Written by Matthieu Archambeaud - TCS n ° 62; March/April/May 2011
Conservation agriculture is commonly presented as the combination of reduced tillage, maintaining permanent coverage of the soil and the setting up of suitable rotations. It is often forgotten, that this is often only possible with the help of total herbicides that allow the farmer to get rid of weeds without the help of ploughing and weeding. It was the appearance of molecules such as paraquat, 2-4 D, then glyphosate, that...
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Direct Driller Magazine
Direct Driller is a new farming magazine, designed by farmers for farmers to educate and inform the industry about no-till techniques
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By Samantha Mullender a Sustainability Researcher with the Organic Research
Centre. Article originally published on the Agricology website in October 2017
Farmers and researchers explore the potential for improving nitrogen (N) efficiency in organic rotations.
Organic principles and standards emphasise the importance of practices that can encourage the long-term health and fertility of agricultural soils. Effective crop rotation, cultivation regimes and organic fertiliser application...
Many farmers in the UK have only just started considering systems of reduced tillage in the past 5-10 years, but worldwide research has been going on much longer. No-Till Farmer Magazine in the USA has been published for over 20 years and John Deere have been selling direct drills in North and South America for the same period.
While looking for information on water run-off we found an article published in the Soil Science Society of America Journal in 1976 which was based on research...
Dale Drills have been helping farmers to drive down the cost of crop establishment for over 20 years. Founded by Lincolnshire farmer, John ‘Edward’ Dale, the company has been a long term advocate of low impact cultivation – recognizing the importance it has for improving soil structure and the associated benefits of improved fertility and increased yields. Now run by Edward’s two sons, Tom and James, who grow 3500 acres of combinable crops (utilising No-Till and CTF techniques) in North...
Avatar SD direct seed drill with single disc Coulter The Avatar SD is a compact seed drill that is ideal for direct seeding or catch crop populations. In cases of black grass resistance, the Avatar’s low disturbance of the seedbed when sowing with the single disc coulter helps prevent the black grass from germinating. The Avatar SD is available in 3, 4, 6, 8 and 12m working widths and due to its high tare weight, the new single disc coulter is ideal for direct seeding.
The Avatar SD in...
It’s been a year of arrivals so far. Our third child William arrived safely in January, then our new drill arrived a couple of weeks later. Unfortunately, spring decided not to arrive until the middle of April. When it finally did “Monsoon Monday” was chasing it away again! We had finally finished drilling (so we thought) on the 26th of April, then on the 29th we had 51mm of rain. In total we had 70ml of rain in the six days following drilling. The picture below shows a field of linseed...
Take the earthworm quiz
A quiz created by Jackie Stroud, soil scientist at Rothamsted Research, also known as ‘The Worm Lady’!
Did you know there are three different types of earthworms at work in your soil? Each type lives in a specific layer and performs a unique function which contributes to the soil’s health.
It’s simple to monitor the activity of earthworms, all you need to do is dig a 20cm deep hole in the ground and count the different earthworms you find in each layer. Counting...
Weaving Machinery
Weaving Machinery’s new 8m no-till drill to demo at Groundswell 2018 The GD8000T “leads the charge” for combining soil health with yield and productivity. Weaving Machinery will demo its new 8m version of the no-till Weaving GD Drill at Groundswell 2018, giving visitors the chance to see the drill in action in Roadshott Field. The GD8000T is targeted at farms that take soil health seriously – and the yield benefits that re-sult – but have thus far not found a drill large...
What is required from the modern direct drill? Everyone has their own idea, based on personal preference, experience, land type and many other criteria. One machine may well find it difficult to address all of these, after all there is the big debate between discs and tines before any other consideration. At Ma/Ag, the SSP drill is a disc drill, so if tines are your chosen type, we can’t help.
Tines are usually a cheaper option, as the drill is a more simple design along the lines of a...
Sentry farming director John Barrett and Essex grower Dan Wormell explain the benefits of Clearfield varieties of oilseed rape and how they manage them in the field.
The UK oil seed rape cropping area has fluctuated from a high of 755,000ha before the neonocotinoid ban to a low of 564,000 ha in 2017. This year the crop area has increased 10 per cent to over 600,000 ha - farmers are seeing the value once more. “People have confidence in the crop again and that’s not just farmers,” explains...
