SHOULD YOU ROTATE YOUR COVER CROPS? FOUR ISSUES TO CONSIDER
You probably know that crop rotation is a good thing. Growing different crops back to back provides several benefits, such as preventing pests and disease, improving soil health and reducing fertilizer inputs, all of which can boost your crop yields and your bottom line. By adding cover crops to the mix, you’re diversifying your rotation even more. But have you thought about rotating your cover crops? Should you be using the...
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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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Groundswell 2019
We started Groundswell out of a sense of frustration that no-one was putting on a Summer Show to which we might want to go. Having gone down the no-till route, we realised that we only really needed a good seed drill and not a barn full of expensive cultivating equipment, so Cereals and all those Tillage events were a waste of our time. None of the lectures and very few of the exhibitors talked about the soil, let alone soil biology.
A visit to the fabulous No-Till on...
Hitting the Sainfoin Trail
As based on information found on Agricology (www.agricology.co.uk) Richard Smith, farm manager of Daylesford Organic in Gloucestershire, is a regular contributor to a series of video blogs produced by Agricology. One topic that he favours for the organic system is growing sainfoin as a forage crop. In this article he reveals some of his experiences of growing and managing sainfoin on the farm:
At Daylesford, we’ve grown a variety of crops over the years but the...
Featured Farmer David Miller
Wheatsheaf Farming Company (WFC) farms around 700 Hectares of grade 3 land in Hampshire for 3 landowners. 2 of the landowners also own WFC as a method of farming their land more cost effectively. David Miller, their farm manager, describes details of their move from conventional to no-till farming.
I have worked in farming full time since 1975 and have progressed through the farming fashions that have presented themselves through the next 35 years. As such...
Not wishing to blow smoke up any arses , issue 5 is the best yet , proper old school magazine , keep it up guys ,
Conserving Water with Cover Crops
Large parts of Germany have struggled for years with very erratic rainfall patterns. Some farmers are now tending to question the usefulness of cover cropping in dry and even semiarid regions largely on the basis of their experience in the dry summer and autumn of 2015. Does cover cropping conserve water or squander it?
Written by Markus Scheller ∙ Dettelbach-Euerfeld
The benefits of cover crops are undisputed: They help to increase biological activity...
We will be adding all of Issue 5 to The Farming Forum - here is what to expect...
CONTENTS ISSUE 5
Introduction .....................................................4
Conserving Water with Cover Crops ................................6
Featured Farmer: David Miller......................................8
Hitting the Sainfoin Trail..........................................10
Groundswell 2019...............................................12
Should you rotate your Cover Crops...
Based on Interview with Dr John Baker, CrossSlot New Zealand. Medicine has made quantum leaps in research, treatment and surgical procedures in recent years – now it’s time for arable farming to follow suit.
Where medicine has moved from invasive to keyhole surgery, agriculture has gone from keyhole to invasive farming, resulting in the depletion of quality soil and contributing to global warming. International soil scientist, John Baker, says medical science, since last century, has...
By Nathan Morris, Elizabeth Stockdale, David Clarke - NIAB
Long term findings from field-scale experiments (STAR and NFS) show that while yields with non-inversion tillage are similar in most years to yields with ploughing, when decreased costs of labour and fuel are factored in, gross margins under non-inversion tillage were better than under ploughed systems. Hence non-inversion tillage is advocated under ‘normal’ conditions.
The influence of primary cultivation method on crop yields...
AHDB’s Petworth Monitor Farm group reignited two popular debates at their recent meeting (18 October 2018): discs versus tines and ‘to till or not to till’.
The Monitor Farm group is hosted by Mark Chandler at Moor Farm in West Sussex. Mark and the other farmers in the group wanted to see how different levels of cultivation and types of drilling affected his first wheat crop, following beans. In a normal year, Mark would cultivate behind the combine with a Simba SL600 cultivator running LD...
