Andy Howard — Low-Input Transition Farmer, Kent

Author of the influential Nuffield report on companion intercropping. Farming in transition: no tillage, 40% less nitrogen, 50%+ less fungicide, almost no insecticide. Now consulting through Abacus Agriculture. From Direct Driller Issue 6.

📰 Read articles by Andy Howard — Low-Input Transition Farmer, Kent on Direct Driller → View author archive

Current System (2019)

Metric Level
Tillage Zero
Nitrogen 40% below standard
Fungicides 50%+ reduction
Insecticides One application on 3ha spring linseed only

Philosophy

“There are a few choices going forward. High input/high output and probably fail on the output part. Organic, but too much cultivation and yield variation. Or a hybrid system — judicious use of pesticides and fertilisers with the aim of reducing year on year by using cultural and agroecological methods.”

Key Observations

  • Manganese deficiency → BYDV → disease: BYDV only appeared on sandy soil that became Mn-deficient in January; aphids attracted to deficient wheat; same areas showed excessive disease. Nutritional management is the root cause.
  • Wheat without fungicide: no fungicide until flag leaf; yielded the same as treated wheat on healthy fields
  • Linseed + oats companion: 80–100 more linseed plants/m² survived Flax Flea Beetle onslaught where oats companion was present (Innovative Farmers trial). “A great example of diversity in action.”

Drivers for Change

  1. Consumer/climate/regulatory pressure demanding less “cides” and fertiliser — “these demands are getting louder”
  2. Chemical tools being removed; resistance increasing
  3. “Farming this way is far more interesting”
  4. Conventional farming hides soil/plant health issues with fungicides and excess fertiliser — “it is not until you reduce or remove their use that you start to see differences”

[Source: dd-issue-06, 2026-04-11]

Nuffield Scholarship

Travelled the world studying companion intercropping. Published: “The potential for companion intercropping on UK arable farms” (Nuffield Farming Scholarships Trust, July 2016). Visited: France, USA, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, Kenya, South Africa, Sweden, Denmark.

Key finding: over-yielding occurs in 75% of cases in conventional intercropping in Canada; 47% in organic.

Inspired by Frederic Thomas speaking about companion cropping with OSR. See Companion Cropping — OSR with Legumes.

[Source: dd-issue-06, 2026-04-11]

Issue 13 — Johnson-Su, a Microscope and a Robot (April 2021)

By late February 2021 Andy has already logged 650mm of rain since 24 September with parts of the farm flooded four times. Despite that, crops look well — a stark contrast to the previous year.

  • Four Johnson-Su bioreactors built since his last article, aiming to apply compost extract with the drill next autumn
  • Microscope purchase: so far has examined “a tick off our pet cat and my daughter’s blood” — aim is to check the biology of the compost extract before field application
  • Second-hand Claydon Terrablade inter-row hoe acquired — spring SU herbicide efficacy “almost useless” with prices unchanged; manual hand-roguing is unsustainable. Aims for 70% patch control with the hoe, hand-roguing the rest
  • UKRI-funded robotics collaboration (n2visionai.wordpress.com): robotic platform carrying cameras captures image data of a winter wheat crop under varying N rates; deep-learning analysis at Manchester Met Uni, aiming eventually at plant-scale variable N application
  • Labour philosophy: direct challenge to industry macho culture — “Why would you work for a relatively low wage, working very unsociable long hours at the time of year everyone else is on holiday or going to festivals and have to handle potentially toxic chemicals? Not a great job advert!”

“I hope to be the last generation of my family that sits on a tractor for 100 hours a week just to get crops planted.”

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

Issue 16 — Equipment for Wet Autumns (January 2022)

After two punishing autumns Andy invests heavily in machinery aimed squarely at managing water on heavy clay: a mole plough (Feb 2020), a drain jetter, paddle-equipped rolls and a Tech Neat Outcast catch crop spreader. The mole plough has had a “very successful” first proper autumn, putting him on a par with what neighbours in Essex have done for years. The drain jetter found drains he didn’t know existed.

