper by Dr Gareth Thomas et al., Rothamsted Research, University of Exeter and University of Warwick — adapted for Direct Driller readers
Across the UK, farmers are dealing with one of the most stubborn and costly fungal problems in modern agriculture: Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. This soilborne disease causes white mould and stem rot in more than 800 plant species, including oilseed rape, potatoes, lettuce, beans, sunflowers and carrots. Once it gets into the soil, it can sit there quietly for years before striking again, often when conditions turn warm and damp.
Traditionally, fungicides have been the main line of defence. But as everyone in the industry knows, chemical options are becoming fewer and resistance is becoming more common. Farmers are being pushed to find new solutions that are both effective and sustainable. A new study from Rothamsted Research and its partners suggests that help may already be living right beneath our feet.
Meet Trichoderma – the farmer’s microscopic ally
Healthy soil is teeming with life, much of it invisible. Some of these organisms work in our favour, helping crops to take up nutrients, improve structure or fight off disease. Among the most useful are fungi from the genus Trichoderma, which have been studied for decades for their ability to suppress harmful fungi and stimulate root growth.
One particular strain, called Trichoderma hamatum GD12, originally isolated from a potato field in Devon, has shown a natural ability to stop Sclerotinia from growing. It doesn’t just compete for space or food; it actively shuts the pathogen down. Researchers wanted to find out how it does this and what makes it so effective. The answer, as it turns out, lies in chemistry — or more precisely, in smell.
How fungi talk — and fight
When soil fungi encounter each other underground, they do not just physically touch or compete for resources. They communicate using chemical signals. Some of those signals are volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, which can move through air spaces in the soil. These are the same kinds of compounds that give mushrooms their earthy smell or fresh grass its green scent.
The Rothamsted team grew Trichoderma hamatum GD12 and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum side by side in Petri dishes to recreate this underground interaction. After a week, they saw that the two fungi had reached a stalemate, with Trichoderma producing a clear yellow band of spores along the contact line. To find out what was happening, they captured the gases being released and analysed them using highly sensitive instruments.
The result was striking. When Trichoderma was grown on its own, it released a certain pattern of VOCs. But when it grew in the presence of Sclerotinia, the entire chemical profile changed. The fungus was clearly responding to the threat by producing a much more complex mix of airborne compounds, many of which are known to have antifungal properties. In effect, it was fighting back using smell.
The discovery of 1-octen-3-one
Among the dozens of compounds detected, one in particular caught the scientists’ attention: 1-octen-3-one. This chemical, which also gives mushrooms part of their aroma, turned out to be a potent antifungal agent. When tested on its own in laboratory conditions, it completely stopped Sclerotinia from growing. Even when diluted 100 times, it still prevented the fungus from developing.
Better still, the same compound also stopped the growth of several other major crop diseases, including Botrytis cinerea (grey mould), Pyrenopeziza brassicae (light leaf spot on oilseed rape), and Gaeumannomyces tritici (take-all in cereals). This suggests that the chemistry behind Trichoderma’s natural defence system may have far broader potential for crop protection.
When the fight begins
The researchers found that this chemical battle peaked about 17 days after the fungi were first introduced. That is when Trichoderma was most actively producing defensive volatiles. More than 30 compounds were identified in total, with over 20 appearing only when Trichoderma was confronting Sclerotinia. Some, such as 6-pentyl-2H-pyran-2-one (which smells faintly of coconut), are known to promote plant growth. Others, like 1-octen-3-one, were newly detected in this species and proved to be highly toxic to the pathogen.
This shows how complex and dynamic these interactions are. When the friendly fungus senses danger, it activates “silent” gene clusters that start producing a cocktail of natural chemicals. These can act as signals, repellents or weapons depending on the situation.
Production of VOCs in treatments of Trichoderma hamatum GD12 and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum co-culture treatments over the course of 24 days for three VOCs. Bars represent the peak area value of each VOC (± SD) (n = 3). Why this matters for UK farming
For British farmers facing growing disease pressure, this kind of research could point towards a new approach to crop protection. Volatile compounds travel easily through soil air spaces, which means they can influence pathogens even at a distance from plant roots. If these gases work the same way in field soils as they do in the lab, they could form the basis of a biological fumigant — a natural alternative to chemical sprays.
This fits well with the direction of travel for the industry. The Sustainable Farming Incentive’s new Integrated Pest Management (IPM) actions reward growers who reduce their dependence on synthetic products by using natural solutions. Encouraging beneficial microbes like Trichoderma could soon become part of how farms demonstrate IPM in practice.
The practical takeaways
There are several clear lessons that farmers can take from this research:
- Healthy soil biology is your first defence. Beneficial fungi like Trichoderma are part of the soil food web that naturally suppresses pathogens. Regular use of diverse cover crops, reduced tillage and organic amendments can help maintain this biology.
- Microbes work best in communities. The study showed that Trichoderma’s chemistry only fully switches on when it senses another fungus nearby. Diverse microbial systems seem to “wake up” defensive chemistry that stays dormant in sterile conditions.
- Natural chemistry could replace some synthetic inputs. Rather than relying on broad-spectrum fungicides, future disease management might use biological inoculants or soil conditioners that release protective volatiles.
- Field testing is the next step. While the laboratory results are exciting, the team now needs to confirm that the same protective effect happens in real soils, under changing weather and cropping conditions. They also need to ensure that the gases are safe for plants and do not affect beneficial species.
A fit with regenerative thinking
This kind of microbial defence is a good example of how regenerative farming and science can align. Instead of trying to kill every pathogen directly, the idea is to create resilient soils where natural biology does most of the work. Just as nitrogen-fixing bacteria reduce fertiliser needs, defensive fungi could one day reduce fungicide reliance.
For oilseed rape growers struggling with light leaf spot and Sclerotinia, or cereal growers facing take-all in continuous wheat, that is an appealing thought. Fewer chemical applications, lower costs and healthier soil biology all fit within the broader goals of regenerative systems.
Antifungal activities of selected VOCs on the growth of Sclerotinia sclerotiorum. S. sclerotiorum was incubated with selected VOCs at 45.5 μM doses and the inhibition rates were calculated relative to control plates (exposed to diethyl ether alone) after 3 days. Bars represent the mean mycelial area of S. sclerotiorum upon exposure to each VOC (± SD) (n = 3). Different letters indicate significant differences between treatments according to Tukey’s multiple comparisons test (p < 0.05). Y axis represents mycelial area (mm2). Still questions to answer
There are still challenges. Volatile compounds are, by definition, short-lived. Their effectiveness may depend on soil structure, temperature and moisture levels. Researchers also need to find out whether the same compounds can persist long enough to provide protection at field scale.
Another important point is selectivity. The compounds that kill Sclerotinia in the lab might also affect plant roots or other beneficial fungi if concentrations are too high. That is why glasshouse and small-plot field trials are planned before any potential products are developed.
But the concept — using microbial communication as a natural pest control system — is gaining momentum. It adds another layer to how we think about soil management, moving from simple “inputs and outputs” towards managing a living, communicating ecosystem.
A promising future beneath our boots
Imagine a future where a seed dressing doesn’t just coat the seed with a fungicide but instead encourages beneficial fungi to colonise the root zone and release protective volatiles when disease pressure builds. Or where compost and digestate inoculants are designed not just to feed microbes but to activate their natural chemical defences.
That may sound futuristic, but this research shows that the building blocks already exist. As Dr Gareth Thomas from Rothamsted explains:
“We’re learning that microbes in the soil aren’t silent passengers. They are constantly talking to each other, and those conversations can make the difference between a healthy crop and a disease outbreak. Our goal is to learn how to work with that chemistry rather than against it.”
For farmers, that is an encouraging message. The answer to managing some of our toughest crop diseases might not come from the next synthetic spray, but from understanding and supporting the life already in the soil.
Key points for farmers
- Sclerotinia sclerotiorum infects more than 800 crops and can survive in soil for over 8 years.
- The beneficial soil fungus Trichoderma hamatum GD12 releases natural antifungal gases when it detects Sclerotinia.
- The key compound, 1-octen-3-one, completely halted the pathogen in lab tests and also suppressed light leaf spot, grey mould and take-all.
- Researchers aim to test these compounds in soil and field conditions to see if they can reduce fungicide use in practical farming systems.
- Building and supporting soil biology through regenerative practices could help unlock these natural defences on farm.
Read the full paper here.
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Farmer Focus – Clive Bailye
From the Field to Westminster: A Year That Changed Farming
It’s been about 18 months since my last contribution to Direct Driller, and during that time, a lot has changed — both on my farm and in British agriculture. I’ve always tried to be open and honest in these pieces. They’re not polished PR, not a government briefing and not a sales pitch for some new magic bullet. They’re simply the reflections of a working farmer who has spent most of his life in fields rather than meeting rooms.
This time, though, it’s been harder to put pen to paper. Not because there hasn’t been anything to write about, but because the past year and a half has felt like a whirlwind; politically, personally and practically. It’s been a year of frustration, unexpected activism and stubborn resilience. And, if I’m honest, it’s been one of the most pivotal periods of my farming career.
The turning point was late October 2024, when Rachel Reeves delivered her Budget. For most people outside the industry, it was just another political speech. But for family farms like mine, it was a seismic moment. With a few lines of policy, she fundamentally altered the landscape for succession, inheritance and the security of multi-generational businesses that have shaped the British countryside for centuries.
Agricultural Property Relief (APR) and Business Property Relief (BPR) are not obscure technicalities to us; they are the backbone of how farms survive from one generation to the next. Those reliefs aren’t “tax loopholes” as some columnists like to sneer. They’re the recognition that farms are not just businesses but working, living assets — often asset-rich but cash-poor — that need multigenerational stability over decades, not just this year’s balance sheet.
