Crimper Conundrum

There is so much public awareness of the perceived issues with Glyphostate at the moment even though 3300 studies have shown it to be a very benign chemical when used correctly in the field.  With any potential restriction on its use being enforced on us I wanted to have a look at an alternative method of killing a cover crop before we plant our harvestable, or cash crop, into the field.  To me a cover crop can only enhance the soil and the wider environment.  It shields the soil from rain, reducing runoff and erosion; it feeds the soil biology with carbohydrates and encourages the development of below ground microbial populations; provides winter feed for our sheep; increases soil organic matter to hold more nutrients and water-its a no brainier for the farm and the wider environment.

Black Oat and Vetch Covercrop

Without glyphosate the termination, or killing, of these crops could prove to be very tricky in our maritime climate.  The cover crop can grow rather large and I don't want to have endless passes with toppers or cultivators to kill the cover crops.  Doing this is expensive, uses fossil fuel and releases CO2, cultivations mean even more CO2 released from the organic matter held in the soil, as it is exposed to oxygen, it means more tractors on the land, causing compaction where they drive which can lead to poorer water infiltration and therefore soil erosion.  So what's an alternative?

With a loan of a crimper roller from Cotswold Grass Seeds (thank you) we had a little play in a large cover crop of black oats, vetch, phacelia and berceem clover.

The idea of the crimper roller is to lay the plants down and squash the stems with metal blades in the hope that this bends or cuts the stems stopping nutrients getting up the stem into the top of the plants, end result being the killing of the cover crop, and any nests or wildlife that gets in the way-but we'll gloss over that for now!

Crimper Roller

We tried the crimper roller on the back of a tractor at first and drove in reverse to make the chevrons point in the right direction but ended up going in round in circles!  So we unhitched the weights from the front linkage of another tractor and set off across the field at 10kph, with the crimper on the front with a bit more success!  The roller weighed in at 620Kg for a 2m machine so about 310kg/m.

Crimped Covercrop 7 Days Post Crimping

I came back to the plot 7 days later to see if it had actually worked and I am sorry to say that it didn't. The oats seems to still be alive and the vetch, which I though would have been totally animated, were still just about hanging on.  The concern for me is we need to find something that works consistently every year and as every season if different.  We need to grow significant levels amounts of green matter and these need killing-somehow.

Maybe we used the wrong machine, maybe at the wrong time  for the plants growth stage,or at the wrong speed or it wasn't heavy enough?  Maybe we need to graze some of the covers down first to weaken then plants?  Maybe it just doesn't work in our climate where we don't always have a frost to follow up and finish off the wounded crop?  Who knows and more work needs to be done, but for now I am not impressed.

Agroforestry with Kellogg's

Agroforestry Oats and Fruit Trees

My introduction to Agroforestry was a great experience and one that has opened up my eyes to viewing farmland in a very different way.  As part of the Kellogg’s origins group (link) we were very lucky to be given a tour of the Agroforestry enterprise at Blue Bell farms, by Steven Briggs.  Steven farms as an organic farming tenant growing wheat, oats, and some vegetables on some very good soil near Peterborough.

The 125 acres of agroforestry is laid out across six fields in 3m bands of fruit trees separated by 24m of cropped land.  The trees are on shortish, root stocks so the fruit can be picked, and the fruit trees pruned by hand and so that the roots don't get deep enough to interfere with the land drains.

Agroforestry Fruit Trees

The system looks at the land in a 3D way.  The trees are able to put roots down below the crop root zone to capture nutrients and moisture lower down in the soil profile. Most arable crops root between 1-2m whereas the trees go down to 10m so there's little competition for these plant essentials.  The tree divisions increase the crop edge effect and the leaf mulch falls onto the cropland, returning nutrients as they decompose.  The trees also act as a wind-break; for every 1’ of tree height you get a 10’ wind reduction effect, very important in the flat fen lands.  This reduction in wind also reduces the notorious ‘fen blow’ of topsoil across the fields and enables more spray days.  Spray days on an organic farm you ask?  Steven's soil is short of manganese so regular applications are applied to supplement the soils deficiency to the growing crops.

Ploughing Overwintered Stubble

The strips that the trees are planted on can be planted with pollen and nectar so that in the short term will provide brilliant insect habitat.  Overtime these will turn into brilliant beetle banks providing habitat and food for beneficial insects helping control pests.  The system is run with a 6m Controlled Traffic Farming layout to keep machinery wheelings running in the same place, except where the overwintered stubbles are ploughed.

So are there any down sides?  To be honest there we’re too many. Yes it ties up the land for a long period of time as you need to write down the cost of the trees, so OK if you own the land but difficult if you are a tenant and a 3 year FBT makes this impossible.  There is a large capital cost, even planning at 120 trees/Ha.  Over time the yield from the crops reduce as the yield from the trees take over but if you have a market for the fruit then the output is significant.  It makes a lot of sense.

