Andrew Jackson — Pink Pig Farm, Lincolnshire

Regular farmer focus contributor and one of Direct Driller’s most internationally-curious writers. Visited the US National No-Till Conference (reported in Issue 9) and brought David Johnson’s bioreactor approach back to Lincolnshire. Daughter Anna joined the farm during lockdown after a career in sports photography.

📰 Read articles by Andrew Jackson — Pink Pig Farm, Lincolnshire on Direct Driller → View author archive

Issue 14 — Bioreactors, Sap Analysis and a Carbon-Credit Reservation (July 2021)

The Drill Journey

  • 2012: bought one of only three Sumo D Spec Trio drills ever made
  • Then to a Sumo DTS — credited as a brilliant stepping-stone for reducing soil disturbance and creating level fields
  • Most recently: a Horizon direct drill acquired with a grant — first season producing “excellent looking crops”

Reading List That Started It All

Growing a Revolution (David Montgomery, 2015), then Holistic Management (Allan Savory) and Dirt to Soil (Gabe Brown). Long-stated ambition to “leapfrog” Pink Pig Farm’s soils to those on Gabe Brown’s farm.

Rotation Diversification

  • Moved from predominantly wheat/rape to include quinoa, herbage seed, Birds Eye peas and OSR as first-wheat options
  • After 40+ years of growing carrots, the sand land has been let out to another farmer for an outdoor pig rotation — hoping to lift OM% on those less productive fields

Education and Frustration with UK Research

  • BASE-UK Zoom programme (under Rebecca Goodwin) credited as the major learning vehicle
  • Independent agronomist of 20+ years has joined BASE-UK and they are “learning together”
  • New North Lincs/East Riding regen agronomy group using RegenBen consultancy
  • Direct dig at academia: “Regrettably the UK Universities and Agricultural Colleges appear to have dismissed regen ag and have in my opinion found themselves behind the curve”
  • Spends winter evenings on YouTube watching Joel Williams, Christine Jones, Elaine Ingham

Johnson-Su Bioreactors

  • Two built after seeing David Johnson present at the US National No-Till Conference
  • Pondering scale-up for application — followed the YouTube trail to the Haggerty family in Western Australia, who appear to blend compost slurry with seed in a grain auger feeding the drill
  • Reproduces the “No Hope in Heck” article on the Haggertys in this issue, having received it via No-Till Farmer magazine USA
  • Notes the Haggertys’ use of epigenetic progression in their “self-replacing livestock” and seed retention — claimed to scale them from 1,600 to 65,000 acres

Carbon Credits — Cautious

Met Thomas Gent to discuss his carbon credit scheme. Concerns:

  • Permanent pasture, hedgerows, margins and woodland ineligible
  • After Issue 13’s piece on potential glyphosate removal, “I now have some reservations about locking into such a scheme for five or ten years”

Nitrogen Reduction

  • Adding molasses to liquid N
  • Using Joel Williams’ recommended trace elements with N
  • Working towards reducing all fertilisers, N first

“In my opinion, we are guilty of not really appreciating the soils that we have inherited in the UK. Those soils together with such a good climate (although now becoming more variable), can provide us with world record breaking crops.”

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

Issue 16 — Walter Witte, Michael Horsch and 700 Tonnes of Bokashi Compost (January 2022)

The harvest 2021 takeaway: yield variability was driven more by soil type than by N rate, even after trimming back to 160 kg N/ha on wheat and OSR.

The Horizon drill switch

OSR has gone in mostly with the Horizon drill — no leading leg to loosen the soil. A “little out of his comfort zone” because most farmers prefer to place OSR seed behind a subsoiler leg (OSR is a “lazy rooter”). DAP rate also dropped to reflect 15 kg N/ha. Performance pleasing: uniform sowing at 4 mm for quinoa and grass seed and 20–30 mm for wheat and meadowfoam. Andrew openly recommends Horizon as a credible no-till disc drill option alongside more established names. He’s also musing that drill manufacturers should now sell inter-row guided weeders matched to their own coulter spacings in case glyphosate is lost.

The Agritrend concrete bucket and Johnson-Su extract

Stumbled across an Agritrend concrete mixer bucket as a way to blend Johnson-Su compost extract with seed at scale. Anna and Andrew successfully blended 10 L of liquid into half a tonne of seed, with the bucket then sweeping the seed into the drill. Four batches filled the drill; seed flowed well through the metering devices and emerged evenly.

The Walter Witte / Michael Horsch bokashi adventure

Inspired by Michael Horsch’s Christmas fireside YouTube chat (alerted by David White) about anaerobic compost from green chopped cover crop + chopped straw, Andrew emailed Horsch directly — “almost as exciting as receiving an email from the Queen”. Horsch pointed him at the work of Walter Witte in East Germany.