When Reeves announced those changes, it felt like the rug had been pulled from under us. Years of careful planning; not just spreadsheets, but conversations with accountants, lawyers and most importantly, my own family, suddenly looked fragile. What had felt like a steady, if challenging, path into the future now had a massive political faultline running through the middle of it.
I’ve never set out to be a campaigner; I’m a farmer. I’m at my best in a tractor cab or a shed full of machinery, not waving a placard or giving media interviews. But when those announcements landed, something inside me shifted. It wasn’t just about our own family business, it was about what this meant for countless others across the country who quietly keep the nation fed and its landscape managed.
And so, almost without intending to, I found myself helping to organise a national protest. A few of us, farmers like Oliver Harrison, Andrew Ward, Martin Williams and James Mills, started talking and then planning on forums and in WhatsApp groups. What began as a loose conversation turned into one of the largest farmer-led demonstrations in a generation.
On 19 November 2024, we stood outside Downing Street with tens of thousands of others. Farmers, families, contractors, young people, old hands, all with one thing in common: they’d had enough of being ignored. For years, the sector has been used as a political pawn, talked about in manifestos and campaigns but rarely listened to. That day, Westminster had to listen.
I spoke to journalists who had never set foot on a farm in their lives. I gave interviews, sometimes from the cab of a tractor, sometimes on a freezing London street or a brightly lit TV studio. I wasn’t speaking for myself alone, I was trying to articulate what thousands were feeling: that this policy wasn’t just a tax tweak, it was a direct threat to the fabric of farming families up and down the country.
While all this was going on, the farm didn’t stop. Crops still needed planting, spraying, harvesting. The rain, or lack of it, didn’t care what was being debated in Westminster.
If I look back over the last 18 months on the farm, the word that sums it up best is “difficult”. We had to put a lot of planned investment on hold. When there’s that level of political uncertainty hanging over your head, it’s not the time to go signing off big machinery purchases or breaking ground on new infrastructure. Everything became about resilience, efficiency and buying ourselves breathing space. The knock-on effects of this are becoming clear, with several machinery dealerships seemingly the first victims of Rachel Reeves plans for “growth”.
However, that didn’t mean standing still. In fact, some of our best bits of innovation happened because we had to rethink things. We leaned harder into the SFI (Sustainable Farming Incentive) options, adding direct drilling and precision farming options to our existing agreement, just days before the scheme was closed in yet another political blow to our industry. We pushed further down the road of herbicide reduction, running trials with the Horsch hybrid system, tined weeding, inter-row hoeing and crimping cover crops. We trialled different rotations, including swapping out some winter barley for spelt, aimed to see if we could potentially open doors to higher value niche markets versus trying to compete on global commodity markets with countries that have far lower production costs and more farmer-friendly politicians.
Like many farms, we also battled through some brutal weather swings. Drought in our part of England was reminiscent of 1976. Yields were under pressure, prices were at a 20-year low and inflation pushed costs higher, meaning margins were tighter than ever. But that’s where regenerative principles and no-till systems came into their own. When the weather is extreme, having resilient soil structure is not some theoretical buzzword; it’s the difference between getting a crop in or staring at dust, and that lower fixed-cost structure I’ve been laser-focused on for 18 years now becomes the difference between profit and loss.
I’ve spoken before about the practical side of farming, but what hit me hardest this time wasn’t the work itself, it was the mental load. Running a farm is challenging enough when you know the rules of the game. When those rules are ripped up overnight, it adds a weight that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it.
This isn’t just about balance sheets and business plans; this is about identity, family and legacy. My two boys are growing up in this world. Every farmer who has the next generation in mind knows that this isn’t just our job, it’s something we hope to pass on. When political decisions threaten that, it gnaws at you every single day.
There were weeks when I spent more time on the phone with journalists, MPs and campaigners than I did running my business. That’s not what I signed up for when I started farming. But I felt, like so many others did, that if we didn’t step up now, we’d regret it later.
The scale of the protest and the outrage around the policy shift did something no one quite expected: it put farming back in the media spotlight. Not just in farming papers, but on national TV and radio. Suddenly, journalists were interested. Suddenly, farming wasn’t just a quaint rural backdrop to a lifestyle segment; it was a serious national issue. We may not have got the catastrophic shift to APR and BPR changed — yet — but that increased public awareness of what’s behind those supermarket shelves is both welcome and long overdue. If anyone feels their train ticket to London last November was a waste of money, they need to consider the value of that public support and its power to potentially change the future of UK agriculture. Media and political doors opened after the 19th of November and we are working hard to make the most of the many opportunities that may bring.
I’ll be honest, it was uncomfortable at times. Farmers are doers by nature, not talkers. Most of us don’t crave the limelight. But the silver lining was clear: people started to listen, and the public response was overwhelming. We saw support on a scale I haven’t experienced before. That matters, because political change often follows cultural change. If the public backs farmers, politicians eventually have to.
Where does that leave us now? Not in some fairytale where everything’s been fixed. Reeves hasn’t reversed course. At least, not yet. But the pressure is on, and more importantly, farming has found its voice again.
On the farm, we’re pressing ahead with what we can control: better soil, smarter rotations, less waste and trying to stay financially lean without giving up on ambition. We’re planning, cautiously but firmly, for the future.
We’ve also learnt something important: resilience isn’t just about the soil. It’s about the people too. The way farmers rallied together last winter was something special. It reminded me of what this industry can do when it stops grumbling in isolation and starts speaking with one voice.
I’m also more convinced than ever that regenerative approaches aren’t a fad. They’re part of how we weather these storms — political, financial and environmental. This past year hasn’t been a distraction from farming; it’s shown me just how intertwined farming and politics have become. Whether we like it or not, we can’t ignore Westminster. But nor should Westminster ignore us.
So yes, it’s been 18 months since my last article and, in that time, I’ve become an accidental campaigner, a reluctant media spokesperson, and somehow, an even prouder farmer.
This has been a year of uncertainty, but also a year of finding our collective voice. If there’s a positive in all this, it’s that farmers are no longer sitting quietly at the back of the room. We’re at the table now. And once you’ve sat at the table, you don’t go back to the corner.
For me, this has been a reminder that what we do in the fields every day is inseparable from the decisions made in Parliament. I’d rather be out drilling wheat than talking tax policy, but if that’s what it takes to secure the future of this farm, and others like it, then so be it.
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When Farming Meets Gardening: How Regeneration Took Root in My Garden
By Donna Harvey-Bailye
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been happiest with soil under my nails and a design plan in my head. Gardening has always been my creative outlet; a place where I can paint with plants, sculpt with texture and choreograph the seasons. My large farmhouse garden in Staffordshire has long been both my canvas and my sanctuary, where I’ve hosted open garden days and shared the joy of colour, form and planting design with other gardeners many times.
But recently, my garden, and I, have undergone something of a transformation. Visitors still come to chat about structure, shade and the art of planting combinations, but now they’re just as likely to find me talking animatedly about soil health, compost layering, worms and microbial life. The shift has been subtle but profound, from simply designing gardens on the land to working with the land.
And for that, I have Farming to thank.
Being married to a regenerative agriculture farmer has its perks, and its lessons. Over the past two decades, I’ve watched him restore health to tired soils, bring back biodiversity to the farm and turn traditional farming wisdom on its head. Instead of fighting nature, he works alongside it, protecting the soil with cover crops, building fertility naturally and encouraging a thriving ecosystem both above and below the ground.
Somewhere between his talk of root structures and soil microbes, something clicked. I realised that what he was doing on hundreds of acres, I could try on a smaller, leafier scale, right here in my own back garden. That’s how my no-dig journey began.
And here’s something I’ve come to believe quite strongly: farmers have a huge amount of expertise to offer horticulture. They understand soil health, water management, nutrient cycles and the balance of ecosystems in a way that gardeners can learn so much from. The regenerative movement in farming isn’t just transforming agriculture, it’s offering a blueprint for a more sustainable, life-giving kind of gardening, too.
The principle of no-dig gardening is disarmingly simple: stop disturbing the soil. Instead of turning it over each season, you build on top, layering compost, mulch and organic matter, allowing the worms and microorganisms to do the work for you.
The science behind it is fascinating. Beneath our feet lies a vast underground community; bacteria, fungi and other organisms forming delicate networks that help plants access nutrients, retain water and resist disease. Every time we dig, we disrupt those networks. When we leave them intact, soil life flourishes, and so, too, does everything that grows above it.
The results have been nothing short of extraordinary. My vegetables are thriving, my flower borders have more vigour and the garden seems to hum with new energy.
The Beauty of Imperfection
Of course, the no-dig approach requires a little change in mindset. I used to pride myself on immaculate borders and well-defined edges; the kind of garden that looks like it’s had its hair done before company arrives. Now, I find beauty in the slightly wilder look: a bit of mulch here, a fallen leaf there, and yes, even a fine selection of weeds.
In fact, I’ve learned to see weeds differently. The odd nettle or dandelion isn’t a failure of tidiness but a sign of balance. They support pollinators, signal healthy soil and contribute to the garden’s ecological diversity. When visitors at my open garden days point out a stray weed I might once have pulled out in embarrassment, I now smile and say, “That one’s here on purpose.”
And nature has rewarded me for loosening my grip. The increase in wildlife has been astonishing. Birds, bees, butterflies and beetles have returned in abundance, drawn by this symbiotic system where everything supports everything else. The garden has become not just a designed space, but a living, breathing ecosystem.
Growing with the Garden
No-dig gardening has changed more than just my soil; it’s changed the way I think. It’s less about imposing order and more about fostering relationships: between plants and soil, between gardener and nature. I used to garden for the flowers; now I garden for the fungi. (Don’t tell the roses.)