Everyone who visited was really impressed with the system and it certainly made everyone think a little more about some of these techniques could be employed on their own farms.

Glyphosate - A Key Ingredient

Over-winter Ploughed field

Not that long ago, the land at Overbury would have been ploughed over the winter time to prepare it for the next crop.  This is a destructive process for all of the organisms; bacteria, nematodes, fungi and earthworms that live in the soil.  It was the only way farmers had to control weeds and create a seedbed suitable for our equipment to plant the seeds into.   Many fields destined to be planted in the spring would have been left in this ploughed state over the winter period.  We now know that is method of land preparation; and we are catching up with the rest of the world, is a very bad practice for many reasons.

The most significant reason is that we are adding air to the soil, which reacts with the carbon locked in the soil, releasing Carbon Dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, a significant ingredient in global warming, adding to the changing climate threat.  The tractors that we use release Nitrous oxide as they burn the diesel, (just like diesel cars) and ploughing uses a lot of diesel.  Moving the soil also destroys its structure, meaning that small particles of silt, are washed through the soil taking pesticides and fertiliser with them.  They wash down to the depth of the cultivation and fill in the pores resulting in the surface level water logging.  This water logging means that any subsequent rain can't infiltrate into the soil and so runs off causing surface erosion. Soil erosion can be reduced by 90% buy not cultivating and using Conservation Agriculture techniques. The soil particles end up in the streams and water courses silting up the stream beds, reducing water flow capacity and can potentially lead to flooding further down stream.  

There are the soil inhabitants to consider as well.  Cultivation destroys their habitat and their food supply and we need them to help our plants (and therefore our food), to collect nutrients from the soil.  Worm populations can be reduced by 50% by ploughing.  We need the worms to aerate the soil, digest the soil and restructure it, adding glomalins (glue) to stick the particles together and recycle dead and decaying plant materials.  A healthy soil is one that can sustain itself with as little human interference as possible and that means not cultivating.

A field after winter with cover crops

Soil is also greatly improved by keeping it covered, using plant material or previous plant residue, a theory nicknamed 'soil armour' in the U.S. This concept uses plants to intercept rain droplets, keeping the soil surface open and aerated.  The plants in the picture above have been growing all winter, capturing available nutrients, taking carbon from the atmosphere and locking it up in the organic matter of the plant, restructuring the soil, feeding our soil biology and providing a brilliant habitat for birds and mammals, Our cover crops this year have hosted brown hares, starling, redwing, field fare, lapwing, meadow pipets, yellow hammer, chaffinch, linnets, snipe, woodcock and many others across these fields.  Compare that to the ploughed field above where it is mainly lifeless.

From the environments point of view cultivation's are not a good idea.

So why the long blog about protecting the soil?  Well this method of farming, called no-till or zero-till, is under threat from misinformed lobby groups trying to get the active ingredient 'glyphosate' banned from all of our European crop production systems.  It is a very safe herbicide, (weedkiller) that we use instead of cultivation to kill weeds and cover crops, prior to planting our next crop.  It has been a valuable tool available to farmers for the last 40 years. Without glyphostate there will be serious implications to our food security and the negative effects of cultivation, (listed above) in terms of mechanical weed control will return.  It is used across the world and is one of the most rigorously tested of any pesticide, that is currently registered for use.  An EFSA (European Food Safety Authority), concluded in a peer reviewed report (published EFSA Journal 2015;13(11):4302in) 

"glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans and the evidence does not support classification with regard to its carcinogenic potential".

The only body to conclude that glyphostate might pose a health risk is the IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer) who concluded it is "probably carcinogenic to humans".  According to the IARC's own classifications glyphostate is in the same category as drinking very hot drinks, working as a hairdresser and working night-shifts.  Glyphostate is safer than orange juice, bacon and indeed coffee, so we need to keep it in perspective and look at the benefits it delivers in globally feedin the world.

Without glyphostate, as part of an Integrated Farm Management approach  UK yields of wheat and oilseed rape (canola) will drop by about 20%, primarily due to weed competition.  We will need to use 546,000 Ha more land to replace this lost production.  Our farms will not be able to compete with other growers using it around the world. Profitability would fall and cheap food imports will be sucked into the country; in many cases produced to lower environmental standards. Mechanised weed control, including ploughing will return; reducing our soil organic matter, biological life, disruption to ground nesting birds and fewer environmental benefits. It will be a gloomy picture.  

We need to look at the whole system to appreciate how decisions impact on each other and if the cause and effect can be beneficial or not.  Nothing is simple or black and white.  I know that not being able to use this proven, safe chemical will impact severely on what we do and how we do it; eroding the positive environmental benefits of no-till farming.