No-Till Farmer USA, first published on May 29, 2018 in the Cover Crops Section Source: Penn State University
Modern agricultural systems focus on specialization and simplification, but we are now experiencing unintended consequences, says Sjoerd Willem Duiker. Rural areas are depopulating as the number of farmers continues to decrease; water quality is under threat as soluble nutrients are leaking to ground and surface waters; soil organic matter has decreased, input costs have escalated...
Sewell Farms Kent
To say this spring has been a challenge is an understatement to many of us in farming. The huge variations in temperature combined with some very heavy rainfall at times and very few “good spray days” have hampered our progress in many ways. We are however blessed and fortunate here in that we managed to get our whole farm planted in the autumn. Our current cropping comprises Oilseed Rape, Winter Oats and Milling Wheat. All of our crops for the past 5 years have been...
This article was published in Practical Farm Ideas Summer 2015, Vol 24 issue 2. It describes the conversion from conventional to zero-till made by a traditionally managed farming estate on the Berkshire-Hampshire border. It’s a major change in method which has continued to work well. Manager Stuart Cath reports that the farm is hitting budgets of 9 tonne crops and the soil conditions seems to be improving. Grass area and sheep numbers have been increased somewhat. They continue with the...
When do we expect the new magazine issue 2 through the post ?
Michel Mercier: Using Peas as an Agronomic Weeding Tool
Written by Frédéric Thomas, TCS Magazine No. 46 - January / February 2008
Like many farmers, Michel Mercier first got into direct drilling based on the economic savings it offered. He first worked with an SE Horsch then onto an AT Köckerling, then onto a SD Kuhn, only to find that the drill is only an ingredient, only part of a solution, purely the way to do something. He soon realised that the key to success lies in the soil, it’s...
Manufacturer Focus: Kuhn
NEXT GENERATION COMBINATION SEED DRILL The 4-metre VENTA 4030 + HR 4040 is KUHN’s all-new, next generation combination seed drill. The power harrow element – HR 4040 – uses straight blades and a Duplex gearbox, enabling rotor speed to be adjusted according to soil conditions. The VENTA seed drill features a 1,800 litre seed hopper and uses a fluted metering unit with large splines for larger seeds (wheat, barley, peas, beans, etc.) and small splines for smaller...
by Frédéric Thomas and Matthieu Archambeaud from “ TCS magazine ”, France
BASICS - During the period between cash crops, seeding any cover-crop is a big step forward in restoring water quality, maintaining and developing soil fertility and in the long term saving fertiliser inputs and reducing the need for tillage. There is no such thing as a bad species and neither are there any specifically good ones. Each plant has its own attributes that fit specific or diverse situations. So it is very...
Get to know the bugs in your soil!
A video from the ‘Learning from the Land’ series created by Catchment Sensitive Farming & Innovation for Agriculture
In this short video, we hear from Matthew Shepherd, Soil Biodiversity Specialist for Natural England, about a test you can do to understand the activity of creatures in the ground and how they indicate and impact the properties of your soil.
List of equipment with links is below!
Read more here...
Do you think wheat Yields can be increased by 50% in the next 20 years?
While it seems impossible to imagine – this is the stated aim of the International Wheat Yield Partnership. The research initiative is focusing on 2 priority areas: targeting the use of new technologies to enable breakthroughs for cereal breeding and seeking breakthrough discoveries that lead to significantly greater grain size, set and grain filling duration following embryo formation, in diverse environments...
Direct Driller Goes International
One thing we didn’t expect when starting Direct Driller Magazine was the interest we would have from abroad. The magazine was something we wanted to be able to provide free to farmers, both online and in print. We felt there should be no barrier to the flow of valuable information for any farmer who wanted to learn more or share experiences. What we didn’t expect was to have so many international readers, with 15 from Norway signing up on just one...
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Tractor Chat #01
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Tractor Chat #01 - with Direct Driller Magazine Farmer Focus writer Phil Rowbottom
Discussing direct drilling wheat, Oil seed rape growing in the UK, Fendt 724 tractor and his Sky Easy Drill.
Discussing direct drilling wheat, Oil seed rape growing in the UK, Fendt 724 tractor and his Sky Easy Drill.