Pondering Picking Peas

Peas emerging 19th April

For the first time we have no-tilled all of the hand picked peas up on the Bredon Hill.  Previously the crop had been cultivated to create the seedbed to plant into.  Historically the fields would have been ploughed in the autumn and left bare over winter, then cultivated ahead of the drill (planter).  More recently the fields were cultivated (quite deeply) ahead of the drill and then planted, but not any longer!  The picture above shows the peas emerging through a sprayed off cover crop of oats.  The oats were planted the previous autumn and left to grow over the winter.  The plants were using the sunshine and nutrients available to them to capture carbon, in the form of plant material-roots, stems and leaves and also feeding the biological process in the soil with sugars which the plant releases through the roots.

Peas in row 11th May

Once the crop was sprayed off with glyphostate, to kill all the green material, the seeder planted the peas.  It was a very dry spring this year but by not cultivating the soil we held all the available moisture-enough to get our crops to establish very evenly.

Peas meeting across the row 26th May

As you can see from the pictures above the crop established very well and continued to grow on and produce a very good yield of quality peas for the fresh vegetable market.  This year the fields designed for peas have once again been cover cropped with oats and they are preparing the seedbed for next years peas which we will start to plant from the end on March 2018.

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

Day 22 - Heading North Through the Palouse to Washington State

The 8th July was my last day in Idaho before setting my sights further East.  Robert and I headed around the farm one more time to take in the scenery before heading North to the University of Idaho.  This is where Robert dis some of his agricultural training, so we called in to see the building and have look around.  Agriculture still plays a major role, not only for the University but also for the farming community with links passing genotypes around between them and Limagrain who I met last week.  The fund raising staff, headed up by Kim O'Neill had just finished raising $40 million for the University Agricultural and Life Science Dept, over the past 5 years, almost 2 years ahead of their target.  Very impressive!

While we were there some teacher training was being taken by the now principal John Foltz.  We gate crashed the party which is under a scheme called 'Ag In The Classroom'.  It is a great idea and I had hairs on the back of neck standing up listening to the ideas.  Basically the teachers; during the summer recess come to learn about Agricultural production, food and the environment as part of their Continued Personal Development (CPD).  I think the course is about a week long, (I will find out more).  It seems sensible to educate teachers who can then pass that knowledge down to their children and teachers are already respected and trusted by them, brilliant!  There was even a combine in the hotel car park!

We rushed through the meeting and I gave a short presentation, spur of the moment, thanks Robert, on Nuffield and why this funny speaking (correctly) person was in the room.  We headed north to Spokane afterwards where I met up wit h6 friends from the Contemporary Scholars Conference, back in  March, on their Global Focus Program.  Here we had a 2 hour presentation and discussion about the  Farm Bill in general but focused on the Crop Insurance Program the farmers can use to guarantee there out put, financially or physically form the farm.  there are basically 3 types.  the cheapest is yield protection up to 85% of your expected, based on the last 5 years crop receipts from the local elevators.  The second form is Revenue protection where you can insure for yield and the price at harvest.  Thirdly there is Revenue protection excluding harvest price which takes into account increases in the grain price.  It was fascinating to hear how the system works, but I didn't realise that 80% of the farm bill goes on food stamps for people on state benefits.  Of the 20% left there is some for Conservation and some for administration so the actual support to the farmer is only about 11% of the total cost.

Here is Matthew, me, Natasha, Guy, Jodie, Kara and Sophie after the meeting.  It really was great to catch up even for such a short period of time, it was like meeting old friends again.  Great!

Idaho has been stunning, my host, Eisenhower Fellow Robert Blair and family have been tremendous and he has shown me everything about their wheat and general crop production methods.  (Nuffield Scholars need to make more of this Agricultural resource).  I leave you with two picture form the area, taken on the last day.  This one shows two fields, one is cultivated with minimum tillage and the other is with mould board ploughing.  There is quite a difference.

The second one is this, of a White Tailed Deer.  They are there in abundance, along with the Elk, and it demonstrates that farmers are capable of farming in harmony with nature, but we have to let our critics and customers know this is how we do it! 

Worms Eye View

With the dry spell of weather over the past few weeks, the land has been drying out which has allowed us to get onto the fields and start working on our spring campaign.  We have started ploughing some of the light land inpreparation for planting salad onions in about 4 weeks time.  Ploughing now should allow a nice germination of weeds before the onions are planted, reducing the cost of weed killers (herbicides) and actually being able to control some certain weeds, like groudsel.

Derek was ploughing in this field, Lynch Piece, and was almost immediately joined by about 50 lapwings looking for all the tasty worms and insects that were being turned onto the surface.  A tasty snack, unless you are the worm!

Spring Ploughing

With the dry weather returning we employed Phil Odam Farm Contractors to spread some organic mushroom compost ahead of spring barley on some light land. The compost is great stuff for increasing the soils organic matter, which will help retain moisture in a dry year (not required for the last two!) and make it easier to cultivate in the future, oh and great food for worms as well! It has a few nutrients in it as well to help the crop get established and to feed it when it starts warming up and the nutrients are released by microbial activity. Having ploughed the field, we'll wait a few days for the top to dry out and then drill more 'Tipple' spring barley.

Derek was loading the compost yesterday and today he was ploughing it all in, to reduce the risk of air pollution to our neighbours (wouldn't want the air to smell like the countryside now would we)! It also helps to lock up any nitrogen, stopping it from being released into the atmosphere.