Clive Bailye

Founder and publisher of Direct Driller magazine and AgriWebMedia Ltd. Zero-till farmer in Staffordshire, active contributor to The Farming Forum (TFF — thefarmingforum.co.uk). Converted to zero-till and conservation agriculture approximately 10 years before Issue 1 (c. 2008).

📰 Read articles by Clive Bailye on Direct Driller → View author archive

Profile

Field Value
Role Founder/Publisher, Direct Driller; Farmer
Location Staffordshire
Company AgriWebMedia Ltd
Forum The Farming Forum (thefarmingforum.co.uk)
Zero-till since ~2008 (10 years before 2018)
Primary drill John Deere 750A, 6m

His Journey

“10 years ago, I set out on a journey to change the way we farmed to a more sustainable and financially viable way. The zero-till and conservation system that we have since adopted and evolved has been truly transformational to our soils, local environment and importantly our farms financial performance.”

Found UK agricultural media “lacking in the detail and depth of knowledge I needed when making such fundamental changes” — looked abroad and to the internet. Founded Direct Driller to fill that gap.

[Source: dd-issue-01, 2026-04-11]

Drill Setup

Primary: John Deere 750A (6m)

  • Used exclusively for 3–4 seasons
  • Surefire liquid fertiliser system: 750l tank; 2 electric pumps; rates from 30 l/ha
  • Güttler wheels + extra Güttler weights on each wheel
  • Stocks slug pelleter (not transferable between drills)

Secondary: Adapted Horsch CO6

  • Bought from German farmer for under £5,000
  • Higher spec than UK-market CO6: wider seed dart tyres, blockage monitors, front packers, liquid fert system
  • Custom narrow coulters with Ferobide wear tiles (harder than tungsten)
  • Acquired and modified in 2016; modifications completed for under £8,000 total
  • Primary use: OSR and 2nd crop cereals drilled into chopped straw
  • 25cm spacing; 12mm wide slot

[Source: dd-issue-01, 2026-04-11]

On-Farm Trials

Ran Adexar® and Librax® vs farm standard and Aviator® Xpro fungicide trial, reported live on The Farming Forum:

  • Farm: Staffordshire, drought-prone soils
  • T1 Adexar + T2 Librax: +0.43 t/ha and +£57/ha margin over Aviator Xpro
  • “Was sceptical of BASF’s claim of £20/ha — my trial showed exactly this”
  • Also returned greater margin than farm standard

[Source: dd-issue-01, 2026-04-11]

Direct Driller Magazine

  • Website: www.directdriller.com
  • Forum: www.thefarmingforum.co.uk
  • Twitter: @directdriller
  • Editor: Mike Donovan ([email protected] / Practical Farm Ideas)
  • Content Management: Chris Fellows ([email protected])
  • Design: Very Vermilion Ltd
  • Advertising: Adam Millard ([email protected] / 01543 686 209)
  • Distribution: Howson Print Ltd

2018 Season — Drought Resilience on Light Soils (Issue 3)

Background: The Journey from High-HP to No-Till

Clive farms mostly light sandy loams — often called “boys’ land” for its wider working windows and lower slug/blackgrass pressure. His gap year on heavy North Yorkshire clay gave him an “unhealthy addiction to horsepower”, and he returned to run the farm with a “tillage train” escalating to 600+ HP tractors.

The turning point: an “epiphanous moment” refuelling a CAT Challenger for the second time in a day. Researching how dryland Australian grain farmers managed drought, he realised: cultivation and bare soil are the fastest way to lose moisture. His journey into no-till began ~2008.

2018: The Year That Could Have Been

  • Autumn establishment ideal; crops got away well
  • Spring applications went on with near-perfect timing
  • Satellite yield prediction models forecasting record yields
  • Then: no rain through grainfill — crops visibly dying daily

Drone Evidence of No-Till Advantage

A local drone photographer captured aerial images from Clive’s field boundary:

  • Looking west over Clive’s 10-year no-till land: crops still green and even
  • Looking east over neighbouring conventionally cultivated land: uneven, clearly drought-stressed
  • The contrast was “stunning” — same rainfall (none), same period, different soil management
  • Same caveats acknowledged: different varieties, drilling dates, agronomy possible — but rainfall was identical

Harvest Results

  • OSR: yields slightly above 5-year rolling average despite lowest input spend ever — close to satellite yield forecast
  • Wheat: approximately 0.5 t/ha below rolling average, but milling quality achieved
  • Early harvest (earliest ever start) — early combining typically means lower yields
  • Overall: “a lucky escape and not too bad a result”

Reflection

“The deeper into no-till farming over the years I had got the more I had lost sight of why that journey had begun. Moisture was what it was all about for me.”