The regenerative movement that began in the paddock has crept into my heart, and my compost heap. What started as an experiment has become a philosophy. Every time I spread a new layer of mulch or spot a happy earthworm wriggling by, I feel a little more connected to the land, and to the lessons it’s teaching me.
So yes, I’ve caught the bug, and now I can happily proclaim that I am a regenerative horticulture gardener married to a regenerative agriculture farmer. I am proud of that.
Donna Harvey-Bailye 
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How Soil Testing is Evolving into ‘Predictive Agronomy’
By Dan Crummett from No-Till farmer USA
Takeaways
- Look deeper than N, P and K and micros for better ROI on inputs.
- Treat the soil as a living system and not merely an anchor for plants.
- Invest in integrated “complete” soil analysis with labs capable of timely, precision testing.
Big changes are under way in the soil testing industry as digital technology demonstrates the importance of viewing farm fields as a living system — requiring more than a yearly grocery list of plant nutrients.
No-tillers and strip-tillers take soil biology seriously and many of them are looking beyond traditional soil tests to boost soil health while reducing input expenses. Typically, that leads to investing in data-driven soil analysis, which includes an integrated look at chemical, biological and physical properties of soil — not just plant nutrient availability.
While still important, the days of traditional soil sampling for nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P), potassium (K) sulfur (S) and micronutrients as a single agronomic best management practice are rapidly fading, experts say. What’s taking its place, however, promises far better precision nutrient management and timely, actionable in-season decision-making information.
Testing for Function
Colorado State Univ. soil health researcher Lexi Firth is well acquainted with the new face of soil testing in her work with soil carbon and water relationships. She coins a kitchen metaphor to explain the difference in traditional soil testing and what she calls “testing for function.”
“Traditional soil tests are like checking your pantry for how many pounds of flour you may have, but not whether the oven is on or who’s going to make the dinner tonight,” Firth observes. “Testing for function goes beyond producing an inventory of ingredients and seeks to answer how those ingredients will be blended, by whom and how long cooking will take. It can also give you clues of what to expect.
“The tests we’ve used for years tell us how much phosphorus, potassium or nitrogen was in the soil when the sample was pulled. But they don’t answer the question of, ‘Is the system actually working?’ That would involve determining: Is the soil cycling nutrients efficiently? Is it holding water? Is biology alive and actively working to break down organic matter?
“Testing for function by examining chemical, biological and physical soil properties provides an integrated look at soil as a system and how well it’s performing,” she adds.
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Learning to Ask the Right Questions
In visiting with Mike Evans, Lexi Firth, Clint Frese and Kris Kinnaird, No-Till Farmer compiled the following list of curated questions and answers for growers to ask if they are interested in taking the next step into predictive agronomy or “testing for function.”
- What problems am I seeking to solve? Problems ranging from compaction, water holding capacity/infiltration, yield barriers, input costs, disease and pest control all have likely roots in soil health relationships. Seek advice from others using high-tech sampling for suggested resources.
- What does it cost? Buying in to high-tech integrated soil testing likely carries a higher cost than traditional soil tests, which mainly identify nutrient content. And, like other investments the cost-benefit ratio and timely ROI figures will be specific to individual operations. For a large grower who can save $20-$30 per acre on fertilizer, the ROI for advanced testing could be easily amortized. Frese says his Illinois operation was spending $1.40 per acre overall for traditional soil testing, but with the integrated approach he’s spending just over $2.
- What lab do I use? Firth recommends laboratories certified by the Soil Science Society of America’s North American Proficiency Testing (NAPT) program.
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When testing for function, Firth looks at soil chemistry (available through traditional soil sampling) to know what raw materials are available. She also looks at biological indicators, which in terms of function, will tell her how well the soil is cycling nutrients.
“A measure of microbial respiration shows how active your biology is, and a strong burst of respiration indicates how busy your microbes are breaking down nutrients,” she explains.
Caption: ALL IN ONE. Integrating on-farm digital data with artificial intelligence and new laboratory tests lets growers stay ahead of challenges, reduce inputs and bin optimum yields, which will benefit growers and the agronomists who are working with them, experts say. Source: Microgen
She also looks for physical indicators (soil structure), which tell how well the soil is handling oxygen and water movement through pore spaces to gauge water infiltration, moisture retention and aggregate stability.
“This information shows whether soil pores are open, and water and oxygen can circulate,” Firth explains. “A soil that seals over quickly and doesn’t hold structure well is going to struggle to support root growth. It’s also going to struggle to support an active biological community, which again is connected to nutrient cycling.
“All these things combined give me clues about management decisions down the line and what might be helpful to optimize crop development,” she adds, noting the integrated soil sampling/analysis approach is part of a growing move to “predictive agronomy.”
Predictive Agronomy
Firth says traditional soil testing provides a “still snapshot” of plant nutrients in the soil, whereas predictive agronomy can provide a “time-lapse video” of likely in-season growing conditions.
It does this using digital data from many real-time soil and weather sensors, historic chemical samples, soil inventory maps, yield maps, satellite imagery, cropping history and historic rainfall and temperature data — all examined with the help of artificial intelligence (AI).
“AI is useful as a tool to find patterns in huge piles of data and then using those patterns to make predictions,” Firth explains.
As an example, an AI model for predictive agronomy would be created by feeding millions of data points from the above-mentioned sources into the system so it can learn which combinations of variables leads to high nutrient availability and which leads to deficiencies.
“Once we train an AI model it can use the data and make a prediction about what’s likely to happen next,” she says.
“For no-till farmers this can be a very powerful tool. In a conventional tillage system nutrients are incorporated and mixed and the results are quite predictable,” she explains.” In no-till systems, nutrients tend to be more stratified, and their release depends heavily on residue breakdown or soil moisture microbial activity.
“By knowing rainfall patterns and soil moisture conditions, predictive agronomy can help a no-tiller anticipate nutrient flushes or shortages rather than waiting to see visible signs of crop stress.”
A Grower’s Perspective
Using emerging technology for ever-more-precise soil and water testing, Jon Abrahamson discovered his irrigation groundwater was working against him on his 1,900 acres of watered no-till corn and soybeans.
Abrahamson’s 25-year history of 100% no-till near Axtell in south-central Nebraska includes adoption of both variable rate (VR) planting and dry fertilizer applications with calcium, lime and sulfur products, along with in-furrow phosphorus, portions of his expected nitrogen needs, and micronutrients applied 2X2 on the planter. Generally, the remainder of his nutrient program is applied through sprinkler fertigation.
HEALTHY AND PRODUCTIVE. Rapid advancements in technology allows farmers to now test for the factors that will help provide growers a healthy soil that can defend itself from pathogens and produces healthier plants resilient to weather and disease stresses, says Clint Frese, a founder of Calibrate Agronomy. Source: John Dobberstein
“We’d been using many of the proven tools for optimum yields and precision nutrient management and were still raising good crops, but several years ago it just seemed like we were hitting a plateau,” Abrahamson recalls. That’s when he began working with other high-intensity farmers in the area looking for clues to better yields and lower inputs.
This included Jared Cook from Idaho who was familiar with poor irrigation water quality in his sugarbeet and potato production; Mike Evans in Iowa, and Clint Frese, an Illinois strip-tiller and no-tiller. All were interested in making their operations more productive by leveraging emerging technology to reduce inputs.
“They introduced me to new testing methods and laboratory services that almost immediately helped me reduce nitrogen inputs for my crops,” Abrahamson says.
Evans, Frese and Cook eventually formed Calibrated Agronomy, an Iowa-based data-driven, farmer-focused company using new technologies that increasingly offer predictive agronomy benefits through various laboratories and new in-field sensor technology.
Working with Cook, Abrahamson employed a rapid soil test to compare soil performance with his irrigation vs. soil and water known to have no counteractive qualities. He found his untreated irrigation water was tying up P and other nutrients.
When P levels aren’t at capacity, crop plants suffer from the deficiency and other nutrients also become less available.
“Once I began treating my irrigation water, the available nitrogen levels climbed sufficiently to allow me to apply less N without affecting yields,” Abrahamson explains. “Using untreated water we were getting single-digit P levels under the irrigation system, but on dryland areas and un-watered corners near our pivots, the levels were in the 20-40 ppm range. It just made sense to me to check the water, and the advanced testing identified the problem.”
Beyond the rapid soil test, over the next several years Abrahamson adopted additional precision testing and in-field soil sensors that are now saving him money.
The year after he solved the water issues, he started using SoilTech Wireless’s Beacon, a tool Cook is using in his work with potatoes, Abrahamson says.
“It’s a loaf-of-bread-sized unit we buried in our fields that measures soil mineralization in real time to let you know when you’re getting a flush of microbial activity and increasing nitrogen levels.”
Abrahamson is also using plant sap analysis as part of his adoption of high-tech technology aimed at optimizing plant and soil relationships.
Sap analysis measures the active liquids in plant vascular tissues (xylem and phloem) and provides a nearly real-time assessment of the nutrients available at the time of sample. In Abrahamson’s sap tests, the fluids are collected with linear pressure to preserve the leaf and cell structure and give a picture of what is active in the plant at sampling.
“Standard soil testing labs are not going to disappear, but their role will likely change…”
“The weekly sap test has helped me monitor the dry calcium we apply,” Abrahamson says. “We’re able to quantify it in nearly real-time and can quickly be reactive within 2-3 weeks instead of waiting for plant stress to become visible.
“To me traditional soil tests are old technology. With the rapid soil test and weekly sap tests, it’s like looking out your windshield, while a tissue test is like looking in the rear-view mirror, and a standard soil test is like looking at your fuel gauge.”
