Adam Driver — Driver Farms, Suffolk

Family-run 1,200ha contract farming business on Hanslope series clay, practising regenerative agriculture with zero and min-till, 12m CTF system, and in-house agronomy. From Direct Driller Issue 7.

📰 Read articles by Adam Driver — Driver Farms, Suffolk on Direct Driller → View author archive

Profile
Farm Driver Farms
Location Suffolk
Area 1,200 ha (contract farming)
Soils Hanslope series clay
System Zero and min-till; 12m CTF (5 years)
Drill Horsch Avatar (12m, shared with neighbouring farm) + Horsch Sprinter (tine)
Agronomy In-house

Key Practices

Companion Cropping

  • OSR with buckwheat and berseem clover — drilled into both stripper-headered and chopped spring barley
  • Disc (Avatar) and tine (Sprinter) drilled respectively
  • No insecticides used — resistance to pyrethroids too high; impact on beneficials too great
  • Instead: very high/stripped stubble, early drilling, no-till, companion crops, farm system based on building ecosystems

Cover Crops

  • Mix: phacelia, buckwheat, linseed, sunflower, some clover (~£24/ha)
  • Aim: balance C:N ratios; avoid too much residue for spring drilling
  • No brassica in cover crops — “they seem to breed slugs horrendously, mustard especially”
  • Broadcast from back of cultivator

Honest Failures

“Flea beetle is probably the automatic thought for many when OSR fails, it’s a great way to divert any blame from your own management.”

Openly admits one OSR field failure was his own fault: should have mole-drained; should have been more vigilant on slugs; probably drilled too deep.

Philosophy

“Regenerative agriculture is an exciting next step where the farm system is no longer built around synthetic chemicals and fertiliser, instead they are a useful and important addition within the system.”

  • Uses brix refractometer and tissue leaf samples but “only just starting to get a vague understanding”
  • Planning to brew beneficial biology for next year
  • Learned from BASE UK farm visits and “Agricecology” group
  • Twitter as key learning tool: “especially if you can avoid arguing and debating. I struggle with that though!”

“Despite the uncertainty surrounding our industry, I believe exciting times are ahead.”

[Source: dd-issue-07, 2026-04-11]

Issue 12 — Déjà Vu, Serviced Agronomy Mk 2 (January 2021)

A year on from the disastrous autumn of 2019, Adam reports an almost-complete autumn — 50ha of poor blackgrassy land deferred to spring barley — and a very different confidence in the system.

  • Started 19 September; 300ha of winter barley and wheat on Dutch points before the rain broke on 23 September
  • Once the rain arrived, drilled 260ha of cover crop land (after OSR and first wheat: linseed, buckwheat, sunflowers) plus 130ha of cultivated land in small breaks
  • Cover-crop fields let the drill run clean; slug pressure real but expected to decline with improved soil structure
  • Early signal from the neighbourhood: winter barley in the area established direct or shallow-cultivated was green and even, while ploughed/deeply tilled crops were yellow with visible wheelings. “More proof that aggressive tillage can often be counterproductive.”

“Serviced Agronomy Mark 2”

Most of the column is a sharp warning about the commercialisation of regen ag:

  • “What was once a farmer led movement is becoming increasingly saturated with various companies offering ‘regen’ solutions.”
  • The regen-product trap: farmers with knowledge gaps become “sitting ducks” for companies offering biologicals and unregulated high-margin biostimulants
  • “Any of these companies offering advice on regenerative farming and selling various products on the back of that is ‘serviced agronomy mark 2’.”
  • Running one biostim trial himself — cheap, with strong independent-trial evidence, unlike most
  • His best-investment advice: “The best investment you can make into making a switch to regenerative farming is in yourself” — books, forums, Twitter, podcasts, webinars, farmer conversations, truly independent advisors, multiple sources

[Source: dd-issue-12, 2026-04-13]

Issue 14 — Candid Crop Evaluation and Overheads vs Output (July 2021)

Adam does a frank field-by-field walk-through:

  • Winter wheat: “pretty good on the whole”; some smattering of blackgrass after OSR, correlating with wet patches; “perhaps we overspent on fungicides this year”
  • SAP testing with Novacrop + brix + pH: “fascinating and shows real promise agronomically” but not yet confident enough to roll out wholesale
  • Winter malting barley: “Looks amazing” — drilled early, very little blackgrass, direct-drilled despite industry doctrine that barley needs loose soil. “It is a great crop to point you towards compaction issues.”
  • OSR: Good after early-harvested wheat/barley, poor after spring barley. Sprayed off 13ha; considering dropping OSR entirely: “I do hate it though… Blackgrass always seems to creep back into it”
  • Spring cereals: difficult start then okay. “Learning more and more how to deal with cover crops on this land so they do not become a hindrance to establishment.”

The Red Queen Argument

Blackgrass nationwide worst in a long while despite more varied rotations — proof that chemical dependency has run out of road and that overheads must shrink to match the lower outputs that genuine agronomic sustainability implies:

“We cannot grow as much output anymore, as the easy chemical options are simply not there… Coupled with the traditional chemical toolkit shrinking or no longer working… it seems to me that lower cost ‘regen’ systems, focused on margin rather than simply yield are going to be vital.”

[Source: dd-issue-14, 2026-04-13]

Issue 17 — OSR Lessons, Spring Drill Choice, and Inter-Row Hoeing (April 2022)

Written as the OSR comes into flower and pigeon patrol can finally relax. Adam concedes some lessons from the previous year’s poor crops:

What it actually takes to make OSR work

“It is probably not a very ‘regen’ thing to say but it does feel like the main way to getting some reasonably OSR is to drill it early, give it loads of early N, and keep the pigeons off.”

Last year where these three things weren’t done well enough, crops were poor — lessons learnt. Will continue growing OSR because the rotational benefits outweigh the weaknesses, but slug pressure post-OSR remains a concern. The promised CSFB-eating beneficials haven’t shown up in sufficient numbers despite years of no insecticide use.

Direct-cutting OSR as a possible cost saver

Desiccation could cost over �40/ha just to spray it off. Now they have more combining capacity, direct-cutting OSR is being seriously discussed.

Wheat and barley updates

  • Malting barley went luminous for a week or two then normalised — total spring N 100 kg/ha plus a tonic
  • One winter barley field had very poor straw chop due to a damp brackled crop that needed shaving — gappy areas where germination was poor, slugs attacked. “MUST DO BETTER”

Inter-row hoeing for blackgrass

Blackgrass present in some wheat — mostly second wheat and after OSR. These areas will get inter-row hoed with the Claydon TerraBlade, possibly twice. Adam is candid that they are nowhere near yield-affecting levels but wants to take out as much as possible.

  • Will hoe ~15% of wheat area and ~5% of barley (where brome is the issue)
  • If it works, a bigger camera-guided hoe could be on the cards
  • Aim: keep blackgrass at an economic level, not zero

Tine vs disc drill in spring

About 1,500 acres of spring drilling imminent — most will go through the tined Sprinter:

“I really worry with the disc drill in the spring as we have seen time and time again the slot can just open up and dry out very quickly. This is regardless of whether it’s been drilled into dead cover, green cover, stubble, rolled, unrolled etc.”

[Source: dd-issue-17, 2026-04-13]

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