Still wants to farm heavier land and does so as a contract farmer — “a nicely hedged position of light and heavy is probably the ideal place to be.”

[Source: dd-issue-03, 2026-04-11]

Issue 4 — Business Restructure and Soil Structure (January 2019)

Trailed Sprayer Switch

After 18 years with self-propelled sprayers, Clive switched to a new trailed sprayer — bigger and heavier but at half the capital cost of an equivalent self-propelled. This was only possible because zero-till had so improved soil structure that it could carry the weight.

Soil Structure Carrying Traffic

  • Improved infiltration tests prove zero-till structure copes far better with rainfall
  • Drainage systems ageing (1960s-era) but biological drainage compensating: worms create galleries equivalent to a 4-inch drain every square metre
  • Problem areas: resisted subsoiling in favour of light surface cultivation + cover crop mix → roots and biology repair structure better than iron
  • “Less is more” — plough to 10″ and heavy loads break through; min-till to 6″ = 6″ ruts; zero-till creates natural structure that carries much greater loads

Business Restructure Philosophy

“Zerotill creates opportunity for complete business restructure.”

  • Capital employed per acre: less than half the level under min-till; a quarter of what ploughing would require
  • Moved from 24m to 36m tramlines — still fits harvest operation (12m base)
  • Smaller tractors, more flexible, more available hours for varied work
  • No one made redundant; changes evolved gradually
  • “UK agriculture has been obsessed with gross margin for too long and has lost sight of more fundamentally important profitability”
  • Higher % spring cropping = lower rotational average gross margin but serious scope for cost cutting
  • Fixed cost savings are what make the real business difference

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

Issue 6 — Staff Loss and 12m Avatar (July 2019)

The Curved Ball

Mark, longest-serving employee of 29 years, left to move into elderly care — driven by work/life balance, not pay or unhappiness. Recruitment failed: applicants viewed small tractors and trailed sprayer as “backward step” from Quadtrac/self-propelled culture. “A negative attitude towards no-till that I had become all too familiar with amongst other farmers was ingrained much deeper within our industry.”

Plan B — Drop One Man, Gain Width

  • Salary saving: ~£40,000/year + tractor capital/depreciation
  • Dropped less efficient contracting work (coincided with contract farming customer change)
  • Moved from 6m JD 750A + 6m Horsch CO to 12m Horsch Avatar SD + retained CO with ULD conversion

Why Avatar 12m

  • Only 230 HP required (keeps existing Fendt 724 tractors)
  • Coulter very similar to 750A design — proven on their soils
  • 25cm row width (same as CO; less than Väderstad Seed Hawk demo that holds farm wheat yield record)
  • 3 hoppers as standard (ISO, seed, fertiliser), Güttler closing wheels and row cleaners from factory
  • ~25% cheaper per metre than 750A equivalent
  • Plans for interrow mowing trials for organic spring milling wheat

Result

“We have more capacity, a new drill, one less tractor to fund and one fewer full-time employee to pay… the spreadsheets tell a tale of the savings more than outweighing those losses.”

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

Issue 12 — Fake News, Honest Yields, and ELMs Fear (January 2021)

A bruised and unusually downbeat column written after Clive’s worst average yields “I have ever been responsible for” — a perfect storm of wet autumn/winter 2019 followed by spring drought 2020. The piece is essentially an essay on honesty in farming.

  • “Fake news”: scepticism of “pub yield” 5t/ha OSR and 15t/ha wheat boasts in the agricultural press that ignore irrigated land, torn-up failures, uncalibrated yield monitors and snake-oil inputs. “Success is judged as failure because of a boastful few.”
  • Decline of independent farming media: “We have witnessed the death of any independence in farming media replaced by seemingly endless paid editorial… I blame the internet.” Concerns about “influencer” farmers reviewing discounted soil-friendly products.
  • ELMs caution: welcomes the pivot from production subsidies but fears capital grants will “penalise innovators” and subsidise gear for those not committed to the system change. “Agroforestry, rewilding and clever value added direct marketing should not be seen as some kind of blueprint for ELMs.”
  • Relief at autumn 2020 drilling: first wheats in on 22 September (same date as 2019), it then rained for two weeks, but mid-October gave ten days to get wheat, barley and rye in. The 12m drill capacity saved them from compromised cropping.

