James Alexander — Litchfield Farm, Oxfordshire

Contract farmer managing 1,500 acres across four farms (800 organic + 700 conventional), also manufacturing and selling no-till drilling equipment. Pioneering UK roller crimper development and permanent white clover understorey trials. From Direct Driller Issue 10 via Agricology.

📰 Read articles by James Alexander — Litchfield Farm, Oxfordshire on Direct Driller → View author archive

Profile
Total area 1,500 acres (4 farms)
Organic Litchfield Farm, Enstone — 800 acres (Cotswold Brash)
Conventional 700 acres — all direct drilled
Staff 2.5–3.5
Livestock 125 breeding ewes (new; organic flock managed by Sam & Charlotte Clarke)

Two-System Learning

“I’ve learnt a lot from farming organically that I’ve taken into the conventional and vice versa. I have the benefit of both worlds.”

  • Conventional farms: all direct drilled; cover crops
  • Organic Litchfield: plough/cultivate/drill currently, but actively working to reduce tillage
  • 2018: grazed 90 acres of cover crops with sheep → enabled min-till instead of ploughing → “grew some of the best oats I’ve ever grown”
  • Key insight: no-till farms weatherproof — “fields that had been direct drilled, we only needed the surface to dry off” vs ploughed/cultivated fields too wet to touch

Roller Crimper Development

Developing a UK-focused roller crimper for organic cover crop termination without glyphosate:

  • Breaks stems at early flowering (weakest point) → creates weed-suppressing mulch
  • Tested rye and vetch — vetch challenging (needed multiple passes)
  • Part of Innovative Farmers field lab on alternatives to glyphosate
  • Key application: Organic No-Till — Is It Possible? — enabling reduced tillage in organic systems

Permanent White Clover Understorey

Innovative Farmers field lab exploring permanent living mulch understory in low-input / no-till systems:

  • Undersow small variety white clover into spring barley at 2-leaf stage
  • Clover provides: permanent nitrogen source (could replace 2-3 year red clover leys), ground cover year-round, ability to direct drill any day of the year
  • Plan: direct drill oats into clover in autumn; mow or graze hard with sheep before drilling
  • Spring crops: leave clover over winter, drill March before clover wakes up (needs >10°C)

“By having the clover there, we also have a permanent source of nitrogen so we mightn’t have to do our 2/3 year red clover leys which we’re losing a bit of production with.”

Buckwheat for Dock Control

  • Buckwheat emits allelopathic chemicals that can help control docks
  • Direct drilled into spring barley stubble over summer for 3 years
  • Ploughed in green before it dies — stops docks growing; seeing less docks each year
  • Home-saving buckwheat seed to reduce cost; higher seed rates (thicker crops) do better
  • Additional benefits: lifts P and K from depth; twice as efficient at N uptake; companion with OSR helps control flea beetle; flowers for beneficial insects

[Source: dd-issue-10, 2026-04-11]

Issue 14 — Living Mulch Field Lab Update (July 2021)

Profiled in Pete Williams’s “Could Living Mulch Be the ‘Holy Grail’ of Arable Farming?” feature alongside Clive Bailye, Mark Lea and Jamie Stephens. James is running the field lab trial across both his organic and conventional ground.

  • Drilled clover into both crops of barley in spring 2020, same day, same drill
  • Organic plot established perfectly; conventional plot did not — strongly suspects synthetic nitrogen residues are suppressing clover establishment
  • “When we took the spring barley off, the clover was a bit patchy, but over August and September it filled out across the ground”
  • Slight barley yield uplift on the organic plot, attributed to the clover
  • Now growing oats in the established clover — looking better than the equivalent crop on conventional land
  • Trying again on the conventional land this spring with a different drill
  • The headline driver: organic ground currently loses a third of production each year to clover leys; if the living mulch works, “we could drill directly into it”

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

Related Pages