Steve Lear

Featured farmer documenting conversion from conventional tillage to direct drilling on a mixed arable/beef farm in Buckinghamshire.

📰 Read articles by Steve Lear on Direct Driller → View author archive

Profile
Location Buckinghamshire
Total area 1,000 ha
Farm type Mixed arable and beef
Livestock 400 pedigree Limousin suckler cows (sold as breeding stock or fattened on farm)
Cattle total ~1,000 head on farm
Arable crops Milling wheats, hybrid barleys, spring oats (3-year rotation)
Soils Mix of clay loams, silty clay loams, and heavy clay
Drill on order Primewest Cross Slot (ordered 2018)
Finance Leader Grant (awarded early 2018)

Conversion Story

Steve Lear was a self-described sceptic — he recalls first seeing a direct drill at an agricultural show and “having a laugh about how it would never catch on over here.”

The conversion began when clay soils were becoming increasingly difficult to work down to a seedbed. Previous system: Simba Solo or plough, then power harrows or discs, then Väderstad Rapid drill.

Triggers for change:

  • Soils becoming harder year on year
  • Rising fuel costs and wearing metal
  • Brexit economic pressure — need to reduce fixed costs on global grain markets
  • Pro-Cam seminars featuring Clive Bailye, Joel Williams, and Jamie Stotzka

“I could see that our fixed costs could be dramatically reduced.”

Drill Trials (Autumn 2017)

Trialled multiple drills in wet November conditions on heavy clay. Initial results:

  • Some drills failed to close the slot
  • Some caused too much soil disturbance
  • Some couldn’t penetrate the soil
  • Crops looked very poor coming out of wet winter

Outcome: Despite poor-looking establishment, the wheat recovered — low plant population tillered out to fill gaps. Not a record yield but not a write-off.

Key learning: Strip-till style drills established crops but caused too much soil movement — problematic for blackgrass control.

Drill Selection: Primewest Cross Slot

Chose the Primewest Cross Slot drill for the following reasons:

  • Large coulter pressure — needed for heavy clay that dries very hard in late summer
  • Variable down pressure system — maintains seed depth across variable soil types
  • Liquid fertiliser kit — allows fertiliser placement at drilling
  • Cross-Slot opener technology: seed placed to the side of the disc, so slot does not need closing like other drills; eliminates hairpinning from crop residue

Funded partly through Leader Grant (local Leader Programme). Primewest drilled 100 ha of spring oats and established 15 ha of linseed and 22 ha of forage maize for the farm while waiting for the drill to arrive.

Farm Management Adjustments for No-Till

A key realisation from the drill trial was that the whole system must change, not just the drill:

Compaction management: Heavy FYM spreading from ~1,000 cattle creates compaction risk. Strategy: drive on tramlines wherever practically possible without expensive GPS investment.

Traffic control: Wider combine header to reduce wheelings; patience when ground is wet.

Coulter travel: With no scope for field levelling after conversion, coulters must drop into wheelings while maintaining seed depth.

Soil restructuring plan:

  • Drill broad-species cover crop between winter barley and spring oats
  • Spray off in November to allow ground to dry for spring drilling
  • Apply FYM on all arable land to feed soil biology

Long-Term Vision

“I don’t think that direct drilling is going to be easy on our heavy clay soils, and I’m reminded of this on a weekly basis by friends and neighbours who assure me that it won’t work. This is great at making me more determined to get it right.”

Aspirations:

  • Eliminate cultivation equipment
  • Eliminate insecticide use
  • Reduce dependence on inorganic fertilisers
  • Improve public perception of farming through CA practices

Still retaining existing cultivation equipment (Simba Solo, plough) until no-till is proven to work on their specific soils.

Issue 3 Update — First Full Season with Cross Slot

Baptism of Fire

Steve’s first full season with the Primewest Cross Slot drill (2017–2018) was marked by extreme weather: a prolonged wet winter followed by severe drought through summer 2018.

