Ed Reynolds — Farmer Focus Writer

Arable farmer working 327 ha of mainly Hanslope and Evesham series clay (40% clay, 37% silt, 23% sand) in west Cambridgeshire growing combinable crops. 71% owned, 29% contract farming. One full-time employee, ~0.5 FTE himself plus harvest casuals. Started his graduated transition to regenerative agriculture in 2016 after early-2010s exposure to “alternative” talks and demos. Featured Farmer, Direct Driller Issue 15.

📰 Read articles by Ed Reynolds — West Cambridgeshire on Direct Driller → View author archive

Issue 15 — Featured Farmer (October 2021)

Why he started

“I instinctively knew Regen Ag was an opportunity I wanted to grasp… I began to grasp the concept that soil functions by itself, in cycles. This was revolutionary as I had come from a traditional, heavy cultivation regime, with little thought for the soil.”

A first attempt failed because he prioritised enthusiasm over information about soil structure. Engaged a soil consultant from year two; now five years into the transition.

Harvest 2021 numbers — direct drill matches conventional

  • First wheat direct drilled: 9.97 t/ha
  • First wheat conventional tillage: 9.80 t/ha
  • 6-year rotation: W. wheat, S. barley, peas, OSR, linseed, oats
  • Multi-species catch and cover crops sown wherever a 5+ week gap allows
  • Soil pits dug each summer; no-till establishment policy with structure-data exceptions

Low-axle-load advantage on clay

A “big win” for the smaller farmer: regen ag doesn’t need much horsepower. Ed runs a 6 t / 150 hp tractor for many operations and an 8 t / 200 hp tractor for crimper-rolling and drilling. Lighter axle loads = less compaction = no sunken wheelings from harvest in wet summers.

Residue management — pragmatism on clay

Has had to bale straw to establish following crops despite the no-till philosophy. “I have learnt to be pragmatic — you sometimes break one rule in order to achieve a successful cropping outcome.” Worm and shredder populations are not yet at the level where high C:N residue gets pulled down naturally. Disc drill = aware of hair-pinning risk.

Setbacks honestly recorded

  • Autumn 2019 second wheat into chopped wheat stubble: too wet on top, smearing, compaction, anaerobic conditions. Slugs and blue mould took the seed; left the stand at 112 plants/m² in February. Kept the crop on weed-free merits — yielded 6.4 t/ha
  • Spring 2021 spring oats into a 5-way grazed cover crop with chopped straw mulch: the mulch prevented the slot drying out in April → 6.0 t/ha at 52 kg/hl milling spec
  • Spring barley × peas intercrop trial (5 ha): barley at 50% rate + peas at 70% in the same rows. Started well, ended with barley dominating at GS39 → 5.4 t/ha barley, virtually no peas, but on near-zero applied N

Mole draining and N reduction

Mole draining and ditch maintenance have been “key to our progression” — a good mole may last 10 years. N rates down 15% over 4 years, moving carefully because yields can drop fast if pushed too hard. Looking at foliar N partial substitution and the long-term role of intercropping.

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

Issue 17 — Soil Carbon Baselining and the Three P’s (April 2022)

Reflections after the BASE-UK 2022 AGM, where two presentations stood out: Dr Sam Cook on conservation biological control (the “three P’s” — Predation, Parasitism, Pathogens) and Professor Richard Bardgett on plant diversity and the soil microbiome.

Cover crop establishment innovation

Echoing Bardgett’s claim that degraded arable soils can be turned around in 2–3 years through plant diversity, Ed wants to establish cover crops faster after harvest. The mod he’s making to do this:

  • Mounted a Techneat Avacast on the Claydon straw harrow so cover crops can be drilled in the same pass that handles crop-residue breakdown and slug-egg destruction
  • Air seeder has multiple metering cartridges to handle the variation in seed shape, size and density
  • Goal: cover crops between every cash crop where there’s a 6–8 week gap, with diverse root architecture

Soil organic carbon baselining

Has begun a long-term SOC monitoring project with CA Agricultural Services:

  • Started with one 24 ha field
  • Field split into 5 zones by soil texture
  • Two sample depths
  • GPS coordinate of each core for repeatability every 5–10 years
  • Measurement covers organic and inorganic carbon, bulk density (for quantity), and active carbon (microbe-available fraction)
  • Motivation: he has been sceptical of his existing organic-matter results (~5.6%) on high-calcium soils, suspecting they are artificially high

The shepherd-collaborator on the farm

A flying flock managed by Ed Hartop has now grazed the cover crops for two consecutive winters. Ed Reynolds explicitly credits Hartop’s complementary knowledge, calling out the value of having more (different) people on the farm as a hidden benefit of the regen-ag transition. Plans include 2-year species-rich leys in rotation and the possibility of grazing wheat in future.

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

Issue 19 — Shocking SOC:Clay Ratio (October 2022)

Harvest 2022 was “fast and completed without a pause”. Wheats averaged 8.8 t/ha on just 155 kg N/ha — 16% below the 14-year farm average, with 85% of the wheat direct-drilled. OSR hit 3.3 t/ha, with the highest-yielding field growing a three-way companion crop until January; by 20 September, rapeseed with companion was experiencing noticeably less CSFB attack, suggesting a cash-crop diversity benefit.

The drought’s lesson

Ten weeks dry followed by 24 mm on 25 August exposed a weakness in Ed’s linear system: annual cash crop → cover/catch crop sequentially. Once harvest cleared fields, soils were bare, exposed and “baked out” in the sun. Half the planned catch crops weren’t drilled at all. The lesson:

“This made me aware of the flaws in our system, where we need to look at overlapping plant cover and more living mulches.”

The Soil Organic Carbon baselining result — a shock

The first 24 ha field tested through the project described in Issue 17 returned a SOC:clay ratio of 1:16 — highly degraded by the Prout et al. (2020) benchmark where 1:8 represents a very good arable soil and 1:13 represents a degraded one.

The field has been in arable production since the 1940s (imported American crawler tractors in WWII), with animal manures rotationally applied until livestock left in the 1960s. Satellite imagery shows lighter soil colour on slopes, indicating historic erosion. The field is already in no-till / shallow till and “functioning well under this new regime” — yet the carbon deficit raises, for Ed, what he calls a bigger question:

“Is my job as a farmer to grow crops safely and profitably for the world market, or is there a moral imperative to stop degradation of my soil, and even try to improve it?”

The field is not even one of his worst. Sampling points have been logged for a 10-year revisit. “No danger of reaching carbon saturation point anytime soon.”

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

Appearances

Issues 15 (Featured Farmer), 17, 19

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