New season learnings

  • Winter beans after herbage grass are safer than spring beans because leatherjackets and other grass pests don’t feed in autumn — excellent autumn 2021 establishment
  • Catch crops are “the missing link” for constant living roots and make later drilling much less risky than going into bare stubble
  • Outcast spreader trial (catch crops into standing crops): need higher seed rates, slug pellets, and a narrower species mix — some species “a waste of time”
  • Trialling with Southern Water to reduce propyzamide in watercourses via two methods — pre-drilling catch crops to smother weeds and reduce runoff, and oats grown with winter beans to reduce in-crop weed burden

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

Issue 17 — My Nuffield Journey, Seven Years On (April 2022)

A retrospective piece on what the Nuffield Scholarship has done for the farm and the wider career — written off the back of being asked to update on his original cover-cropping/intercropping topic.

How it changed the farm

  • Inputs reduced by 10% every year for the last five years — the farm has shifted from “boring, predictable synthetic input” to “knowledge intensive, flexible, constantly changing”
  • Bought a drill that can handle intercropping (different species at the same time)
  • With his father, built a bespoke intercrop separator from second-hand components — they can now separate intercrops on-farm
  • Crops increasingly grown on contract for Hodmedods (“a real vision of how the food system should work”)

How it changed the career

  • Pre-Nuffield: struggled to speak for 20 minutes at a farmers’ meeting; now has to be “kicked off after 90 minutes” and has spoken to 100+ groups across Europe
  • Joined fellow Nuffield scholar Stephen Briggs at Abacus Agriculture as a consultant
  • Now involved in the Innovate UK-funded N2 Vision project applying AI, deep learning and robotics to precision N application
  • Trial collaborations with PGRO, Innovative Farmers, the Diversify Project and Southern Water

His honest summary on imposter syndrome: most authors in the regen-ag space are not infallible. “There is no-one who has perfected their system. This was a very important realisation for me and took pressure off me mentally.”

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

Issue 18 — From Drought to Deluge (July 2022)

Sitting down to write on 24 May with thunderstorms hammering outside after 50 mm in 6 days — a week earlier the temperature was 26°C and crops were wilting.

Operation Zero Tolerance for blackgrass

The farm is on the offensive on blackgrass: hand-roguing every plant before seed return on the few problem fields. Arduous but satisfying — fields that were once issues now hold very low populations. Bonus: walking the crop you can really inspect the wheat instead of seeing it from the sprayer cab.

Variety blend vs Crusoe

The wheat variety blend has visibly outperformed straight Crusoe in the drought, with Crusoe again showing brown rust susceptibility. Andy is leaning towards moving fully to the blend going forward.

The fungicide concession

Hoped to go fungicide-free this year but had to spray a couple of Crusoe fields with brown rust. Sap analysis afterwards revealed Mg and P deficiency was the underlying cause. Lesson: tissue test more frequently next year.

Silica trial

Foliar silica was tried as a fungicide replacement. The verdict: “silica suppresses disease but does not cure it.” Once disease is established, silica isn’t enough — fungicide is still required. Mistakes: didn’t put silica down with the seed last autumn, and started spring rates too low. The whole-plant nutrition has to be in balance for silica alone to work.

Low-N wheat trial

One field is on 70 kg/ha solid N + two foliar sprays, with no visible difference yet to the rest of the farm. “Hoping the combine cannot tell the difference either, then I will not need to buy another load of overpriced fertiliser.”

Spring intercrops

  • Bean/spring-OSR intercrop now coming together (after several previous spring-OSR failures the agronomy was changed this year)
  • Linseed/oat companion looking great
  • Lentil/camelina intercrop just visible in the rows — first time growing camelina

[Source: dd-issue-18, 2026-04-13]

Issue 20 — French Style Harvest and Trial Results (January 2023)

Andy opens with the gag that 2022’s harvest felt “like we were farming in France” — everything finished by the first week of August and the ground baked too dry to plant cover crops. He actually spent a day off with his partner on her birthday (“for the first time in our relationship”). The family-time angle neatly frames a column that’s otherwise a trial-results audit.