Future Face of Soil Testing
Abrahamson likely won’t be returning to a traditional soil sample and a paper nutrient RX, but Firth, Frese and Evans say traditional visits to the field to pull core samples and send them for analysis aren’t going away. They may just become less frequent or collected by robots.
“Standard soil testing labs are not going to disappear, but their role will likely change,” Firth says. “The physical tests we do now are going to be used more for ground-truthing and calibration checks for the emerging AI-based systems, but the depth of analysis you’ll do with these legacy tests will certainly be scaled back in the next 10 years.
“I envision integrated soil testing to become a ‘dashboard’ of dynamic sensor-based data on which growers can monitor real-time soil chemistry and biological activity, compared with laboratory spectral analysis of field-collected soil samples — providing a ‘living system’ that you monitor throughout the season rather than generating a chemical analysis report on a piece of paper.”
Firth explains digital systems are only as good as the data they’re fed, however, and field soil samples likely will remain important to provide baseline data as well as on-going information to teach and calibrate virtual and precision systems.
Kris Kinnaird, director of farm and retail growth for FarmersEdge, in Canada, agrees, noting his firm developed an AI-assisted Virtual Soil Testing (VST) product and for about 8 years has been fielding it on millions of acres. Still, he says traditional soil sampling chores are at the heart of baseline operations — even for growers who depend upon advanced modeling VST to “fill in the gaps” on some fields while they actively sample others.
“Traditional soil tests are like checking your pantry for how many pounds of flour you may have, but not whether the oven is on, or who’s going to make the dinner tonight…”
FarmersEdge has customers in Canada, the U.S. and Brazil using the VST product to take massive amounts of information and turn it into insight that drives a decision.
“We apply different growth stage disease and pest models in our platform, along with satellite imagery, weather data and other remote sensing information and use that with soil data we’ve collected to give growers highly-correlated data to yield prediction.
“As growers use it, they become more comfortable relying on it even when the acres on which it is used were not sampled for the immediate season,” he say. “Likely they were able to spend their soil-collecting and lab expense budgets on other acres of their operation to either scale up acres farmed, or to hold the line on soil analysis costs.”
Testing for Soil Health
Kinnaird, himself a southwestern Manitoba small-grains producer, says the company has farmer and agronomist clients who’ve seen return on investment upwards of $30 per acre with VST and complete soil analysis.
Firth says with rapid adoption of complete analysis and AI-assisted virtual systems, crop consultants will remain important in the future as soil-testing evolves. Kinnaird, Frese and Evans agree, saying the new technologies are rapidly become part of the interaction between crop advisors and growers, with advisors explaining how the avalanche of data can be best used.
Evans says the launch of Calibrated Agronomy in 2024 was based on belief growers can benefit from the newer technologies to be more predictive and capable of realizing, with some certainty, what may occur in fields before problems become obvious.
Frese notes the principal members in the new company have experience in reduced tillage, reduced fertility, no-till, strip-till, cover crops and the different management of each of those practices as well as work with biological inputs.
“We’ve pulled every soil test for a biological, nutrient or chemistry perspective that exists to enter the predictive agronomy business,” Frese says. “Technology now allows us to test for the factors that will help provide growers a healthy soil that can defend itself from pathogens and produces healthier plants resilient to weather and disease stresses.
“Only 8-10 years ago such analysis was financially out of reach for growers who might want to determine different soil-borne microbes in their fields. Today, however, it’s cost-effective we can identify the genetics and size of various populations of each in a biological profile.
Frese says the biological profile should be of particular interest to no-tillers — particularly those who think because they aren’t disturbing the soil they are building their ecosystem and improving soil health with annual cover crops.
“We see many no-tillers incorporating cereal rye as a cover crop which is very likely helping them improve their soil aggregate stability and water-holding capacity,” he notes. “We’re finding however, without a diverse crop rotation or biological inputs we can never outcompete some of the pathogens that are building up in those soils. They really need to know the basic pathogen profile of their fields.
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Unlocking the Genes Behind Wheat Growth and Grain Size
Adapted for Direct Driller readers based on a paper by Dr Stephen Pearce from Rothamsted Research and the Czech Institute of Experimental Botany
If there’s one crop that keeps British farming grounded, it’s wheat. From milling and feed markets to exports, it sits at the centre of most arable rotations. Yet after decades of breeding and agronomy improvements, yield progress seems to have slowed, and the question facing the industry is clear: where will the next gains come from?
A team of scientists at Rothamsted Research believe part of the answer lies deep within the plant’s own biology. Their latest findings shed new light on how wheat controls its height and grain development — and how small changes in key genes could help breeders fine-tune yield and plant structure in the years ahead.
The growth hormone story
The work, published in The Journal of Experimental Botany (link for the full paper at the end), focuses on a set of natural plant hormones called gibberellins (GAs). These hormones act like growth regulators inside the plant, influencing everything from stem elongation to seed development. If the name sounds familiar, it’s because gibberellins are the same hormones that synthetic plant growth regulators (PGRs) mimic or influence.
In wheat, gibberellins were central to the Green Revolution of the 1960s, when short-strawed, semi-dwarf varieties dramatically increased yields worldwide. Those varieties contained mutations that reduced GA production, preventing lodging while allowing more of the plant’s energy to go into the grain. But even today, we still don’t fully understand how gibberellins are distributed and balanced within the plant.
The new study unpicks this puzzle by looking closely at the genes that control GA production, and how they vary across different wheat tissues.
Seven genes, one big influence
Bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) is genetically complex, with three sets of chromosomes inherited from its wild ancestors. That means most genes come in multiple copies. In this case, the researchers identified seven versions of a gene family known as GA3OX — each involved in converting gibberellin precursors into their active form.
By switching off individual members of this gene family one at a time, the team were able to see which versions affected plant height and which influenced grain size. What they found shows just how precisely the plant controls its own growth.
When the GA3OX2 genes were knocked out, the plants were severely stunted and produced almost no grain. They simply couldn’t make enough active gibberellin to support normal development. On the other hand, when the scientists targeted the GA3OX3 or GA1OX1 genes, the effects were much more specific — focused on the developing grains rather than the whole plant.
In simple terms, GA3OX2 acts as the “master switch” for overall growth, while GA3OX3 and GA1OX1 fine-tune the balance of hormones in the ear, determining how large or small each grain becomes.
Fig. 1. Late stages of the gibberellin (GA) biosynthesis pathway in higher plants showing the activity and substrates of 2-ODD enzymes. Substrates GA54, GA55, GA60 and GA61 are detected only in wheat grain tissues. The reactions forming these substrates are highlighted in blue. Hormones on the move
One of the most interesting discoveries from this research is that gibberellins appear to move around the plant more freely than previously thought. Changes to the genes active in grains also affected stem height, suggesting that hormones or their precursors are transported between tissues.
That finding could have big implications for how breeders think about yield and structure. In modern wheat breeding, shorter plants are desirable because they resist lodging and can carry more grain. But making plants too short can limit their ability to compete for light or support big grains. Understanding how hormone levels in the spike influence the rest of the plant could help breeders strike a better balance between height and yield.
As Dr Stephen Pearce from Rothamsted Research explained:
“Decades of work on the gibberellin pathway led us to target these genes, which could now help develop wheat with bigger grains. The challenge has always been balancing plant height and yield potential, and this work gives us new tools to do that more precisely.”
Natural variants already in play
When the team analysed a panel of modern wheat varieties, they discovered that many breeders had already, perhaps unknowingly, selected for natural versions of these genes that favour larger grain size. In other words, the process of selection in breeding programmes has been nudging these hormone pathways in the right direction for years.
However, now that these specific genes have been identified, breeders can target them much more efficiently using genetic markers. This opens the door to designing wheat varieties that combine the best of both worlds — strong straw and bigger, heavier grains — without the trade-offs that have limited progress in the past.
Fig. 2. Functional characterization of the ga3ox2 mutant in wheat. (A) Quantification of gibberellin (GA) concentrations in wild-type and ga3ox2 seedling tissues. (B) Phenotype of representative wild-type and ga3ox2 plants when wild-type plants reached anthesis. The plant labelled ‘+ GA’ was sprayed twice weekly with 10 μM GA3. (C) Tiller number in wild-type and ga3ox2 mutants (n=20). (D) Spikelet number in wild-type and ga3ox2 mutants (n=20). (E) Representative spikes of wild-type and ga3ox2 mutants taken post-anthesis. Bar=1 cm. Asterisks indicate significant differences between ‘Cadenza’ and ga3ox2 genotypes (*P<0.05, **P<0.01, ***P<0.001; two-tailed Student’s t-test). What this means for UK growers
For British arable farmers, this type of science might sound a long way from the drill, but it’s exactly this kind of background work that drives future yield improvements. The Rothamsted study helps explain why some modern varieties combine high grain weights with robust structure, while others struggle to translate biomass into yield.
Better understanding of gibberellin pathways could lead to:
- More consistent yield potential across seasons by maintaining optimal grain filling even in stress conditions.
- Improved lodging resistance without relying solely on chemical PGRs.
- Varieties with built-in hormone balance, reducing the need for growth regulation inputs.
These outcomes align well with the shift toward more sustainable, input-efficient systems that many UK growers are pursuing through regenerative practices and integrated crop management.
A genetic roadmap for breeders
For plant breeders, the paper provides something extremely valuable: a clear genetic map of where to look for useful variation. The seven GA3OX genes each act in slightly different tissues and at different stages of development. By selecting combinations that give the right gibberellin balance, breeders could produce varieties that reach an ideal height under UK conditions while still delivering strong grain size and weight.
This could also help make breeding for resilience faster. Rather than screening thousands of plants in the field, breeders can now use molecular markers linked to these GA genes to predict how a line will behave. That means shorter breeding cycles and a better chance of combining complex traits like height, tiller number, and grain mass.