No-till planting Into Cover Crops

A Shout Out for the Worms!

Preparing to count worms

At long last we have finally managed to get some time in the field to do some worm counting.  I have been trying to find a few hours for quite some time BUT at long last we have created a bit of a benchmark.  It should have been done at the start of the switch into no-till farming but as always its not until you start something that you realise what is important and believe me-these guys are important! So what did we find out?  Firstly that there are many factors that have an effect of worm numbers.  The first field we sampled was on our sand and gravel fields with a high sand content.  

We randomly sampled 4 separate areas within the field, each sample measured 20cm wide x 20cm across and 30cm deep.  This field is only into year 2 of no-till farming and as you can see from the photograph below the worm numbers are quite low.  On this field we had an average count of 11 worms/sample section with a minimum number of 6 and a maximum number of 15.  Our target is 16 worms in a spade full, so roughly our sample size.  We measured the soil temperature as a point of reference to see, when we re-sample, what effects this might have on the population and all sample points were geo-tagged so we can return.

This field averaged out at 268 worms/m2 which is slightly short of our target population of 400 worms/m2.  So there is some work to be done!  By reduced cultivation or no-tilling our fields and by returning crop residue, or by adding compost as worm feed we should be able to build populations over a relatively short period of time.

Worm count form Bottom Heath-Sandy field

The next sample field was up on Bredon hill at an altitude of 900ft above sea level in a field planted with winter wheat, after oilseed rape (same rotation as the sandy field).  Up here the worm populations were very pleasing with some sites hitting 45 worms/sample.  Most of them were epigeic worms, which move around in the upper surface layers of the field feeding on crop residue and will help to recycle the decaying material.  The counts ranged form 12-45/sample area.

Worm count from Shaldons-Cotswold Brash

But why bother, what is the point of having more worms, what do they do for us in the middle of an arable field?

Worms are important for many reasons; their burrows aerate the soils, moving fresh air (oxygen) down into the plant rooting zone, breathing life into the deeper layers of soil.  We must not forget that soil is made up of 25% air.  Worms also feed on soil, reformatting its structure in the form of casts on the soil surface.  These casts are rich in available plant nutrients held in a stable organic state, unlikely to leach through the soil surface.  These castings can contain 7 x more phosphorus, 10 x more potassium, 5 x more nitrogen 3 times more magnesium and 1.5 x more calcium than the surrounding soils.  Recycling the dead plant material is also a key role played by these sub terrain dwellers, coming up to the surface and dragging down plant material such as straw, leaves and any organic material we may add.  They are also key when it comes to field drainage.  The burrows of Anecic worms can go down 2-3 meters which are very helpful for taking storm water down into the subsoil and stopping it running off from the fields, helping reduce flash flooding events further down the catchment.  Worms are also food for others, so a good supply can only benefit the populations of birds and small mammals increasing overall farmland biodiversity. 

Worm Cast in Shaldons

There is more to do.  I will be sampling the heavy land fields (4 years no-tillage) and some other areas of the farm that have recently been cultivated to see what numbers are lurking in the soil.  We will be looking at increasing the feed for worms to continue their growth in some areas.  Can we get too many worms or will dry summers and cold winters even out the populations?  Only time and monitoring will tell.  If you want to find out more information then please consider joining the Earthworm Society of Britain who are looking for new members and people to search for and record their worm populations.

Loosing Our Biggest Asset-or not?

LiDAR Image of the Carrent Catchment - source Environment Agency

Every day is a school day and so we have to keep learning about our environment and how we interact with our natural surroundings.  We are just starting to develop a local group of farmers, with help from Gloucestershire FWAG called the 'Carrant Catchment Restoration Project', with the aim of increasing water quality and biodiversity in the local stream that originates around Bredon Hill.  One of the most staggering bits of information came from our local Environment Agency and uses LiDAR information to look at the erosion risk from farmland.  At first glance this sea of red shows high risk areas all over he top of the hill!  Quite alarming.  We then have to start looking at land use, and some of the red areas are taken out of the equation with woodland and the grassland.  We mustn't ignore the grassland-as significant soil erosion can stem from overgrazed or compacted grassland, but it's the arable area of the hill that is by far and above the largest proportion and so poses the largest risk of erosion.

Surface runoff is caused when the field is at water capacity or when compaction is present, both cause the next rainfall to run downhill taking soil particles with it.  These particles are potentially carrying fertiliser and pesticides off down into the nearest water coarse, causing the very typical brown water often seen after heavy rainfall events.