The recipe Andrew assembled:

  • Roughly 50:50 grass aftermath (from his stripper-headered grass-seed crop) + chopped straw
  • Volcanic rock dust (Remin)
  • Seashells (suggested by Andrew Sincock at Agriton)
  • Bokashi liquid (bought from Agriton; could be self-mixed)
  • Whole-crop forage harvester (contractor) for collection and Bokashi application
  • Concrete pad, mixed with the loading shovel
  • Sides consolidated, clamp height ~2.5 m

Result: ~700 tonnes of compost of unproven benefit. “Watch this space.”

Anna and “Six Inches of Soil”

Daughter Anna, who career-switched into farming in lockdown, has been approached by a film crew making a UK equivalent of Kiss the Ground called Six Inches of Soil — Andrew expects to be consulted. Anna and Andrew also made a YouTube video for Satchel Classes to promote agriculture as a career.

BASE UK farm walks — invite the unconvinced

Andrew makes a specific case for BASE members to invite non-BASE neighbours to farm walks rather than only fellow members, “to explain what I am trying to achieve” and create some honest debate over a beer. BASE UK membership has grown from ~200 to 483 in the last 18 months.

[Source: dd-issue-16, 2026-04-13]

Issue 19 — Peristaltic Pumps, Bokashi and an OSR Companion Mix (October 2022)

Yield surprise again. Andrew attributes high wheat yields this year to June sunshine more than rainfall — 207 mm total to the start of harvest. “Like the Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch some might say I was lucky…”

Equipment: Tim Parton’s peristaltic pump

A blockage in his Horizon drill’s liquid fertiliser applicator — caused by his own preference for “lumpy biological product” — prompted a call to Tim Parton, who uses Trevor Tappen’s peristaltic pumps on his John Deere drill. Andrew took the plunge and had a peristaltic pump fitted. First autumn use: applying nitrogen and fish hydrolysate when sowing OSR and grass seed. “So far so good.”

OSR with an all-legume companion crop

Drilled OSR with crimson clover, Rivendale white clover (ground-hugging), berseem clover and black medic (a prostrate trefoil). Field “looked a picture” in May. OSR yield respectable — uncertain how much legume N benefited the crop vs will show up in the following wheat.

Johnson-Su seed dressing and Walter Witte compost

Two wheat fields sown with seed dressed with Johnson-Su — one yielded 10 t/ha on 160 kg N/ha. Combine yield maps failed to detect any benefit, but trials continue. The 700-tonne Walter Witte bokashi compost (Issue 16) has been PLFA-tested: high in bacteria, fungi and protozoa with a good B:F ratio, low only in PLFA diversity. Spread at 25 t/ha on a second-wheat field — harvest 2023 will reveal results.

SSM gold standard soil test

Results over 10 years show an average 1.81 percentage-point increase in SOM across ten fields — a ~97% increase from a low base, with all but one very sandy field now comfortably above 3% OM.

A change of cereal seed strategy

After twelve years as a cereal seed grower, Andrew has concluded the seed premium no longer reflects commodity price volatility and has ordered eleven varieties of wheat to blend and retain home-saved seed. Also featured in this column: daughter Anna’s filming role in Six Inches of Soil, and Andrew’s book-gifting strategy of sending Dirt to Soil copies to interested farmers — including a signed copy delivered via a friend to Jeremy Clarkson.

[Source: dd-issue-19, 2026-04-13]

Issue 21 — Perimeter Fencing and the 10 t/ha No-Fungicide Goal (April 2023)

A practical column about returning grazing animals to the arable fields for the first time in over a hundred years. Andrew is perimeter-fencing his two farms, funded partly by grant and partly by “not spending thousands of pounds on phosphate and potash”. Rationale: sixty years of P reserves already in the soils, release them via undisturbed fungi.

The fencing solution

Having fallen out with three fencing contractors, he sourced Clipex stock netting on steel posts from McVeigh Parker, plus a Quickfencer and post-knocker so that he, Carl and Anna could erect fences themselves. First section completed just after Christmas, and three fields now graze with confidence. Side benefits: dogs deterred and public footpath discipline.

The impossible goal

After attending David Hyner’s motivational talk at both the National Farm Attractions conference (Pink Pig Farm has a visitor attraction) and the BASE UK AGM, Andrew set a deliberately audacious target:

“To strive for the impossible, to aim to grow a 10 T/Ha crop of wheat, direct drilled, without using fungicides, insecticides and applying only 100 kg/N/Ha.”

His logic: if it works on wheat, the system works for everything else in the rotation — and it might give neighbours who “look over my hedge and wonder what the hell is he up to” something to think about. He is building a local cluster group to share the goal and run parallel trials.

DIY urea fertiliser

After Joel Williams’ foliar nitrogen course and conversations with David Aglen at the BASE UK conference, Andrew is converting a redundant Dutch barn into a fertiliser-making plant — dissolving urea into water to make his own foliar and placement nitrogen for the April 2023 season. A visit to John Pawsey (organised as part of Anna’s Six Inches of Soil filming) generated a useful side-debate: shallow ploughing at 4″ — the same depth as a horse-drawn plough — as a possible alternative should glyphosate ever be lost.

[Source: dd-issue-21, 2026-04-13]

Appearances

Issues 7, 8, 14, 16, 19, 21, 25, 27

Related Pages