“If climate change is real, we as farmers are very much on the front line and will quickly become its first victims.”

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

Issue 13 — Zoom, Carbon Trading and the Red Tractor Threat (April 2021)

Clive writes from a year of lockdown and sees the rise of the webinar as “fast forward on the internet” — a net positive for BASE UK membership, which hit new highs as overseas speakers previously blocked by geography became accessible.

  • Carbon accounting: rejects the idea that farmers should carry the embedded carbon of synthetic fertiliser manufacture. “Are we really suggesting that Yara, Europe’s biggest user of natural gas, is carbon neutral?” Far more logical: each part of the supply chain owns the carbon it directly produces.
  • Sequestration vs storage: warns that paying just to plant a tree covers only the growing years — storage also has to be valued. “How do we sell and guarantee both future storage as well as the tools for carbon removal?”
  • Carbon measurement: trialling an ISO-certified desktop quantification model to become the backbone of Thomas Gent’s Gentle Farming programme — aiming to sell ISO-certified regenerative carbon as a premium brand rather than a race to the bottom.
  • Red Tractor attack: “20 years of Red Tractor’s complete failure to make the UK food assurance scheme into anything which provides UK farmers with a premium.” Alarmed by CEO Jim Moseley’s ambition for Red Tractor to sit behind ELMS. “If Carbon has the potential to be farming’s ‘gold rush’ we must vigorously resist those with such a proven track record of failure getting involved.”

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

Issue 14 — Living Mulch as the “Holy Grail” (July 2021)

Featured in the Soil Association / Innovative Farmers / ORC / AHDB living mulch field lab alongside James Alexander, Mark Lea, Jamie Stephens and others. For Clive this is explicitly an attempt to get organic-style fertility-building without livestock, which he has never been able to run.

  • “So, to find out how we can do organic no till, without livestock, is like the holy grail of farming.”
  • First clover attempt failed to establish through lack of rain; re-drilled the small-leaf (70%) / medium-leaf (30%) white clover mix, inter-rowed with a barley and wheat crop
  • Machinery change as a direct result: moved to 25cm / 10″ row spacing on combinable machinery to give space for inter-row hoeing and an inter-row living mulch
  • An unexpected finding from the field lab: James Alexander’s clover established on organic land but failed on conventional — Clive now openly asking whether synthetic input residues are suppressing clover establishment

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

Issue 15 — R & R: Rye and Rapeseed (October 2021)

After two consecutive years without an OSR harvest (2020 lost 100% to CSFB larvae, redrilled with linseed; 2021 deliberately not planted), Clive uses this column to think aloud about replacement break crops and the economics of a “low stakes” approach to rapeseed.

Why grain rye replaced OSR

  • KWS contract trial work years earlier had shown the crop had no special establishment problems
  • �30/t below feed wheat — workable when N requirement and crop protection costs are also significantly lower
  • Hybrid grain-rye varieties have improved standing power; can be drilled early and harvested early — fitting the same logistical slot OSR previously occupied
  • Straw yields ~2× wheat — useful organic-matter builder
  • Lower N requirement directly reduced the carbon footprint and earned more Gentle Farming ISO certificates

The drought-tolerance observation

In a rye field with significant volunteer wheat, mid-March dry spell exposed the difference visually:

“The wheat roots were totally dry with no soil attached whereas the rye roots were still surrounded with soil that was clearly still holding ample moisture.”

This single observation — repeated to readers via the editor’s leader column — became one of the most-quoted Issue 15 takeaways across the magazine.

First-year rye verdict

  • Yields about the same as wheat in a generally good year (claimed yield-advantage didn’t show)
  • Margin similar or slightly below first wheat; comparable to second wheat
  • No Take-all; planning continuous rye on a couple of blocks and doubling the acreage
  • Has expanded to monitor SOM gains carefully

OSR returns at low stakes for harvest 2022

After winter barley off and baled in late July, Clive couldn’t resist re-entering the OSR lottery. Drilled 10 August on 12/36m CTF with 2-year-old farm-saved seed and 30 kg/ha placed DAP through the 12m Horsch Avatar at 250 mm spacing, between previous stubble rows. Total spend under �10/ha. Near-perfect crop by 1 September.

