Holding Our Nerve
There’s a certain satisfaction in early spring when the farm looks well, before the dreaded blackgrass rears its ugly head and takes the edge off my favourite month of May. Things aren’t perfect, but they’re alright. Crops are clean, gaps are few and far between, and though growth stages are hugely variable, roots are moving. The rapeseed will be eye-burning yellow by Easter, and the forage rye is already reaching for the sky. It feels like we’ve got away with it. So far.
This year comes with a caveat: it’s been a bit wet. Not as wet here in the east as friends further west, who’ve been flooded seemingly for months, but enough to make patience the main job. Spring barley went in at the end of March, held back until we could just about get a tilth on the surface. On this sort of clay, a day too early and you’re smearing, slotting, and setting yourself up for cracks later on.
I remember the spring drilling campaign of 2018 (I think). A twelve-day operation, with the lowlight being two fields: one of spring oats sown first and written off as too wet and failing to establish, and the other of the drilling campaign of a field of spring barley I should have written off, as the ground was parched by the time I got to it and it floundered.
So, we waited. The drill rarely rewards eagerness on heavy land.
Nitrogen: the uncomfortable question
The bigger question this spring has been nitrogen.
Not what the crop needs, but what we’re prepared to spend. With nitrogen prices where they are, you’re not just making an agronomy decision; you’re well aware it’s more financial than usual.
And this isn’t just a normal price wobble. It’s a “big, beautiful” spike, to coin a phrase from America’s commander-in-chief. Thanks, Donald.
A spike like this really sharpens things, and we’re seriously considering holding back the final applications and effectively carrying over around 30 tonnes of AN, bought and paid for in late 2025, into next season. Not as a punt, but as a hedge. Of course, if prices can rise that quickly on geopolitics, they can fall just as quickly. Buying nitrogen this spring feels as much about reading world events as reading the crop.
Biology, not blind faith
Part of answering that N question sits in a field this year.
One field – Low Meadow, high organic matter and prone to sitting wet – is being run as a proper test. A third wheat, good organic matter in a silty clay loam, with a largely biological approach. Herbicides still in, because we live in the real world. The only conventional nitrogen was the first pass, applied into cold soils where biology wasn’t doing much yet.
After that, we’re stepping away from bagged N, and a costly fungicide programme.
We applied Mega-Fos from Soil Fertility Services (though – in BBC tone – other products are available) in early March. It’s a phosphite-based product, so not feeding the crop directly, but helping it help itself: root development, energy movement, getting the plant up and away so it can access what’s already in the soil.
Then, much of the rest of the nitrogen programme will come via Bio-N, again from the SFS guys. This is a biological nitrogen product, aimed at fixing atmospheric nitrogen and improving how nutrients cycle in the soil. It’s not a like-for-like replacement for AN, and it’s certainly not instant, but the idea is to support a steadier, more demand-led supply of N through the season.
Disclaimer: SFS make the products we’re using, but there are similar biological and phosphite-based options on the market. The principle is the same: rely less on what you bring in, and more on what your soil can do; it’s multiplication instead of boring old addition and subtraction. And with war and world prices sharpening minds, I hear others are filling the Bio-N order books.
Whether it works in our system this year is the question. We’ve had good results with biologicals over the years, but every year is different, and biology responds very differently to a simple chemical reaction.
Learning from the plots
This hasn’t come out of nowhere.
At Cereals, over the past few years, the message has been fairly consistent. The biological programmes don’t always win on yield (though they often do), but they almost always win on margin.
Lower input, slightly lower output, and more profit to go with your better soil at the end.
In some cases, those systems have outperformed both conventional and hybrid regen approaches like ours on gross margin. That’s hard to ignore, particularly with input prices where they are.
The question is whether those plots are a one-off, or something repeatable on farm.
This year, we’ll find out.
A system under pressure
All of this is happening alongside a slightly different kind of work. I’ve spent part of March at the High Court as part of the challenge to the government’s handling of changes to agricultural and business property relief.
It’s an odd contrast. One day, you’re looking at roots and nitrogen; the next, you’re in a courtroom discussing whether family farms have been properly considered in policy.
What stood out was how much of the case, in both numbers and presence, was carried by farmers themselves. For something that stretches well beyond agriculture, we seemed to be doing a fair share of the lifting.
Holding our nerve
Either way, the crop doesn’t wait. You come back, walk a field, and crack on.
So, where does that leave us? Another year of heightened uncertainty, and some (as ever) experimental farming. As the UK asks if she can wean herself off fossil fuels and embrace a renewable-based energy system, we’re doing the same on the farm; not eliminating artificial N altogether, but asking whether we can use less of it, and use it better. Whether healthier soils and decent organic matter can carry more of the load. And whether it’s worth holding our nerve a bit when everything – prices, markets, geopolitics – is pushing the other way.
It won’t all work. Some of it definitely won’t. But farming has always been about making decisions with imperfect information. This year just happens to include a bit more uncertainty than usual, and a slightly closer eye on the Strait of Hormuz than we’re used to.
