Alberta Day 2 18th June

Day 2 and we are out on farm.  Today we were visiting the team from Agritrend who are a group of independent crop coaches (agronomists) who all work under the Agritrend umbrella  The company was started by Rob Saik in 1997 and is now involved in many aspects of farm business from agromomy,  business development and precision farming (incl data management) to grain marketing and many other aspects.

After meeting Warren Bills and Matt Gosling  (and a footlong sub for lunch), we headed to the fields in Wheatland County.  There are 1 million acres in the county and 3% of that land would be classified as the best soil in the province of Alberta, with about 1/3 of that land on the farm we visited.

The spear Matt used very easily went down 18" of no-till soil before he pulled out it out to reveal the black organic soil that smelt incredible.  The soil had just been direct drilled for about 20 years and was in a great condition.  Then he put the probe back into the hole and took out the next 18" down which was a more bodied clay but also very free draining and very accessible to the plants roots.  The crops here only have a very short growth period, maybe only 150 days from the middle of April until the middle of September when the first frosts kill off the crops.  They go through the growth stages very quickly.  The stem extension stage can take as little as 10 days (GS30-GS40)  At home that can take over 35 days.  Only 2 fungicides are applied as the crop grows so fast and the majority of the fertiliser is applied in the soil at seeding.  There are no growth regulators which limits the amount of fertiliser farmers can apply, effectively pegging yield as the crops need to stand.

The drilling rig here is about 21m wide (66') and the seed trailer at the back has 5 compartments.  One for seed and the other 4 for different straights of fertiliser so each nutrient can be variably applied, to a recommendation based on soil sampling, yield prediction and previous history.  The rotation is all spring cropping with OSR (Canola) then wheat followed by barley which is whole cropped to feed to the cattle.

The cattle feed lot, where 10 years ago they would have finished 22-25,000 head of beef now they finish 11,000 head due to the economics of beef production in Canada.  There are fewer processors to sell to so a proportion of the beef is shipped to the US for sale.  The cattle will travel down to Nebraska, Utah and Washington from here.

A huge thanks to Warren, Matt and Rob for showing us around the operation and also to Marissa for the excellent home cooked ribs we had for supper.  After leaving Matt's house we headed north towards Three Hills for the next leg of our journey.

Alberta Day 1 - 17th June

On our first full day in Canada we ventured out into the Rocky Mountains along the main East-West Trans-Canadian Highway (Number 1).  We headed into Canmore, then onto Banff where we had lunch before heading further into the mountains in search of lake Louise and Lake Moraine and the Valley of the 10 Peaks, that tower over the crystal clear  glacier water.  The view took our breath away and after the torrential downpour with accompanying thunder and lightening in Banff, the sun shone and it really was spectacular! 

We were lucky enough to see this little fellow at Lake Moraine a young male Grizzly beer, just grazing grass near the car park, completely unmoved or disinterested with the 50 or so lenses pointed at him.  He looked up occasionally but decided dandelion's were a better option than tourists!  Just as well as they can run at 60Km/hr and with huge claws they obviously need to be treated with respect.

We headed back to Calgary via the Bow Valley Parkway which runs through the National Park and is a stunning drive, twisty roads, fabulous views and probably the longest train I have seen!  This train was  empty heading East to the Potash mines in Saskatchewan.  It was about 170 carriages long and was doing  about 60Km/Ha. There could have been over 10,000 T of Potash fertiliser on the train when full, with a farm gate value of over £3.5 million!

The Dodge Charger was just the beast for taming the twisty roads!  No number plates on the front though which we thought was strange.

We rounded the evening off down at the local pub with our Nuffield Scholar host Ryan Bonnett, his girlfriend Helaina and room mate Scotty.  Early start tomorrow to surrender the Charger, get a local mobile phone and head out East into some fields.

Welcome to Calgary

Well we have finally left the country!  After a farewell at the airport with Andrea, we headed into Terminal 3 at Heathrow for our flight.  As we checked in the lady asked us if we minded taking a later flight as the flight we were booked onto was over sold.  We looked, and thought and finally agreed, the compensation was to be about £500, another trip somewhere we thought; but as it turned out we weren't required to 'volunteer' to be delayed.  There was no upgrade either!  The flight took about 9 hours and when we arrived and headed onto the road the first thing that struck me was the space.  Wide open space, except for the huge mall's but a big blue sky.  I'm sure the photo's this trip won't do it justice but we're underway.

Our host for the first couple of nights is 2012 Nuffield Scholar Ryan Bonnett who works for BASF and is based just outside of Calgary in a town called Airdrie.  After settling in, meeting Scott and Helaina and unwinding with a game of 'throw the bean bag in a hole' (which we got thrashed at)

and chatting constantly we headed to the pub; just around the corner for a beer before turning in for the night.  Tomorrow is another day with lots more to discover.

Nuffield Adventures Part 2

So it's finally here, take off day.  The first leg of my Nuffield personal study to investigate whether or not it is possible to grow a 20T/Ha wheat crop in the UK in the next 20 years.  It's been a long time in the planning stages with e-mails and skype messages, even finding contacts through twitter, but today is the day I head to Heathrow to set off for the first stop Calgary.  So if you are in Calgary and see a couple of lost Nuffield Scholars do stop us and hello!  I am travelling with Andrew Williamson from Bridgnorth in Shropshire for the first few days which I'm looking forward too.  It will be great to share some of the experience with a mate.

I'll be looking at growing wheat in the Canadian Prairies, the Great Plaines, the Palouse and the Dakota's of America, talking to farmers, scientists and agronomists.  It will be a great adventure as well as bringing some important messages back to UK Agriculture and new ideas for the home farm.  I will try and update the blog as much as I can to keep you all posted about the journey I'm about to embark on! 