“Oh, how I have not missed this crop! but I can sleep well knowing that if it does ultimately fail it will at least fail cheaply.”

[Source: dd-issue-15, 2026-04-13]

Issue 17 — Risky Business (April 2022)

Written shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine pushed nitrogen above �1,000/t and red diesel to ~�1.25/L. This column is unusually candid about how Clive made his money in 2021 — not from farming but from buying and selling at the right time.

Confession: trading, not farming

“The financial performance was really because of just 2 key decisions, buying inputs (particularly nitrogen fertiliser) and selling outputs at the right time. So, did I make money farming or trading?”

He argues that when British weather risk is so much lower than Australia’s or the US plains, the bigger risk lever for UK arable is now market timing — and that the “trader” mindset often outweighs agronomic genius.

Fuel maths makes cultivation look reckless

  • Old cultivation system: 32 L/ha of fuel to establish a crop
  • Today’s no-till system: ~4 L/ha
  • A high-HP cultivation tractor can burn 1,600 L/day — enough to no-till about 1,000 acres
  • At �1.25/L red diesel, the capital required to plant a cultivated crop has soared, “where will that extra margin required come from?”

Nitrogen as the existential question

  • AN approaching �1,000/t — a ~4� rise; new-crop wheat only up ~70%
  • Predicts much lower autumn 2022 plantings of nitrogen-using crops
  • Likely outcomes he sees: more pulses (oversupply risk), more attention to FYM/compost imports, more interest in nitrogen-fixing cover crops, fallow becoming viable on marginal land for low fixed-cost businesses only, and ELMs/SFI suddenly looking like a safer bet

The verdict

“The farmers that have already moved to lower fixed cost, lower inputs systems are by far the best placed to deal with these extremely uncertain times… but in such a volatile market the truth is profit or loss is far more likely to being down to those 2 same things… buying and selling at the right time.”

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

Issue 19 — Power Corrupts (October 2022)

A reflective piece framed as the annual “school report” — harvest yields being the scorecard farmers receive each year. Clive argues that the more meaningful results come at calendar year-end, where input buying, output selling, labour and machinery decisions can be judged.

The bulk of the column is a personal potted history of UK arable horsepower inflation: from a 100 hp Ford 8240 (plough + power-harrow combi) on 250 acres in his early career, up through a 270 hp JD 8410, 8520T rubber tracks, and a 25-tonne, 610 hp Challenger 875 pulling a Simba Solo / Väderstad Rapid combo. Ten times the output, but probably “more than ten times the cost”. He admits candidly: “the main reason I had a 610hp tractor back in 2007 was really because I wanted a 610hp tractor.”

The core argument: horsepower buys labour, but power corrupts.

“Power adds weight, lots of weight! combined with that ability to force work when conditions are not right that power can quickly add up to a lot of damage to soils, this damage needs cultivation to fix it and so the vicious circles begins where cultivation creates the need for cultivation.”

Direct drilling broke the cycle in the opposite direction — removing the cultivation operation entirely reduced seat-hours so dramatically that he could step back to a 240 hp tractor on a 12m direct drill, covering 300 ac/day with work rates “far more than we need”. For Clive this is “smarter big, efficient big — not just big ego”.

A useful exercise he recommends any farmer: look back at the horsepower needed on your farm 20 years ago and ask whether you could farm today with it. If not, “something is wrong”.

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

Issue 21 — ChatGPT Writes Clive’s Column (April 2023)

Clive’s most unusual Farmer Focus: the first ~2,000 words are an article on AI in agriculture — precision farming, autonomous machinery, pest management, market analytics, supply chain optimisation, and the risks of widening inequalities between large and small farms.

The twist, revealed at the end:

“Confession: I didn’t write this article. It was actually written by ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI. I simply gave it a brief of the subject I would like it to write ‘as me’. If you didn’t realize that before reading this confession, it’s an indication of just how powerful AI already is, even in its early stages of development.”

He then writes a short genuine postscript agreeing with the optimistic AI-generated take, while flagging the risks the ChatGPT text itself raised: data privacy, access inequality, and security. The piece is effectively a Trojan-horse demonstration of how quickly large language models had moved from novelty to credible farming-press authorship in early 2023 — and a deliberate provocation to Direct Driller readers to notice.

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

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