Crop Performance

  • Wheat and oats: proved very resilient despite the conditions — held up well through both wet winter and drought
  • Maize: failed — fertiliser applied to cracked, dry soil could not be utilised; the crop never recovered

Cover Crop Programme

Established a diverse cover crop mix with the Cross Slot drill:

  • Species: Quinoa, Blue lupins, Buckwheat, Phacelia, Berseem Clover, Oil radish, Vetch, Linseed
  • 8-species mix designed to provide diverse root architectures and nitrogen fixation

Composting Initiative

Steve has begun composting FYM aerobically with woodchip, following the methods of Elaine Ingham and the Soil Food Web approach:

  • Aim: transform raw FYM from a potential compaction source into a biological inoculant
  • Aligns with Simon Cowell’s compost-making approach (see Soil Farmers of the Year 2018)
  • Addresses the compaction risk from heavy FYM spreading identified as a key challenge in Issue 2

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

Issue 4 Update — Autumn 2018 Establishment (January 2019)

Good Autumn for No-Till

Drought-cracked soil to 2ft depth acted as natural subsoiling. Crops established into unmoved soils through November after a good blackgrass/volunteer flush in mid-October. “Probably better establishment compared to our old conventional system.”

Crop Choices

  • Wheat variety: Nelson — high-grade German milling wheat that performs well in organic systems; hoping to reduce fungicide passes to protect soil microbes
  • Winter beans (first time): drilled into 4-year grass/clover ley sprayed with glyphosate; white clover persisting as companion crop (resistant to glyphosate); expecting N fixation for following wheat
  • Upped cereal seed rates since switching to no-till — seeing very good establishment

Pasture Reseeding (NZ Method)

  • Grazed pastures down very tight; no fertiliser applied (limit sward competition)
  • Direct drilled into existing pasture with tetraploid/diploid mix at ~2/3 rate
  • Cattle left on until new grass chitted (~2 weeks); returned once roots established
  • Planning more diverse pastures with herbal plants for deeper rooting and year-round growth

Soil Benchmarking Programme

  • Testing soil under hedges and in woodland as natural cycle baseline for microbial activity and organic matter
  • Using NRM “Soil Health Suite”: standard nutrients + COâ‚‚ burst test + OM + textural classification
  • Also conducting worm counts, infiltration tests, and slake tests across the farm
  • Joined BASE UK — watching Dr Kristine Nichols presentation (“worth the membership fee alone”)

Input Reduction

  • Liquid phosphate applied with seed for rooting improvement; searching for a biological alternative
  • Minimal slug pellets (cold north-facing slopes only; drought reduced populations)
  • No insecticides used on the farm; minimal aphid arrival on crops in stubbles

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

Issue 12 — A Four-Point Plan After Another 130mm October Weekend (January 2021)

A second consecutive drowned autumn — 130mm over the first weekend of October — has forced most of the farm back into spring cropping again. Steve acknowledges that on their clay, once rainfall like that hits, “it’s pretty much game over” for winter drilling, but notes that zero-till has made spring cropping a reliable profit centre thanks to cheap establishment, composted manure reducing N, and whole-crop options for the cattle. Three years of all-spring rotation is also delivering genuine blackgrass decline.

The Four-Point Plan

  1. Drainage — an honest admission that ditches were silted, tile drains blocked, and the old hand-dug system “really knew what they were doing”. Bought a small drain jetter; currently ditching and finding drains “we didn’t even know we had”
  2. Green cover before autumn drilling — previously sceptical of pre-winter covers; now convinced a fast-growing cover can keep the drill running in wet autumns by preventing soil sticking to press wheels and openers, and failing that becomes a cover crop through to spring
  3. Continue to increase infiltration rate — more covers, grazed perennial in rotation, carbon via manure, traffic discipline; has also bought a small low-disturbance subsoiler as a last-resort oxygen tool
  4. Bring drilling date forward — blackgrass now controlled enough to justify earlier dates; considering bringing OSR back after a 6-year break (“if it fails we will pretend it’s a cover crop”)

Livestock and Whole Crop

Whole-cropped oats under-sown with grazing leys and herbs proving a cattle favourite — intakes up, silage analyses well, only low in protein. Next year: companion cropping the oats with vetch or peas for protein, grown on a pre-drilling glyphosate + FYM application only.

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

Issue 16 — A Year of Easy Drilling and the Aberdeen Angus Trial (January 2022)

After two soul-destroying autumns when very little winter grain went in, autumn 2021 finally went smoothly — all winter cropping established with relative ease. Steve had planned an end-of-September start but a moisture event delayed him into October, which now suits his blackgrass strategy.