All Covered Up?

Well this year is certainly making me think long and hard about the long term benefits of cover cropping when there is no other crop planted in the ground.  It is also making me think about leaving ground bare and I'm coming to the conclusion that we should be having crops growing all the time.  The soil microbes, fungi and bacteria all need to be fed to keep them healthy, this would seem logical wouldn't it?  Keeping the soil microbes healthy recycles nutrients within the system, keeps the soil structure maintained reduces soil erosion and increases water quality. It can also dry the land out faster and more evenly.  It also provides a great habitat for  our wildlife, I see an abundance of brown hare; we have skylarks serenading me as I walk the fields and lapwing swooping down to ward of visitors from their nests and young fledglings.

The field above is a mixture of Phacelia, Fodder Radish and a mixture of winter and spring beans.  The beans can, with the help of nitrogen fixing bacteria, turn atmospheric nitrogen into a form that the plants can use later in the season or it should be available for the next crop.

This is a fodder radish plant that has a tap root very similar to a parsnip by the looks of things.  It is penetrating the soil with the equivalent force of 400lb/square inch.  The picture above shows the root development 5 weeks since the crop was planted in a very cold and difficult spring (aren't they all these days).  I am hopeful that where the crop has established well there will be no need to subsoil this year.

As the cover crop plants die; the following crop, in this case winter wheat, their roots will be able to follow these roots down to the moisture in tracks already provided.  This means the wheat will use less energy to produce their roots enabling more efficient use of energy.  All in all there is no immediate financial return for doing this but the long term benefits will pay back with better yields and we'll have a farming system that is more resilient to the challenges of climate change that are all to obvious.  There will also be opportunities for moving livestock around the farm, returning more organic manure, I just have to work out how!

NIABTAG Visit to the Gene Pool

Monday the 13th May was another day to remember on my Nuffield adventure.  My visit was to the HQ of NIABTAG near Cambridge, who just the evening before had been on Countryfile with a brand new development in wheat breeding!  I was met by Bill Clarke, to whom I am very grateful, he spent at least 3 hours showing me around the site and detailing the very valuable work that is being undertaken at the centre.  Bill explained about NIAB, what it does with the recommended lists, the Innovation farms and the wider extension work to the farmer members.  The membership only make up about 10% of the income stream, with the balance being from commercial work or contract work from industry or the BBSRC.  We spoke about wheat growing and the challenges that we face trying to produce more from less, with less.  How is that supposed to happen we can't work miracles, especially when you look at the potential to ban some or all triazoles from the fungicide battle.

Something that does resemble a kind of miracle is the work that Sarah and Emma are doing in the labs to multiply up the engineered seeds.  It was fascinating to hear them speak with such knowledge and passion about a subject that is quite alien to me and so very specialised.  It's great to know that people like this our working on our behalf making our industry better and more productive.    

It was a great visit and I was allowed to see first hand the stages that went into the creation of the synthetic wheat featured on Country File the previous day, demonstrating a potential yield increase of up to 30 % over our existing varieties.  Although the work is a long way from becoming available on the farm, the genetic engineers and plant breeders are working hard to help feed our growing world population, of that I am sure.

Cranfield University - National Soil Resources Institute

I can't believe where the last month has disappeared too. After Canada, lambing day and the spring work on the farm, things sure have been very busy.  Last week we hosted Natasha King, a 2013 Nuffield Scholar, who we met in Canada.  So as I was heading to Cranfield University with Tom Sewell to meet Professor Jane Rickson, Natasha came along as well.  After half a days crop walking with Dominic the day before, we were slowly converting this Kiwi to a life alongside dairy cows!

The day at Cranfield was fantastic, Jane looked after us really well and lined up a great line of people available to tell us about he various areas of research they were undertaking.  Karl Ritz was able to host for a while after lunch which was fascinating, to hear his thoughts on where arable cropping could be heading.  We mused about mixed cropping in the same field, seed mixtures not just of different varieties but also of different crop types.  In the past livestock farmers could have grown peas and spring barley together as a whole crop, baled and fed to livestock.  Karl was talking about harvesting these mixes and then selling it as a blend or separating it out in the grain store.   It would be very interesting to hear the industries views of segregation of different crops or selling blends.  Does it matter for instance if a group 1 milling wheat is a mixture of Crusoe, Solstice and Gallant if it all makes the specification, but requires less fungicides, with the same yield?  I guess these are things that organic farmers use to try and make sure 2/3rds of the crop survives a fungal attack.  Maybe now is the time to slacken off the homogenised world of specifics and go with a more natural diverse scenario?

Later in the day Professor Rickson took us to the soil hall which was a tremendous asset to have.  The trays above demonstrate how different soils under cultivation behave in different rainfall events with different topography.  The tray above shows the effect on soil movement of a buffer strip, slope and tramline.  When the water has reached a certain velocity then it moves down the slope taking soil particles (carrying pesticides and fertilisers) with it.  These have been stopped by the grass buffer (right) but can this area act as a reservoir for super pollution during a once in a lifetime rainfall event when the soil particles contained in the buffer strip are washed out of the strip?  A debate for the future, all about the width of your buffer!  It also highlighted Tom's Nuffield topic of direct drilling and some of my previous thoughts, leaving crop residue on the surface through min-till or direct drilling is better for water quality and reduces soil erosion, and that is a fact.

We finally ended up in another area of the building looking at the soil pits that can be used to simulate cultivations and compaction and what can be done to remove or alter these in-field problems.  The facility has the option to get any soil moisture level required, by simply simulating rainfall, which will obviously have an effect on the machinery being tested at any one time.

Again, more questions were asked than answers found, and lots of food for thought, not sure when this diet is going to start!