The long path to applied genetics
The Rothamsted group’s discovery builds on decades of work into gibberellin biology. The first dwarfing genes used in the Green Revolution (Rht1 and Rht2) were found to reduce gibberellin response, effectively making the plant insensitive to the growth hormone. The new research takes that understanding one step further, showing how wheat actually manufactures the hormone in the first place.
It’s a reminder that yield progress often depends on small, carefully tuned changes rather than single “silver bullet” genes. As Dr Pearce and his co-authors note, GA3OX2 is essential for basic growth, so knocking it back too far would cripple the plant. But small adjustments to GA3OX3 or GA1OX1 expression could subtly increase grain size without upsetting the rest of the system.
The bigger picture — feeding the future
With the global wheat demand predicted to rise by 50% by 2050, incremental genetic gains are going to be crucial. The world’s available farmland is not increasing, so yield per hectare must continue to improve. The Rothamsted study provides a roadmap for doing just that — using genetic insight to make each plant a little more efficient in how it uses its own growth regulators.
In the UK, where growers face both yield plateaus and climate uncertainty, understanding hormone balance could also contribute to stability. Plants that regulate their own gibberellins more precisely may cope better with variable moisture or heat stress, reducing the swings in grain size seen in dry or late seasons.
Looking ahead
While the study is still at the research stage, it represents another piece of the puzzle in understanding how wheat growth is controlled. The next steps will likely involve testing these gene variants under real-world growing conditions, to see how they interact with environmental stresses, nitrogen levels, and other agronomic factors.
This is where partnerships between scientists, breeders and farmers become vital. Translating gene-level discoveries into field-ready varieties depends on feedback from the field — how plants behave under tramlines, not just under glasshouse lights.
As with previous Rothamsted breakthroughs, the benefits will filter through over time. The varieties that reach farm trials in the coming decade may owe much of their yield stability or grain weight to the subtle tweaks being identified in this research.
Key takeaways for growers
- Rothamsted scientists identified seven GA3OX genes that regulate gibberellin production in wheat.
- The GA3OX2 genes control overall plant height, while GA3OX3 and GA1OX1 influence grain size and weight.
- Gibberellin hormones appear to move between tissues, linking grain development and plant stature.
- Modern varieties already carry natural variants of these genes that breeders have selected for larger grains.
- Understanding and using these pathways could help develop wheat with higher yields, balanced height, and less need for PGRs.
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Challenging Season Highlights
THE NEED TO CONTROL COSTS
Below-average yields and low prices this harvest underline the importance of maximising efficiency across every aspect of crop production, emphasises Jeff Claydon, Suffolk arable farmer and inventor of the Claydon Opti-Till® direct seeding system.
August 2025
In the article I wrote last August I mentioned that after an exceedingly difficult season crops on our own and many other farms could best be summarised as ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.’
Unfortunately, the challenges continued into 2024/25, which brought variable weather, below-average yields and low cereal prices. On the Claydon farm, despite an optimistic start to the season, yields were 15% to 20% down, disappointing but nowhere near as bad as some have experienced. With feed wheat futures currently languishing at £160 per tonne, well under half the £360 per tonne on offer in May 2022, it has become much more difficult to make a profit.
I know that you probably don’t want to hear it, but when things are at their toughest the key is to ‘think change’. That was the situation we faced in 2002 when grain prices fell below £60 per tonne, at which it was impossible to make a profit, putting the future of our family farm in question. To survive we had to reduce our cost base, a key part of which was to significantly change how crops were established because conventional methods had become too expensive.
At the time there was nothing on the market which would do what we wanted, so I designed a direct drill which dramatically reduced the amount of time, machinery, fuel and labour required. What subsequently developed into the Claydon Opti-Till® System has been a ‘game-changer,’ transforming the economic and ecological sustainability of our farm. This simple, practical, fast, efficient, low-cost approach has also brought tremendous improvements in timeliness, soil structure, soil biota, and quality of life.
After a couple of difficult seasons many businesses will be questioning what changes are needed to ensure that they are agronomically and financially viable going forward. Understandably, many will want to carry on as before, but against the current backdrop facing the farming sector doing nothing is unlikely to be a viable option. Investing in more efficient, more effective ways of working could help to ensure that you have a sustainable business going forward.
To provide the Claydon farm with the evidence-based data necessary to make informed decisions, everything is recorded on three systems: Claas Telematics on the Claas Lexion combine, the Fendt One Connect system fitted to the two Fendt tractors and sprayer, together with the Omnia digital farming platform which is used to record and manage SFI actions. A CHALLENGING SEASON
On the Claydon farm we made significant changes to our cropping for 2024/25. Growing oilseed rape had become a struggle, primarily due to the increasing damage caused by cabbage stem flea beetle following the ban on neonicotinoids. Lacklustre yields combined with prices which did not warrant the high financial and agronomic risks were other reasons why we decided to stop. Instead, we extended the wheat area to two-thirds, while the remainder went into spring oats, providing a good opportunity to control grassweeds using a combination of chemical and mechanical methods.
Opti-Till® has been used here for the last twenty-three years, so our heavy Hanslope Series clay soils are in excellent condition and very well structured, which stood us in good stead last season. The lack of rain, just 60mm from March until harvest, was a serious issue and yields were 15% to 20% down on our long-term averages. I have just sold 116 tonnes of wheat to make space in our grain store for machinery, but hopefully £160/t will not be the highest achieved in the next few months.
Having heard reports of wheat yields as low as 7t/ha, and beans down to 1t/ha, we are not too disappointed but had hoped for better results this season. Winter wheats were variable, averaging 8t/ha, 2t/ha below our long-term figure, with areas drilled in October yielding 10% more than those which went in during November. Elsoms Bamford was our star performer, so we will be growing the variety again in 2025/26.
Elsoms Lion spring oats averaged 5.8t/ha, ranging from 5.25t/ha to 6t+/ha. The highest yield came from an 18ha block where we took out weeds between the rows with our 6m TerraBlade. Despite initial concerns that this might have caused some damage to the emerging crop it was obviously not the case.
Elsoms Bamford winter wheat was the star performer this harvest and will be grown again this season. We were fortunate to secure the SFI area we applied for last year, three 85ha blocks, and have received some payments, for which we are grateful given below-par yields this harvest. The companion crop of beans planted under SFI did not feature at harvest, having stalled at GS32 due to the dry weather combined with competition from the wheat and oats.
We are always questioning what we do and host numerous trials on the farm. The dry weather meant that last season the trials produced no definitive results, but we will continue and, as for the last 45 years, we will measure the yields and decide whether a process or product is worthwhile on a commercial scale.
FAST TURNAROUND
Harvest was a somewhat drawn-out and frustrating affair because of the frequent showers. In aggregate, they amounted to less than 13mm over four weeks but crops often took two or three days to dry out enough to allow the combine to roll again. We started the wheat on 15 July and by the end of the month had finished the spring oats, completing the last field of wheat on 9 August.
We turned the farm around in an amazing time this year. During the last two years we have corrected areas of sub-standard drainage with plastic mains and laterals, overlayed with mole drains, so there’s no need to do anything this season. Our soils are now in an ideal condition for direct drilling.
This 15m Claydon Straw Harrow is at the heart of the farm’s stubble management approach. Ideal for taking out weeds and volunteers efficiently, quickly and cost-effectively, it has also been remarkably effective in distributing chopped straw behind the combine, allowing cover crops to be drilled quickly and easily. In between the showers which halted harvesting our 6m Claydon Evolution drill was hard at work, the combination of its high output and the low seed rate enabling cover crops to be established very quickly using just 8 litres of diesel per hectare.
Drilling immediately behind the combine can be extremely challenging where there is a high volume of chopped material, particularly spring oat straw which can be very ‘clingy.’ Our 15m Claydon Straw Harrow was used behind the Fendt 724 Vario to distribute chopped straw evenly across the field which improved the situation no end. After a day of dry weather it flowed through the drill with no issues.
This season we are experimenting with three cover crop mixes. It will be interesting to compare the performance of crops which follow the cover crops and those where we just used the Straw Harrow, a fast, efficient, low-cost way to take out weeds and volunteers. We will use it up until the first week of September and then apply glyphosate to take out any remaining volunteers before direct drilling wheat with our 6m Claydon Evolution.
Drilling a cover crop immediately behind the farm’s Claas Lexion combine, after the Straw Harrow had been used to evenly distribute the chopped straw. The Opti-Till® System is so efficient, from 2011 to 2023 the Claydon’s previous main tractor was able to drill up to 1600ha annually on contracts with a 6m Claydon direct drill yet clocked only 6000 hours in that time. Farming is not a hobby for the Claydon family, purely a commercial enterprise, so we continually embrace change and operate as efficiently as possible. Using Opti-Till® total fuel use across all the operations required to produce cereal crops is 40 to 50 l/ha, a fraction of what it would be with a conventional system. That includes all stubble management operations, drilling, spraying, fertiliser application, inter-row hoeing with the Claydon TerraBlade, harvesting and corn carting. Plus all the savings in time and extra machinery needed, and risks involved with the extra workloads, weather, etc, with conventional tillage
(Above and below) A cover crop emerging strongly just days after being drilled directly into stubble and chopped straw following spring oats. 
Opti-Till® has also reduced tractor hours by 80 per cent, while wear and tear, servicing costs and depreciation are all significantly lower, leaving more ‘margin’, which benefits everyone involved. Time saving is another, increasingly important, benefit given that I and my two sons, Oliver and Spencer, also manage the Claydon agricultural machinery manufacturing business. Being so efficient, it allows us to use time more productively and have some left over for more interesting things, be it spending time with children / grandchildren or being able to take time off to go shooting.