Winter Barley Rooting Structure on Bredon Hill

Our new system of zero tillage (no till) crop farming is the best way to stop erosion from happening on our fields.  The system means that the soil is not disturbed so it can structure itself to allow more water to enter it, reducing runoff.  By leaving crop residue or by growing cover crops the soil surface is protected form rain droplets, stopping surface compaction from happening.  By not cultivating the land we are not burning the organic content of the fields, reducing green house gas emissions.  From a water storage position the organic matter acts like a sponge so the more we have, the more water we can store before it runs off through the soil profile into the groundwater.  The picture above is from a field that has been in zero tillage for 4 years and is really starting to come to life in many ways.  The crop residue is present and under that a crumbly mixture of roots and soil particles attached to the roots of the plants.  This is just the start of what I hope our soils will turn into over time.

Buckwheat Cover Crop

Buckwheat Emerging After Peas

We tried a single species cover crop this year in a very quick slot after the hand picked peas up on the hill on those fields that we harvested early enough.  The Buckwheat was planted right behind the pea pickers and rapidly covered the  ground.  The idea was for these roots to start to undo some of the damage to the soil caused by the heavy traffic (tractors and trailers) during the harvest.  The crop grew for 8 weeks and was really flowering well (below top left), almost too well and we are finding a few seedlings in the following wheat crop, which isn't causing me too many alarms.  Buckwheat will die when temperatures get to below 5 degrees. The bottom picture shows the Cross Slot opener (seed placement bit) actually planting the seeds and the third picture (top right) shows what the field looked like after the drill had passed over the field.

Cross Slot Drilling into Buckwheat Covercrop

It certainly looks very different to a conventional field, without the green lines on a brown background but to me this is how mother nature plants her seed, no cultivation just the seeds working into the ground.  It really is a case of retraining the mind to actually appreciate what is happening in the field.   The residue of the peas and the buckwheat is spread on the soil surface with the seedlings making their way up through to the light.  By next harvest all of that residue will have been returned to the soil by the worms and the weather, recycling the nutrients locked up within it.  Where the system really benefits the wider environment in in terms of carbon capture.  Without cultivating the soil the carbon retained within it, in the form of organic matter, stays in the soil, it is not oxidised and released to the atmosphere. So the soil is not being depleted and the dead plant material is slowly being turned into organic matter and then humus.  But it will take a long time!    

Wheat Emerging through Buckwheat Covercrop

Wheat after cover crops have all emerged really well this year which is always a great relief!

Looking Underground for Long Term Solutions

I had a really nice comment, via a good friend, from a local retired farmer. "Bredon Hill is looking very green".  Now I am not sure it was meant as a complement or a statement but I shall take it as the former as that is what we are trying to achieve.  We need to cover up, indeed don't farm naked, to protector our biggest and most valuable asset, our soil.

Buckwheat Companion Crop with Oilseed Rape

We have had a really super summer and autumn, after the damp and cloudy June, we've had good sunlight, warm temperatures and periodic rain events.  It reminds me of the summers I can remember growing up as a child, endless days of sunshine.  Harvest ran like a dream, our new header performing very well and crops nice and dry, although the yields were disappointing they were on par with our neighbours, which with a completely new system is very encouraging indeed.

The cover crops we have planted have all grown very well indeed and are now producing many environmental benefits.  The most obvious to see is the huge array of flowers producing pollen and nectar for insects to feed on.  During the sunny afternoons these fields are filled with bees.  There is so much insect feed available that a local bee keeper has brought 6 hives down for his bees to feed on the flowering buckwheat.

Buckwheat Root, Root Hairs and Mycorrhizal Fungi

There is also a lot going on underground that we are unable to see, unable to really understand, but we are starting to explore the dark world of the plant and fungal interaction.  The fact that we have plants growing in our soils means that they are capturing every bit of sunshine and turning it into organic matter.  They are growing roots, root hairs, leaves, stems and even fruit.  All of this is capturing carbon from the atmosphere and locking it up in the soil.  The roots are pushing into the soil, helping to repair soil structure so that when we get heavy rains it will infiltrate the soil rather than run off.  The leaves will intercept rain droplets and stop them compacting the soil surface.  The roots are feeding the fungal and bacterial populations in the soil, helping to build a web of different colonies able to scavenge for nutrients as the plants need them.  As these populations grow, they excrete waste which the plants can use.  The waste has a high level of nitrogen in it, which is a key nutrient for our crops, so we can in time use less natural resources in the form of fertiliser.

Cross Slot Drill Planting Wheat into Buckwheat Covercrop

One of the key aspects of making this system work is by having a planting machine (drill) that can cut through these heavy crop and cover crop residues to get he seeds into the soil with good seed placement.  The fact that we can also add starter fertiliser and any slug control products at the same time makes this a very efficient system.  Its better for the environment, better for our productivity and our profitability.  In an uncertain; post Brexit world, where farm support will be reduced, reducing costs and reliance on purchased inputs will be essential to arable farming survival but I believe we are developing a system that will enable us to achieve this.