Direct drilling, cover cropping and crimping

I moved from a plough-based system to using a machine that moved the soil I wanted to a depth I wanted, allowing us to treat fields with compaction or soil health problems differently. I now try and work with our soils with the understanding that doing less is better. My soil is my asset - it’s where I get my production from.

I grow cover crop mixes including buckwheat, phacelia, sunflower, vetch, linseed, fodder radish and crimson clover, to benefit the soil health, produce and grow nutrients, harvest the sunlight and turn it into organic material to help increase our soil organic content.  

I have started using a drill with a crimp roller on the front - which allows us to grow big cover crops and be able to manage them. We are looking at establishing which cover crops work for us and different lengths of growing season. The crimp roller lays the crops down, creating a mat which suppresses weeds (see the video footage below).

The machine I have been using also allows us to use different seed mixes according to the area, so in compacted zones we can put in a different crop mix and target those areas. We can also intercrop rows. In addition to improving our soil health and reducing compaction, the low soil disturbance due to cover crops and direct drilling has led to more insect life in the fields - predators are building up and managing most of our pest problems, allowing us to reduce our operation and input costs. This video explains the machinery I’ve been using and benefits I’ve noticed in a bit more detail: 

This spring (2022) we have used a shallow cultivator to try and terminate the cover crops and move away from using glyphosate - we are actively trialling and assessing other alternatives to using glyphosate - looking at what the complications and costs are. There can be cultivation costs and yield penalties (as we have experienced with trialling manure and cover crops in very dry spring weather), but we have to try.

We have sheep to graze the cover crops in the winter and add fertility and biology into the soil. We work with a grazier - establishing a grazing plan of where, when and how we want to graze to help build soil health.

Nature-based IPM

About 9 years ago I decided to do what I could to control pests without insecticides and monitor the impacts on my yields and profit margins. There is no blueprint to IPM - it has to be a whole farm and landscape approach, it is not as easy as conventional farming with pesticides. Many measures I have adopted in the transition to regenerative agriculture have multiple benefits.

I have broadened the range of crops I grow; moving from a system of 2 wheats, OSR, 1 or 2 wheats, and beans, all winter-sown, and a ratio of crops in the ground of roughly 70% wheat, 20% OSR, 10% beans, to now having winter and 30% spring barley and no fixed rotation, and tailoring the cropping in each field to help with weed pressure and soil health. If I have a black-grass problem I will not go with a second wheat, even though this may give a better return than a spring or break crop. Crops in the ground now are about 40% wheat, 30% barley, 20% beans and 10% OSR. This would seem like a less profitable rotation, but I have slashed my cost of production (which has made up for any reduction of yields and crop values) and my net profits have increased.

I use pest resistant varieties where possible and have moved back to traditional recommended cropping intervals - with 5-6 years between OSR crops. I drill cereals after mid-October if weather allows, rather than September to reduce black-grass and autumn aphid pressure. I avoid over-feeding crops with N fertiliser in one application to prevent rapid growth, making the crop more prone to pest and disease pressure.

Creating habitats to improve biodiversity and enable beneficial insects and spiders to thrive is key. In addition to flower-rich margins around the outside of the fields (see the video footage below), I’ve been adding flower-rich strips every fourth tramline (120m) to improve natural pest control and insect pollination.

Our widest machine is 30m so we have 6m margins with 1m tussocky grass on either side and 4m of flowers down the centre.

The flowers are cut and removed in the autumn and the tussocky grass is left for the continued winter hibernation of the insects. Data from ASSIST trials shows that most bugs move 50m - mine are hopefully going to be super fit and go 60m - in our system we have 4 tramlines in-between so we can go up and down twice, to increase efficiency. We also use these avenues now in our grazing system during the winter - moving the sheep up and down in them so they have defined pieces to graze.

I see the benefits of in-field strips on the yield maps of my OSR and beans (see video below); yields are 5-20% greater next to the strip and tail off further into the field. This also reflects my observation of the number of bumblebees I see across the fields. The yield response is probably a combination of the effects of increased insect pollination and increased natural pest control.

We have been carrying out trials with PGRO (see here). Results show that our farm compared with a farm that still uses some insecticides and has a conventional farming system is showing less pest damage and more biodiversity within the whole insect system.

Where we have good marked habitats, we are having a lot less damage from bruchid beetle, and we have two thirds more biodiversity in our margins and on our farm (as shown in the sweep nets). We are repeating the trial this year.

Improved soil health, crop health and better rotations have also enabled me to cut down on my use of herbicides, fungicides and molluscicides. I monitor slug levels, but if I see lots of beetles in the field, I see if they can do the job first and only treat areas that seem to be struggling.

I have been trying a few ideas this last year to further benefit from the IPM approach - I’ve sown a mix of wheat varieties in my wheat field to avoid pest and disease risks that can arise from a single variety monoculture, have undersown beans with clovers, and tried intercropping oilseed rape with phacelia and clovers to see if these measures will disguise the crop from pests and boost beneficial numbers further.

Overall, crop yields are a little lower, but this is more than made up for by the reduction in costs of production and the net margins are up, despite reducing the areas of wheat, our most profitable crop. There are visibly more beneficial insects and spiders and more wildlife overall, especially birds. The incidence of pest levels exceeding economic thresholds has declined to zero.

You can find this information in the Farm Wildlife case study, which also gives more detail on what led me to transition towards not using insecticides and the environmental and cost impacts of that and of reducing herbicides, fungicides and molluscicides and applying the other regenerative agriculture techniques I describe.

Reducing N application and establishing a carbon baseline

I’m very focused on how we remove artificial fertiliser and on what we need to grow a profitable crop, with a concentration on margin rather than yield. We are carrying out soil analysis for N application in the spring and also using tissue and satellite imagery to help map where it is needed. We are finding so far this spring that half our winter wheat hasn’t needed any fertiliser and we have delivered almost all the fertility in our soil for the spring barley from our cover crops. By using data and science and the tools to assess our crops we are actively reducing the use of artificial fertilisers.

We have carbon mapped all our soils for organic and carbon content to give us as baseline and assess how it’s changing, with a view to looking to the future of the carbon markets. This has been doing using deep core soil sampling and a light machine to scan the soils. I have a lot of apprehension around claims of building carbon in to soil - I'm aware that after establishing a baseline, I then need to understand what my business needs will be and then potential areas of market opportunity...