This healthy crop of maize was direct drilled using the same 6m Claydon Evolution which establishes all the other crops on the farm. To help others, the Claydon team has developed the Claydon ‘Think’ campaign, which shows how the Opti-Till® System helps to reduce the time and cost of establishment by almost 50%. It also demonstrates how customers improve yields and benefit soil health to deliver healthier, more sustainable, more profitable crops. Details can be found on the Claydon website: claydondrill.com/think-change/
Visit https://claydondrill.com/our-customers/ to hear from farmers across the UK and further afield who are achieving great results with Opti-Till® on a range of crops on varying soils in all climates. You can also keep up with the latest posts, photographs, and videos from Claydon and its customers through the Claydon Facebook page www.facebook.com/Claydondrill
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Groundswell 2025: A Regenerative Festival That Goes Beyond the Soil
I know I’m biased as I was involved in the first Groundswell, but the event proved once again why it is the UK’s flagship event for regenerative agriculture. As always, held at Lannock Manor Farm in Hertfordshire, this year’s festival brought together farmers, scientists, environmentalists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers for a celebration of soil, food, sustainability and systems thinking. With over 200 sessions and 500 speakers, the event offered something for everyone, from hands-on workshops and field demos to deeply philosophical debates on food systems, land use and the future of farming.
I’m going to admit that I missed the sunrise bird walk and yoga sessions, I would imagine many farmers did, but this event is no longer just about farmers. Those passionate about food and what we eat as a nation were in attendance too.
Diverse Voices, Shared Vision
Groundswell 2025 showcased a global and multi-disciplinary view of conservation agriculture. Farmers from across Europe gathered for a panel titled Unity in Diversity, sharing stories of farmer-led action from Italy to Norway through the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture. The message was clear: systemic change is not just possible, it’s already happening. Highprofile keynote speakers like Prince
William, Gabe Brown and Tim Lang stirred the crowd with calls for radical change. Brown’s talk, What is All This Talk About Regenerative Agriculture? was a highlight (although some of us have heard a variant of it before), urging a shift away from input dependency and toward holistic land stewardship. Lang, meanwhile, painted a sobering picture of UK’s food system vulnerabilities and stressed the need for civil food resilience.From Soil to Supply Chains
This year, Groundswell expanded its lens beyond the field. Reshaping Supply Chains for a Regenerative Future drew a packed crowd eager to explore new economic models that prioritise fairness, transparency and ecological outcomes. The conversation wasn’t just about growing food, it was about how that food moves through the system and how farmers can retain more value. Discussions on AI in agriculture and
nature markets reflected the cuttingedge, even experimental spirit of Groundswell — open to technology, but never at the cost of ecology or
autonomy. We are still clearly missing the tools for AI to help farmers with their tasks or learning but it is on the horizon.Science in the Soil
One of the most striking elements of Groundswell 2025 was its focus on soil health as a living, breathing system. Attendees packed into sessions like Worming Your Way to Better Soil Health and Earthworms and Their Impact, which blended scientific rigour with real-world
farm case studies. Interactive features like Resonating Fields, an immersive installation capturing the bioacoustic sounds of soil life, offered a poetic reminder of the richness beneath our feet. This experimental blending of art and science caught the imagination of many and reinforced the idea that there is a heartbeat of regenerative farming.Trees and Livestock
Trees and livestock also featured heavily, with practical walk-and-talks on shelterbelts, silvopasture and integrating trees into vegetable production. The session Taking the Golden Hoof One Step Further offered real-world strategies for incorporating livestock into arable systems without compromising ecological integrity. The Dung Beetle Safari and Regenerative Rotation walk, helped bring theoretical principles to life. Farmers were able to get their hands dirty, ask detailed questions and walk away with practical insights.
Tackling the Big Questions
Panels like Can British Farming Be Saved? provided political context to the agronomic conversations. The mix of Defra officials, campaigners, and pragmatic land managers allowed for an honest airing of frustrations and a mapping of the pathways forward. It’s clear that more policy makers (and royals) attend Groundswell than Cereals. Thus, while they are in the room, it’s great to be able to talk to them about the problems that all farmers are facing, not just those embracing conservation agriculture.
A Festival
Perhaps the most unique aspect of Groundswell remains that it runs late into the evening (The nighttime music is certainly the closest I will get to a festival at my age). It’s also definitely a celebration of food. There is no doubt that farmers are outnumbered by food processors, supply chain workers, policy makers and investors, but I don’t see that as a bad thing. We are all in the same place and we want the same thing: healthier food on our plates and healthier returns for those who grow sustainable food. The bars and communal eating spaces buzzed with conversation all day and evening, underscoring the community ethos. Over a pint, you could talk to soil scientists, chefs, artists, smallholders and AI engineers.
It’s not just about methods; it’s about mindsets. It brings together a powerful coalition of the curious, the committed and the courageous. I can only thank everyone who took the time to speak to me about what they are doing and what they want our food system to be. I have, as always, come out of the event knowing a little bit more about many subjects. And that it the main reason I go and will continue to go every year. (That, and the fact they now have whisky stands.)
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Why we need to talk about water and the land it runs through
Water is central to sustainable farming, but too often, it’s the part we leave out.
At Groundswell 2025, we set out to change that. As a water supplier working across some of the UK’s most environmentally sensitive landscapes, we were proud to join the event to share our work, listen to the farming community, and deepen our commitment to land and water stewardship.
Because water isn’t just something that arrives at the tap. It begins in the soil, runs through the land, and infiltrates into aquifers and carries the imprint of everything it touches.
What the land teaches us
One of our key messages at Groundswell was simple but powerful:
“Water quality starts with the land it moves through.”Through the rainfall simulator demo, we showed exactly what this means in practice. Visitors could see side-by-side comparisons of how different soil management techniques impact runoff, erosion, and water infiltration. The difference between compacted, depleted soil and living, healthy soil was striking, and undeniable.
Healthy soil doesn’t just support better crops, it leads to healthier water. It’s all connected.
From the ground up
Each year, we test over 200,000 water samples to ensure safety for both people and ecosystems. But the real work starts upstream, through our work with farmers to optimise inputs, improve soil structure to reduce losses, and support the transition to regenerative practices that benefit the whole system. Affinity Water’s catchment team have supported the drilling of over 11,000ha of cover and companion crops, a core regenerative farming principle, since 2020. These crops help fix nitrate and prevent leaching and reduce runoff of sediment and pesticides into watercourses.
At Groundswell, we had the chance to speak with dozens of farmers about our catchment schemes, innovation grants, and landscape-scale restoration programmes, including work to protect globally rare chalk streams and improve catchment resilience.
Danny Coffey, Catchment Manager at Affinity Water, explains:
“Water quality can reflect what is happening in the landscape. When we invest in better soil management and regenerative farming, we’re also investing in cleaner water, resilient rivers, and healthy soils. Groundswell gave us a vital opportunity to show how these pieces fit together and to work with farmers who share that vision and help us treat water, out in the catchment.”
We’re not just a water company
Affinity Water is evolving. We’re not just managing infrastructure; we’re building long-term partnerships with the landowners and farmers who care for their land.
We believe that supporting landowners and farmers is essential to protecting water at its source. That’s why we’re investing in practical solutions, from funding cover and companion crops, to river restoration schemes, and to demonstrating what works through tools like our rainfall simulator.
We are here not just as a water supplier, but as a partner in resilience, nature recovery, and sustainable food production.
Looking ahead
Groundswell was a powerful reminder of the innovation and passion driving change in British agriculture. And it reinforced why water needs to be a bigger part of the conversation.
As climate pressures grow and water becomes an increasingly precious resource, we’ll need to work together more than ever, across sectors, landscapes, and disciplines.
To protect water, we need to protect everything it touches.
Notes to editor:
- Affinity Water supplies drinking water to over 3.9 million people across parts of London, the Home Counties, and the East of England. We are the largest water-only supplier in the UK.
- Affinity Water is committed to protecting and enhancing the environment. We invest in river restoration, support regenerative agriculture, and work with land managers to improve water quality at source.
- The company plays a leading role in protecting the UK’s rare chalk streams, over 60% of the world’s chalk streams are in England, many of which run through Affinity Water’s supply region.
- At Groundswell 2025, Affinity Water showcased a rainfall simulator to demonstrate how different soil structures affect runoff, infiltration, and water quality. This hands-on demo highlighted the vital role of soil health in protecting water resources.
- Through its Catchment and Land Management programme, Affinity Water offers funding, soil health testing, and advice to help farmers transition to practices that benefit both their land and local watercourses.
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Featured Farmer – Frederik Larsen
Writing this article (while the season is coming to a close in the midst of a 30C heatwave) is the perfect opportunity to reflect on yet another exciting year of arable farming. I’m usually idealistic on which directions to take my farm and arable clients, always striving towards ambitious goals. However, for each new season of arable cropping I experience, I seem to get more settled with the philosophy that farming is a journey towards an always-evolving target. It’s better to get used to the fact that no perfect season exists, no perfect crop can ever be harvested and there’s no perfect cropping system. Instead, it’s one big mess of trade-offs between the plan and reality. Then repeat.
Yet the 2025 season is one to remember. Our first-born baby boy arrived in April and so far it has been amazing. We are really settling into parenting and everything that it entails. I usually fly out of Denmark several times a month to consult on my clients’ farms in Europe, but I have been able to take a paternity break, thanks to my wonderful colleagues providing cover for me. I’ll miss Groundswell this year as well, with severe FOMO already developing.