Lentils and Camelina intercrop — the heat champion

Their lentils + camelina intercrop was the only spring crop that coped with 40°C temperatures and yielded well. The learning: roll twice and add slug pellets at drilling in future. Best camelina establishment was on the headland — “which is always telling.”

Wheat trials

  • Nurture 60 foliar vs bagged N: 70 kg soil N + foliar Nurture 60 vs 140 kg bagged N + no foliar. No noticeable difference in yield or visual appearance between strips. No one could pick out the trial.
  • Foliar N protein lift: control plot, AF nitrogen plot, Nufol plot. Nufol won by a margin, lifting protein 1.5% and allowing the crop to make milling spec. “Even though I grumbled at the exorbitant cost of it at the time it has had a great ROI this year.”
  • Variety blend vs single variety (Crusoe): +1.2 t/ha uplift on one field, +0.6 t/ha on another for the blend. Andy notes the context: light land, dry year, and Crusoe is drought-vulnerable; heavier ground or a better variety comparison may not show such dramatic differences.

Compost extract on spring linseed

A small trial gave a 13% yield bump when compost extract was applied down with the seed. Encouraging enough that all wheat got compost extract this year (with control strips). “I still feel we have a lot to learn about using them.”

The grass-in-rotation observation

Two 2nd wheats sown into land where a herbage seed crop had been grown two years earlier were “twice the size of other 2nd wheats that haven’t had grass in the rotation” — highlighting the long-term fertility benefit of grass.

[Source: dd-issue-20, 2026-04-13]

Issue 22 — Mole Ploughing Revisited and BYDV Returns (July 2023)

A more downbeat column written on the last day of May. The farm had gone from “drenched” at the start of May to “having the life sucked out of them” by the end of the month after a sustained dry wind. “If you had asked me at the beginning of March, I would have told you the farm looks fantastic, now it doesn’t!!”

Mole ploughing lessons

A stark reminder that soil structure is iteratively built on heavy clay: areas moled twice to 1.5 m apart look great; areas moled once to 3 m apart show a wavy crop — good over the moles, poor in between; areas unmoled “look poor”. Autumn moisture is needed urgently — “we have a lot of mole ploughing to do”.

BYDV returns

After six insecticide-free years with virtually no BYDV, it has shown up again this season. Andy sees a correlation with wet areas, spring SU usage and specifically the variety Crusoe — plant health compromised in those areas, high aphid pressure, a poor combination. Notably, neighbours who sprayed insecticides twice still have BYDV. Some is likely spring infection — he has found BYDV in wild oats, meadow brome and even blackgrass in the same fields, which wouldn’t have been there in the autumn.

Blackgrass spot spraying

Positive: finishing the year’s blackgrass spot spraying in wheat and grass seed by tomorrow. Vital for maintaining second wheats and herbage seed in the rotation. “Hearing lots of horror stories of a black grass mess across the country so at least we aren’t too bad, and our seed return will be low.”

The crops that are holding up

  • Mid-May drilled linseed with oat companion and the lentil/camelina intercrop looking well
  • A strip of chickpeas in the linseed for Hodmedods — good price this year
  • Spring OSR/bean intercrop a struggle — drilled Easter Sunday into a tough month

The Twitter poll

Andy flags Clive Bailye’s Twitter poll that found 60% of respondents thinking about quitting farming. “Even though I don’t feel that despondent I do understand the frustration.” The specific list of grievances: falling markets, high input costs, disappearing subsidies, public disdain — “but the one that annoys me the most is the weather; we don’t seem to be able to go a season without a major issue.”

[Source: dd-issue-22, 2026-04-13]

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