Cross Slot vs Simtech head-to-head

Both drills were used this autumn, with some fields drilled with both for comparison:

  • The Simtech crops get going faster — probably from mineralised N from slightly more disturbance — but also chit a little more blackgrass
  • Will be interesting to see the differences play out at harvest in the yield maps

OSR back into the rotation after seven years off

A few fields of OSR went in for the first time in seven seasons. Hybrid varieties got up and away; conventional varieties (drilled on heavier soil) didn’t really get going and ended up with significant flea beetle damage. Steve refused to use insecticide and redrilled 60 acres of brassica with Group 1 milling wheat — given the prices, possibly not so bad after all.

Wheat varieties: Zyatt, Extase, Nelson — all Group 1

  • Extase first impressions: very fast out of the blocks
  • Nelson and Extase chosen for their disease profiles
  • Zyatt drilled late and now looks fungally-susceptible — won’t be grown again
  • Possibly going to a Group 1 blend if his market accepts it

Soil conditions on heavy clay at drilling were “some of the best we have ever seen” — what used to be a smeary mess now has crumb structure. But mole ploughing has made enough difference that he plans to do slightly more of it.

The High-N-Price Plan

A six-point strategy for getting more out of less N, written as the urea price topped �700/t:

  1. A little and often — smaller doses, more regular intervals to improve NUE
  2. Lean towards foliar applications — better NUE, but more expensive per kg
  3. Back-load N — delay applications to allow soil-supplied N to feed the early crop, possibly reducing fungicide need by avoiding large green biomass too early
  4. Allocate poorer land that historically needed higher N inputs to spring beans
  5. Spring whole-crops with FYM and undersown red clover — aim for zero synthetic N (foliar if needed)
  6. Every N application carries a carbon source

Limousins still outdoors in December

Most of the Limousin herd is still at pasture as the column is written, “fairly unheard of on our soils.” Grass growth has continued slowly through November. Going forward Steve wants to develop low-input forage crops with more legumes and diversity in swards. A small but fast-growing Aberdeen Angus herd has been started alongside the Limousins — interested in what the native breed brings to fattening on pasture without concentrates.

Mental health note

“Depression is an illness not a weakness — yanahelp.org are there to help, give them a call.”

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

Issue 20 — Farming as a Gamble, and a Push for Better Data (January 2023)

Steve opens with the comparison that frames his career: a friend who works in commodity-trading investment banking once pointed out to him that he, Steve — not the banker — was the gambler. The banker had a team of researchers; Steve was risking all the costs of growing a crop with no idea of yield, quality or market position at the end. “These past two years have highlighted the gamble that we take as producers.”

Reducing risk via better data

Steve’s New Year’s resolution: collect data on the farm more efficiently and embrace new technology. A move to cloud-based solutions has already given each employee a phone-based toolkit:

  • Breedr for cattle herd data
  • Merit Ag for machinery and building repair logs and H&S documents
  • A search underway for an arable-data equivalent (he asks readers for suggestions)

Harvest 2022 and the OSR success

A “good average” harvest with no huge yields and no disasters — moisture held well through the drought thanks to system improvements. Spring beans the only below-average crop. OSR drilled with the Cross-Slot in the third week of September, after a rain event, emerged late but never looked back. Crucially, the flea beetles had migrated to winter homes by the time the OSR was at first true leaf, so no insecticide was used. Steve also credits digestate at emergence for keeping the beetles off.

The winter barley aphid stand-off

Drilled in mid-October with the Cross-Slot, the winter barley emerged with “fantastic vigour”, only for a wave of aphids to arrive in the mild November. Steve has a no-insecticide policy, and the BYDV risk has played on his mind, but he held the line: “I decided that we would stick by our guns and haven’t applied any, ill let you know in the spring if it was the right choice or not. I’m hoping for a very cold week to kill them naturally.”

Cover crops and 200 ha of overseeded grass

Cover crops drilled late September look better than expected — “I haven’t seen the solar radiation figures for our area through autumn but I suspect it was fairly high.” The drought made ground perfect for grass overseeding: 200 ha of pasture overseeded with the Cross-Slot at standard rate into existing sward, with the cattle left in the fields. The new grass anchored quickly enough that the cattle were never moved off, and they were still outside in December — “incredibly late for us but a welcome bonus as feeding cattle is an expensive past time these days.”

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

Sources

  • [[sources/dd-issue-02]] — “Featured Farmer: Steve Lear”, Direct Driller Issue 2 (June 2018)
  • [[sources/dd-issue-03]] — “Steve Lear Update”, Direct Driller Issue 3 (September 2018)
  • [[sources/dd-issue-04]] — “Farmer Focus: Steve Lear”, Direct Driller Issue 4 (January 2019)

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