The second big news for 2025 has been that I have taken over the family farm with full ownership. 250 hectares of prime arable crop land (among the top third of soil quality in Denmark), almost all of it is combinable.. I’m humbled to be given this opportunity and feel so thankful for the support I’ve received from my partner, Mathilde, and especially my younger brother and sister, who have been so encouraging and understanding throughout the whole process. Now I’m the sixth generation at Barløsegaard, and I look forward to doing my absolute best to take care of the family farm while it’s my responsibility. What has worked well for my family is that from the very beginning, my parents were strongminded and decisive on what they wanted: to pass the farm to one child on the best possible terms with a minor cash gift and no liability to siblings. Because our parents were settled on their goal from the start it has been easier for us siblings to accept the terms. Is this the best time in history to take over the farm? Most likely not, but there’s no such thing as ‘timing the market’ for a farm purchase. However, with a new property valuation tax reform on the horizon, we had another incentive. Farm succession in Denmark basically comes down to the following rules: 1) pass to family at 15% below full market value, 2) seller can keep promissory note on the estate (difference from market value to full mortgage), 3) if needed, pay 10% inheritance tax on cash/assets passed down, 4) seller will be capital gains taxed, but with an inflation adjustment.
Above. Winter OSR undersown with living mulch mixture of 25 kg/ha (75% lucerne, 15% red clover, 10% white clover, weight based). The clear canopy effect of OSR has reduced the size of the undersown living mulch compared to no canopy to the right. 
The current big threat/opportunity to farming conditions in Denmark is yet another push for even tighter environmental/nutrient legislation, which will force the profitability of arable farming even lower. This should have a negative farmland pricing but it’s looking like this is further exacerbating the huge gap between the earning potential of farmland and its market value, which seems to keep rising. Many nonfarming entities (government included) are heavily buying up farmland, which pushes the price even higher.
Barløsegaard has been no-ploughing for 25 years this season and with not illage crop establishment for the last 12 years. The majority of the land is what Brits would call boys land, with 1525% clay in a sandy loam clay mixture (almost no silt). The parent material is glacial tilth and our soils are very deep with no bedrock (I think it is at least 800 metres below). Our latitude is at 55.3, which corresponds to slightly north of Newcastle. We’re receiving around 700 mm of annual rainfall and 1800 hours of yearly sunshine.
We have been running our modified Primewest Cross Slot drill for nine seasons now and are really getting comfortable using it for most drilling options. It’s especially great for small seeds and grass/clover because of the advanced depth control and nonhairpinning from the hybrid disc/blade opener. Normally, we want to grow 50% of the farm with winter wheat, 25% with winter OSR and 25% with a spring break crop (faba beans, malting barley, oats). Sometimes we grow grass seed crops, but those are variable in acreage and contract depending. We keep a minor
but healthy population of Italian ryegrass, black grass and rats-tail fescue in some of our fields, so they play an important consideration on the crop management. Our core crop rotation is winter OSR followed by winter wheat, then spring break crop, then winter wheat, then repeat. Wheats are farm-saved feed variety blends of the three to four of the newest top performers selected on high disease tolerance (high untreated yield). OSR are hybrid variety blends of three top performers from distinct breeders with special attention to stem health including verticillium tolerance.
Winter oats with third year lucerne living mulch below. We will make sure to bale the oat straw to
help the lucerne regrow and hopefully make a nice autumn forage cut.
The same winter oats from above. I have recently finished a large soil sampling scheme. Because of our tillage approach, we have a clear nutrient/pH stratification with almost double the amount of phosphate and potassium in the top 10cm of our soils and 0.5 lower pH compared to the 10-20cm interval. We have not limed the soils for 25 years, but this autumn we will apply a baseline of 2 ton/ha of calcium lime with 2.5% magnesium. Afterwards, we will correct the odd sub areas where magnesium might become close to potassium levels. We can also conclude from this sampling that surface applied phosphorus and potassium are useless in our no-till system. Hence, we now apply a modest NPK fertiliser (50% of expected PK grain removal) seed bed placed in the autumn for winter wheat so we only have to apply N and S in the spring for winter wheat and OSR.
March, April and May have been very dry (although we luckily got 100mm of rain in late May), so again we can conclude that large nitrogen doses early on (in mid-March) are preferable to multiple modest split doses going into May. I’m a big believer in using the right type of nitrogen source. We try to avoid nitrate-N and instead prefer urea and ammonium sources. These N-types are safer to apply in large doses early without a leaching risk and they supply nitrogen for a extended period of time. The best part is that they are also the cheapest option. This approach works great together with foliar applied fertiliser (total nitrogen applied for winter wheat is around 180kg/ha with the target yield around 10 ton/ha. We’re still in the early Simplified choice Expertly selected Our expertise and rigorous assessment of both established and new seed varieties enable us to offer you a superior, short-listed selection. We simplify your seed decision process, giving you more t ime to focus on your farm. stages of getting used to foliar feeds at our farm, so we buy the expensive premium solutions from nearby Flex Fertilizer System. This season we have tried 3x 80 kg/ha of a NPKS 16-1-3-1 with 1Mg. (In Denmark we always list nutrient content in raw non-oxidised forms.). They work great together with our fungicide sprays but we have learned that evening and night applications are preferred in order to not burn leaves. Our wheat disease pressure is modest with an long-term average 100kg/ha yield benefit from fungicide control. I try and capture this as economically as possible by applying a T2 fungicide spray at 33%-50% label rate and a T3 at 2533% label rate.
Recently, we have had mixed experience with no-till and min-tilled spring malting barley and this season we have avoided growing spring barley. Instead, we have focused our attention on spring faba beans and winter milling oats.
Our best winter wheat field this year. There’s a large height difference between the ears because of the early September drilling date. We normally drill at the end of the month so there’s less difference Winter oats are not a common crop in Denmark. I have trialled them on a minor scale for two seasons and this third year we are now growing them commercially in a 25 hectare field. I’m very excited to f ind out their yield.
Winter wheats are currently looking good. I hope that the foliar feeds, with the last one applied at the end of f lowering, will extend will extend grain f ill, keep the wheats green and help them through this current heatwave. One interesting observation has been the visible differences between variety blends from early drilling compared to same variety blend from later drilling. Varieties are more uniform when sown late.
Last autumn, wheat establishment was challenged by herbicide injury (I guess hybris has struck as I’m my own agronomist) and slug grazing. In the future, we’ll apply slug pellets 14 days ahead of our drill and make sure not to spray residual herbicide in warm weather on large wheat seedlings. We’re not doing any exciting cover cropping this summer. I have spent many years trying different approaches but currently we will drill raddish/oat mixture straight after the combine.
Undamaged to the left. Herbicide damaged to the right. From autumn residual herbicides. Living mulch adventures
Our current development goal is the ongoing efforts of developing our lucerne-based living mulch farming system. (Use #livingmulch on X to follow my journey.). With this method I hope to develop a reliable mixed farming system with quality forage production, while annually cash cropping 80-100% of my farmland. The core idea is to undersow winter OSR with 25kg/ha lucerne (or a mixture of lucerne, redclover and white clover) in early August. During the first autumn, the legumes will be a free companion crop together with the OSR. We will then take good care not to broadleaf spray the OSR so we have a green bottom of living mulch below at the time of harvest. Then, after the OSR harvest, we will mow the field and living mulch will regrow. We will take a forage cut six to eight weeks later and no-till winter wheat at the end of September. During the wheat crop we will again make sure not to spray out the living mulch. (This will be a fun challenge for your agronomist.). The key is to chemical mow (temporarily stunt) the living mulch in order to make a great wheat crop. Post wheat harvest it’s the same: mowing, regrowth, forage cut, no-till next winter cereal, which this year is winter oats. I hope my winter oats will let my lucerne survive so that this autumn I can take yet another forage cut before reseeding into winter wheat. Furthermore, I’m trying to f it ultra-early-drilled dual-purpose graze and grain winter cereals into the living mulch system, but that is currently very niche. For my next piece in Direct Driller I will know more from this season’s trials and we can take a deep dive into living mulches.
Good harvest to all of you. I’m currently a full-time agronomist with Copenhagen-based Agroganic. Please get in touch if you have any questions or ideas to share and discuss. We can always learn more when working together.
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Farmer Focus – John Pawsey
June 2025
I get asked a lot of questions about farming stuff, most of which I have no idea what the answer is. So I usually make something up that sounds right. However, I do suspect that there will always be an element of truth in whatever I say in those situations because after 40 harvests, I must have picked up some knowledge along the way. In any case, even if I come up with something which is quite obviously not true, who actually cares? We all know now that it’s not about literal truth in an empirical sense; it’s about lived experience and emotional authenticity. It is my truth, as people say today.
One of the most common questions I get — and you must all get this too, being readers of Direct Driller, challengers of the farming status quo — is where do you get your advice from? Usually, the question is centred around agronomic advice, and so for the purpose of this article, that is what I will focus on.
When we converted our first fields to organic production in the autumn of 1999, I still had my non-organic, independent agronomist. Alice will tell you that I spent more time with him than I did with her, which is probably true. He was my fixer. My dealer. Having made the organic pledge and not wanting the bromance to die, I persuaded him to come with me on my Magical Mystery Tour, hoping that he would accept the invitation to be my post-drug buddy and weather the painful cold turkey period as we weaned ourselves off chemicals. I’m sorry to say that he quickly relapsed and went back to the dark side, whereas I ventured boldly into the Post-Acute Withdrawal Syndrome phase.
To the rescue came the Organic Conversion Information Service or OCIS, which ran from 1996 until 2006 under the DEFRA Organic Farming Scheme. They offered me free unlimited telephone support, a visit from an accredited adviser to put a conservation plan in place on my farm as well as some guidance on soils, organic certification and other grant applicable schemes. Quite why DEFRA have not offered the same service for today’s farmers who are wanting to climb aboard the regenerative train is beyond me. It was an excellent service. We need to suggest an alternative service for the Sustainable Farming Incentive 2026 offer. As a first attempt, what do you think about the Transition Initiative for Tillage Sceptics? We may need to work on the acronym.
