Help is on the way!

A very belated post and not really in keeping with the time of year but I have just discovered these photographs on my phone and thought I would share them after a conversation with Caroline Drummond from LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming) about the importance of providing habitat for beneficial insects.  In an ideal world it would be good to farm without insecticides; allowing mother nature to control the pests that predate our crops and impact on the quality of the food they produce or the yield.  Is there a way to enable larger numbers of these biological helpers to control the pests for us? Habitats such as grass margins, beetle banks and pollen and nectar strips have all shown to increase the numbers of beneficial insects that can help control the pests.

Work undertaken at the   Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust at Loddington show how a simple step, like creating a Beetle Bank in fields over 20 Ha (50 acres) have have a huge benefit to providing habitat of overwintering beneficial insects like spiders.  These guys are then able to migrate across the field and help protect the crop from invading pests like the black bean aphid or others.  But what about using biological help in a different form?  Could we spray fungi and bacteria onto our fields to help deter pests, disease and potentially weeds?  All things to be considered in the future which are currently being used in green houses and controlled environments but could they be used in the wider landscape? 

A Late Spring?

The spring has finally arrived after a fairly dry but chilly start to the year.  Rainfall totals for the farm, from the remote weather station indicated just over 100mm of rain since 1st January.  Soil temperatures, however have been really cold, only getting into the critical range for seed germination of between 7-8 degrees at the end of March.  Seeds will obviously germinate at lower temperatures but the emergence of the crop will be slower, leaving the seedlings exposed to pest (slug and pigeons) attack for a longer period of time.  An old saying that spring barley should be out of the bag and out of the ground in the same week should be remembered.  This is especially true for crops that are direct drilled in non-cultivated soils.  Cultivation warms up the soil by moving the soil, and can help dry out the soil to allow earlier plantings, but there are disadvantages.

By drying out the soil it leaves less moisture available to germinate the seeds especially if the weather turns warm and windy after the seeds have been planted.  It also risks smearing the soil at the lower depths, where the tine or disk is working, which means putting a deeper compaction layer in the soil. It also burns up the organic matter in the soil releasing carbon into the atmosphere.  I remember in spring 2013 we planted spring barley ahead of my Nuffield trip to Canada and three weeks later the seeds hadn't emerged, it was that cold.  It just goes to show that you can't farm by the calendar!

There is also a practical balance to think about as well, we can't justify having enough man and machinery power to drill everything on the perfect day, so we have to start when we can on the suitable fields in order to get the crops planted.  These are two pictures of beans (top) and peas (below), planted using a direct drill (no cultivation) system.  The peas have germinated and the roots have started to emerge within 3 days, which is great news.  The seedbed was moist and warm so crop establishment will be quick and will hopefully outgrow the early attack of marauding pigeons!  The beans were planted 10 days earlier, but germination was slower as the seed bed was cooler.  As the sun shines the soil will continue to warm up and it is important that these crops get away to the very best start to optimise their potential and deliver a good harvest in August.  There's a long way to go and we'll have to wait and see how the season develops.

Alberta Day 4 - Beyond Agronomy

Our second day out with Steve started with a visit to Al Jones, who's family has been farming in Alberta since 1903.  Al runs about 5,000 acres with his family.  A herd of 200 Herefords (Herfuds) cattle also run on the farm.  We looked at some of Al's crops after a tour of the workshop.  Steve and Al are trialling precision rape seeding with very low seed mortality compared to the usual air seeding.  The photograph above shows the young canola seedlings growing fantastic root structures very quickly.  Al doesn't practise CTF (controlled Traffic Framing) but has been zero till for a long time.  Again what stood out was the lovely soil, very well structured even after a lot of heavy rain.

Al is also trying a field of Faber Beans this year to see how the crop develops and to get a handle on its Agronomy.  The crop was just starting to flower and in need of a herbicide, but weather delays, due to rain are frustrating the operation. (Sound familiar?)  Beans would be a fairly new venture in the area to add further diversity into the rotation.

I put this picture in of a huge tractor, used for seeding to demonstrate the low ground pressure that they are using when travelling on the fields.  These tires would run at 7psi on the front and 8psi on the rears. It helps that the tractor is duelled up but the attention to traffic and soil protection is a credit.  Getting the soil wrongly managed can be a disaster especially on the soils around Alberta.  Here's what we saw when driving to Saskatoon the following day, not a customer of Steve's!

After an agronomists lunch we headed out to visit Spencer Hilton who has land spread over a 100Km  strip end to end.  I bet it's quite a sight at harvest moving men and machines along the highway.  Spencer had a great business, succession and planing are the key.  Weekly family management meetings and regular staff meetings all made for a very well run business.  The staff were empowered that if they weren't happy, for a safety reason, they could shut the operation down, the management would sort it out and they would move on.  With the removal of the Canadian Wheat Board new markets were developing and Spencer was taking full advantage.  They are contracted to grow malting barley for an American brewing company where the risk was shared between the two parties, in the form of an area value rather than a bushel value.

A huge thanks to Steve and Vanessa for putting us up and showing us around the Three Hills area of Alberta, it really was a terrific visit!