At the beginning of February I was fortunate enough to attend the 2022 BASE-UK AGM. There were many excellent presentations, including the lecture from Dr Sam Cook on conservation biological control where she referred to the three P’s – Predation, Parasitism and Pathogens. It got me thinking about the next level of IMP that we …
Nitrogen Use Efficiency and OrganicMatter Having done 20 years of testing for organic matter in my soils I thought it would be a good idea to put all the results onto a spreadsheet and see what has happened over that time. I have a total of 63 tests, some fields have only been tested three …
Risky business The financial results are in, and they are good, in fact some of the best of my farming career to date. It would be wonderful now go on to describe how that is all down to the huge savings in fixed and variable costs made through our transition to a zero tillage, regenerative …
Last night we hopefully had the last frost of the year as the OSR is just starting to flower. I think we can finally relax with pigeon patrol. This has been relentless and my Father has spent a huge amount of time chasing them over the last few months. It seems to have paid off …
How I decided to join a carbon payment scheme Not a week goes by without another discussion about getting paid for carbon. I know that many farmers are taking a “wait and see” approach and I respect that. Above all, I understand that making a decision to enter this new market feels big and it …
Harvest has come and gone. Yields were good but could have been better had the growing season not been so variable. We had trimmed our Nitrogen rates to 160 Kg/N/Ha for wheat and OSR, but huge swings of yields within the fields told me that the yield had not been altogether determined by the fertiliser …
The good the bad and the ugly! As I sit here on the 30th November furiously tapping away to get this written for tomorrow’s deadline I reflect on what has happened since I last wrote. My last piece mentioned how well the crops looked before harvest! How things have changed in just those few short …
I was not sorry to see the end of harvest 2021. A combination of low yielding OSR, a large acreage of Firefly wheat that broke down to Septoria, disappointing Extase yields and spring barley that was flattened by August rains meant that it was not a vintage year for us. Luckily prices have compensated to …
Berwickshire farmer Neil White calls for clarity and equity in their baseline carbon audit on his farm after six years ofNo-till Harvest 2021 was, in the end, better than expected. The crops came out of the wet cold spring looking respectable, but then continually improved to culminate in some top yields and good quality grain …
What a different a year makes… Steven Lear fine tunes his arable cropping, and looks toAberdeen Angus to produce some low cost beef After the soul destroying previous two autumns when we managed to drill very little winter grain, this year has been rather refreshing. After cutting all of our spring crops in half decent …