My accredited adviser introduced me to the Elm Farm Research Centre (ERFC), now the Organic Research Centre (ORC), (www.organicresearchcentre. com), as it was the ERFC that accredited those advisers in the first place. EFRC/ ORC was the greatest source of advice in my early days. Pretty much all of the stuff that gets re-researched today has already been done by the ORC and partners. Nothing is new. Some examples:
- Through the DIVERSify project, ORC trialled intercropping cereals with legumes (eg wheat with beans, linseed with oats), resulting in 7374% reductions in weed biomass and improved yields, thanks to resource synergy and weed suppression.
- They explored multi-species leguminous cover mixes, helping to improve nitrogen fixation, structure and soil biology. That work emphasised the use of cover crops for soil tilth, nutrient cycling, moisture regulation and erosion control, especially when aligned with reduced or no-till methods.
- ORC partnered in EU-wide trials (eg the Oper8 project) to test mechanical weeding tools, living mulches and alternative weed control, supporting f ield labs and events that promoted practical adoption. In projects like TILMAN-ORG, ORC evaluated reduced tillage in organic systems to understand its impact on weed communities, soil structure and resilience.
- Beyond trials, ORC championed participatory research, co-designing experiments with farmers to ensure real-world relevance. They also contributed to EU projects (COBRA, SOLIBAM, SUSVAR, CORE Organic II) and delivered farmer training, field labs, events and advisory services.
The list goes on. You should look into a few of those projects. They are easily found on the internet or your favourite AI wangle.
Then we have Agricology (www. agricology.co.uk), which is another excellent source of advice. A lot of ORC research and other brilliant stuff can be found on their platform. I am sure you know the site well.
There is also the wonderful BASE-UK (www.base-uk.co.uk).
In the year 2000, a group of French farmers from Brittany formed an organisation called Bretagne, Agriculture, Soil and Environment or ‘BASE’. It was and still is a network of farmers wanting to share information on ways of farming that not only produced food but improved soils and nature as well.
One of BASE’s leading lights, Frédéric Thomas, started to spread the word and in 2012 the good news arrived across the English Channel — or ‘la Manche’ as our Gallic neighbours insist — and BASE-UK was born. Helpfully, the French founders changed the name to Biodiversity, Agriculture, Sol and Environment to enable the organisation to travel better and all we had to do was to just insert an ‘i’ into ‘sol’ to make ‘soil’ and we were away. I don’t connect as much as I should with BASE. I need to do that more.
YouTube. How many times has your partner rolled over in bed and asked incredulously, “What are you watching?” with an emphasis on the word ‘are’. In the Pawsey bedroom, this question is followed by Alice saying, “Can I put on the Archers now?” What’s happening here is that I have gone down a rabbit hole of being fed ingenious videos of farmers demonstrating pieces of homemade machinery for pulling out docks and creeping thistle. The best ones are from the subcontinent where protective guards are a no-no. The juxtaposition of successful weed control and a man potentially losing a limb is oddly captivating. Alice’s question is not actually a question. What she really means is, “Turn that screen off. I’m putting the Archers podcast on.”. It’s actually a wonderfully soporific show. All I get is, ‘Tum ti tum t i tum ti tum’, and the next thing I hear is my morning alarm. Brilliant! Anyway, that’s YouTube’s farming community, the motherlode of all agricultural knowledge.
Still on social media, I find Twitter (I refuse to call it X) useful , but you have to curate your experience. I make personal lists. My farming-related ones are: agricultural policy influencers, farmers I have met or know, strip and no-tillage agriculture and of course, organic farmers. Slot your relevant farming heroes into the relevant categories and you’ve got a concentrated feed on what is happening in the world of enlightened farming. All the nonsense is bypassed.
Then there is meeting actual people. I know, weird. They smell, some have accents I don’t understand, they puncture easily and sometimes they go on a bit, but meeting actual people is the best. Especially readers of publications like Direct Driller where we accept that we don’t have all the answers. We are on a never-ending journey of discovery and we understand that to learn, to take us to the next stage, we have to share knowledge with each other. After 25 years of giving farm tours at Shimpling Park, I’ve never had a group leave without someone solving one of my many agronomic problems.
So, having successfully survived rehab, did I ever replace my agronomist? No, but we possibly should. I say ‘we’ because the next generation of Pawseys are chomping at the bit to have a go. It’s not all about me. Although I do have stuff to pass on, so much has changed in the organic regenerative space over the last ten years, and that is for them to discover, to adopt and claim as theirs. Enlightened agronomy, it’s happening. If you don’t believe that it is, then you’ll just have to accept that it’s my truth.
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Report suggests regenerative farming pioneers are outperforming conventional approaches
A new benchmarking report comparing 78 regenerative farms across Europe provides evidence of how regenerative farming can outperform the average conventional system
Written by Mike Abram
Pioneering regenerative farms across Europe are delivering 20% higher gross margins than the average conventional farm, while using 61% less synthetic nitrogen and 75% less pesticide. Yields were only 2% lower on average, despite those reduced inputs, with many farms achieving parity or better.
Those are some of the headline figures from a new report from the European Alliance for Regenerative Agriculture (EARA), which collected survey data from 78 regenerative farms, covering a total of 2144ha, across 14 EU countries between 2021 and 2023.
The report marks the beginning of EARA’s farmer-led research programme, which aims to measure what Europe’s most pioneering farmers are achieving, both agriculturally and ecologically.
To do that, the researchers have developed what they call a novel, farmer-centred index called ‘Regenerating Full Productivity’ (RFP) to understand and track real-world productivity of agriculture.
This metric is designed to capture the full spectrum of land stewardship outcomes – agronomic, ecological and economic, the report authors state. It builds on the conventional Total Factor Productivity (TFP) model used by many governments to compare trends across farming sectors and evaluate sector competitiveness.
“RFP integrates field-levels measurements, farmer-generated data and satellite imagery, benchmarked at local, national and European levels,” the report says.
Using this metric the report says the regenerative farmers delivered 33% higher regenerating full productivity on average, in the study period of 2021 to 2023, with gains ranging from 13% to 52%.
The data also points to fields on regenerative farms achieving over 25% higher photosynthesis, 24% higher soil cover and an increase in plant diversity of 16% over the period 2019-2024.
“This advantage means more biodiversity and better soil health,” the authors claim.
Cover Crops 
Regenerating almond production in Greece 
Data for the report was collected via a survey of the 78 regenerative farms, where the farmers provided information about crop yields, input use, feed sources for livestock systems, fuel and irrigation use for a self-selected three “best” fields.
Farmers were specifically asked to choose fields where the impact of regenerative management had had the greatest effect.
The farmers were also asked whether they thought biodiversity in the field had increased over time and how it compared with their neighbours’ fields.
Comparative baselines for yields and input use from average conventional farms were set using data from national and EU-level datasets.
In addition, the survey data was supplemented using satellite data from the three fields, plus nine neighbouring conventional fields with same use type, soil and climatic conditions.
NDVI (normalised difference vegetation index) imagery from satellites was used to assess photosynthesis and soil cover, while variations in NDVI were used to calculate plant diversity, with larger variations in NDVI associated with greater plant species richness.
Remote sensing data could also be converted into estimates of land surface temperature and evapotranspiration rates.
The results counter the assumption that Europe’s food security depends on chemical-intensive farming, the report claims.
“Instead, they reaffirm that regenerating systems, whether rooted in agroecology, conservation agriculture, organic farming, syntropic agroforestry or other disciplines, are not only viable but already superior in most contexts.
“Moreover, the progressive reduction, and eventual elimination of synthetic inputs is not only feasible but also economically and environmentally beneficial,” it states.
2025 EARA Research Study Phase 1 on Regenerating Full Soil Cover 
2025 EARA Research Study Phase 1 on Regenerating Full Photosynthesis The authors calculate that a 50% adoption of regenerating forms of agriculture could more than offset current EU agricultural emissions. “If scaled EU-wide, the study estimates RFP-informed transitions could mitigate an estimated 513 Mt CO2e/year, over three times the current EU agriculture sector emissions.
“By transitioning, the sector would become nature-positive and climate resilient, ensuring food and fibre security while reversing ecological degradation and improving food quality and public health,” the authors claim.
Enhancing soil health, water retention and biodiversity reduces the frequency and severity of climate-induced shocks, such as droughts, floods and crop failures, they continue.
Evidence from across the farms using the collected remote sensing data found that fields on the regenerative farms were 0.3C cooler during summer months than surrounding conventional fields, for example.
EARA is positioning the use of the RFP metric, not just as a research tool, but as a practical performance system to support farmers, financiers, policy makers and supply chains.
For example, it could be used to support eligibility and targeting of agricultural subsidies and climate-related finance tools, helping align incentives with outcomes, it suggests.
The next phase of the RFP project will involve more farms from across Europe and add new measures for things like soil carbon, water use, and local economic value.
Digital tools are also in the works to help farmers track their own RFP scores, compare with others, and plan improvements over time. EARA plans to work more closely with co-ops, supply chains and funders—so that better performance can lead to better support.
Overall, a key aim is to make RFP something farmers can use to build stronger, more resilient businesses, as well as become a recognised tool in policy and regenerative investment.
How RFP index could drive change
Sector How RFP could drive change Policy Reward real outcomes in support payments Finance Tie loans / insurance to ecological performance Supply chains Enable traceable, regenerative sourcing Farmers Guide decisions and comparisons Public / NGOs Improve transparency and advocacy messaging Governments Track ecological performance and national goals 
