Jan 2026
The start of a new year, full of hope and expectation! I always try to stay upbeat and hopeful as that is far better than just moping around the yard, moaning! Yes, we have a lot against us at present but looking at the black side does not do our mental health any good. I tend to think that there is always a solution to any problem. It may not always be the solution that you would really like, but nevertheless it is a solution and when things are piling up on top of us, it is so important to regroup, take a breath and work out how we are going to overcome the difficulties that lie ahead of us.
Crops are looking very well at the time of writing and went to bed with a nutrition-balanced foliar spray to give them the ability to get through the winter months, be that from low temperatures or pest / disease attack. As you all know, it is my firm belief that everything can be overcome by ensuring the correct biology and nutrition is available to the plant. Companion cropping further adds to that mix, interacting with more biology and hopefully making more nutrition available to the cash crop, which is obviously the most important crop for the business. Profit must always be our number one concern in the troubled times we find ourselves in, as without profit we are finished as a business.
Cover crops have looked well all the way through the season, even though they were a little slow to get going due to the lack of water and they haven’t reached the height that I would normally expect them to. That said, they are still doing that wonderful job nature intended them to do, putting carbon back into our soils and pulling out nutrition from the soil to make available for the following cash crop. To me, this is the wonder of nature in action, as it has been done for millions of years before human beings started to think that we know better. Applying lots of synthetic products throws everything out of balance, leading to the need of more synthetic products to treat the symptoms the initial products have caused! What a wonderful way to make money! The harvested and produced ‘food’ is then supposed to nourish us (or animals destined to nourish us), but is more likely than not, lacking in nutrients and phytochemicals. This then leads our bodies to get sick from lack of nourishment and we go along to the doctor to get treated for illness – again treating the symptom, not the cause! Thus, making certain companies an awful lot of money. (The pharmaceutical industry is now worth $1.5 trillion worldwide.) Is it me or should we be asking the question what is going wrong? Am I just a sceptic? As soil degradation has got worse, human health has declined, along with livestock.
Getting biology back into our soils is the only way to address these perpetual problems, along with carbon. When biology starts to work, things begin to fit into place and nutrients become available. I have seen a soil pH change by itself just with biology! But is it really any wonder? How do we really think our soils got so productive and active without mankind’s intervention! Do we really think we know better than mother nature? We have so much to learn and biology has so much to offer if we are prepared to put the time in. When biology starts to work and the porosity of the soil starts to change, that aggregation begins to get more depth and compaction becomes a thing of the past. That is when the power and magic of biology become visible and our food becomes nutrient-rich and packed with phytochemicals that are then going to enrich our bodies and immune systems to help us to stay healthy.
Getting that biology back into our soils can take time and, as I have always maintained, you must earn the right to farm in the way that I do. It’s not just going to happen overnight, but if you are prepared to put the work in, happen it will. It may well reappear and function on its own, but for me, as I can get impatient sometimes, I like to reintroduce as much as I can on a regular basis. This is done from buying in microbes, where you know exactly what you are introducing and why! Alternatively, it can be from farm-made compost, which is going to give a very wide variety of microbes if it has been made well. Good compost making is not rocket science and there are plenty of books on the subject if you are prepared to put the work in. Extracting the compost is the best way of getting all those lovely microbes off the carbon and into the liquid applicator on the drill made by Trevor Tappin (who has recently excelled himself yet again by helping me get more mobile around farms with my own beach buggy and trailer. I can’t thank him enough – see picture below – independence is everything when you have lost it). Extracting compost is always the safest way in my experience as not all biology will multiply when in the brewer and I want to get as much variation as I can back into the soil biome. Compost teas are great when your own knowledge of compost has improved and you are confident what is in your compost, but until then, extraction is always the safest bet. As your soil becomes more aerobic and this new community starts to work, improvements in soil commence, in my opinion.
I hope the year ahead is kind to us, as growers, as we could do with a normal growing year for a change. But with the moon in its current orbit, I suspect not! Nevertheless, the main thing is to keep spirits high and know that we shall get through this storm cloud hanging over us one way or another.
