Chris Martin — Agronomist in Focus

Head of Soil Health at Agrovista. Frequent Agronomist in Focus contributor — Issues 18, 22, 28, 33. Known for arguing that industrial agriculture is reaching its end and that a hybrid model combining holistic methods with effective chemistry is the realistic path forward.

Issue 18 — “Industrial Farming Has Been an Incredible Success Story… but the Era is Coming to an End” (July 2022)

The Agronomist in Focus column reads as a manifesto for the regenerative-but-pragmatic agronomy Agrovista is now positioning itself around.

The thesis

“We’ve been fighting mother nature for the past 70 years, and we now need to work with her. The silver bullets we once had to control all manner of ills are not coming along as often and, when they do, they tend to break down more quickly to resistance pressures.”

The ongoing degradation of biodiversity and soil fertility is making conventional agriculture increasingly reliant on synthetic inputs to prop up the system. “It will get worse and, at some point, it will fail.”

The hybrid prescription

Chris is explicit that the solution is not all-or-nothing organic, but a hybrid model that incorporates the best holistic methods backed up by effective chemistry. Done correctly, this delivers:

  • Better soil health to optimise crop health and yield
  • Maintained or enhanced yields underpinning returns and driving down production costs
  • Improved farm profitability through targeted inputs and reduced establishment costs
  • Enhanced carbon sequestration to tackle climate change and offer new income streams

Not prescriptive — get off where you like

“I cannot emphasise enough that it is not prescriptive — how far people want to go down the more sustainable farming route is a personal choice. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing; very useful effects can often be obtained from quite conservative tweaks.”

For some, a complete reboot. For others, dropping a power harrow pass or amending the rotation. “There are plenty of stops where you can get off along the way.”

The five principles, agronomist-translated

The article walks through Chris’s framing of full regen ag as being built on five principles, of which the first two are explored in detail in this column:

  1. Limiting physical and chemical disturbance of the soil — improved structure, drainage, water-holding capacity, reduced runoff, energy savings, lower CO₂. Choice depends on regional suitability, soil type, drainage, biology and chemistry, residue management, resistant grass weeds and plant nutrition.
  2. Keeping soil covered — (continued in subsequent issues)

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

Issue 22 — A Testing Season for Cultural Controls (July 2023)

A diagnostic Agronomist in Focus column written after a year that “really highlighted the golden rules” of direct drilling — drainage, rotation, and the limits of synthetic herbicides and fungicides under extreme pressure.

The season’s lesson

After a mild dry early winter and an excessively wet spring with cool, damp, often waterlogged soils through to mid-May, “even the most robust synthetic herbicide and fungicide programmes have struggled to cope. Grassweeds are now poking out of the top of many fields and Septoria tritici lesions can be easily found throughout the crop canopy.” Drainage starts from the soil surface downwards — many natural drainage channels have been impeded by the rain and need attention before the next crop.

“You get the weeds you deserve”

Just as weeds become resistant to herbicides, they become resistant to cultivation strategies repeated unchanged year on year. With the open autumn 2022 and high commodity prices at the time, some growers tried to direct drill two — even three — winter cereal crops in succession; the dry autumn meant stale seedbeds were not particularly effective and sterile brome thrived.

Fungi:bacteria as a weed-management lever

Chris draws an unusually direct link between soil biology and weed pressure:

“Earlier succession plants such as bromes and blackgrass tend to prefer bacteria- and nitrate-dominated soils, with a fungi:bacteria ratio circa 0.3:1. Such environments are often created by traditional industrial farming, with intensive cultivations destroying fungi and nitrate fertilisers encouraging bacterial blooms. In other words, through industrial farming, we have created the ideal environment for some of our biggest enemies.”

Arable crops prefer a more even ratio of 0.7–1:1 and more ammonium. Tools to shift it: reduce cultivation intensity, lessen reliance on nitrate-based fertilisers, chop straw, add compost, apply mycorrhizal fungi (especially after non-mycorrhizal crops like brassicas), and use specific fungal feeds such as humic and fulvic acids.

Septoria, sap testing and spring rebuilding

Late-drilled crops and variety blends were noticeably cleaner. With unprecedented Septoria pressure through April and early May, growers had to revert to robust rates of fenpicoxamid or mefentrifluconazole. Wet anaerobic soils slowed nutrient cycling, leaving many crops “hungry at some point during the season” — Chris credits regular sap testing and growth-stage tissue sampling as the way to spot deficiencies in time. For autumn 2023, deeper-rooting cover-crop species like tillage radish or berseem clover, and targeted low-disturbance loosening while the cover is in place, are his favoured tools to “release the roots and restructure the soil without the expense and damage to natural soil structure from having to cultivate the whole field.”

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

Appearances

Issues 18, 22 (“Era is Coming to an End”, “A Testing Season”), 28, 33

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