By David White
A predicted slowish drive down the M11/25/20 turned out as predicted. Richard Harding my observer and I had left in plenty of time to catch our EuroTunnel train so a coffee and croissant in the terminal building we slipped under the channel on route Dieppe. Day one had been reserved for travelling down but rather than fill it with a long lunch stop at Le Touquet I had researched the resting places of some family members killed in the Great War so I could pay my respects...
By Richard Harding Organic’s potential for whole farm improvements came under focus at the UK’s largest organic on-farm event.
The 2018 National Organic Combinable Crops (NOCC) conference brought organic and non-organic growers together to hear the benefits organic systems bring to the farm business and the farmed environment. It is noticeable again this year the increasing number of farmers and agronomists practicing Conservation Agriculture who have become regular attendees. Held by...
CONFERENCE HIGHLIGHTS CALCIUM’S VITAL ROLE IN SOIL NUTRITION
10th October 2018 – At Nantwich Football Club
Calcium has a key role in maintaining healthy, fertile soils and the production of high-quality crops and forages. Yet it is estimated that 60% of UK soils are below optimal levels of pH and calcium, and the importance of this key nutrient is often overlooked. To help put calcium under the spotlight, granulated lime manufacturer, Calcifert, hosted the UK’s first Calcium Conference...
Mike Donovan writes...
Joel Williams is a familiar face to many with an interest in soil health and biology, and first spoke to a UK farming audience in 2010. The Australian plant and soil health educator has a global audience and Direct Driller magazine caught him at the Overbury Estate in Worcestershire where he joined the estate manager and no-till enthusiast Jake Freestone and also Simon Cowell, a long term no-tiller who farms heavy land in Essex who was voted Soil Farmer of the Year...
After successfully completing the multi-year research project MARS (Mobile Agricultural Robot Swarms) in collaboration with the Ulm University of Applied Sciences and the EU research funding, AGCO and Fendt decided to develop the robot project up to series-production readiness for the Fendt brand.
The entire system, including small robots operating in swarms and a cloud-based system control will now be operated under the product name ‘XAVER’. ‘Xaver’ is a traditional Bavarian name with deep...
LAMMA 2019 will see the launch of a new low disturbance Soil Conditioner developed by the team at Dale Drills. As a non-drilling piece of equipment, the Dale’s decided to launch the product under a new brand, Meir Agricultural, named after owners Tom and James Dale’s late maternal Grandfather, Thomas Meir, who worked as an engineer in Teeside in his youth, before taking on the challenge of farming on the plains of Manitoba, Canada in his later years.
The Meir SC has been designed to...
GPS and other modern technologies, along with thorough trial protocols, can make farm trialling straightforward and routine. Decisions and innovations can then become thoroughly validated and tailored to real farming conditions.
This useful guide from ADAS outlines processes leading to successful farm-trialling and how to avoid the pitfalls. The guide covers trials conducted with ADAS Agronōmics support, trials using yield mapping technology without ADAS support, and trials where the...
COMPARISON OF “STANDARD ROW” TO “WIDE ROW“ IN ORGANIC SPRING WHEAT AND SOYBEANS
By Einböck, from their Organic Farming Guidebook
In spring of 2017, organic spring wheat and soybeans were sown in plots (4000 m² each). Each crop was seeded once in standard row (row spacing 13 cm / 5”) and on wide row (row spacing 37.5 cm / 15”).
Location
The test area is located at 4751 Dorf an der Pram (Austria), at an altitude of 460m above sea level. The average annual temperature is 11 degrees...
HOW NZ CONTRACTORS NO-TILL 3000HA/YEAR WITH A 3M SEEDER
By Thierry Stokkermans
There is one country where some contractors seed 3000 hectares per year with a 3 metre wide drill, and it is New Zealand. It is not a country of wide plains… most paddocks have odd shapes. How do they do this?
New Zealand has a mild oceanic climate and numerous mountains. Their climate allows the grass to grow all year long. They stock sheep and cattle, for the meat and the milk. There is some cash cropping...
BUSY BACKEND AND DISCUSSIONS WITH THE NEIGH SAYERS!
Having travelled all over the country with the Ma/Ag drill we are now beginning to see the results of our toils which seem positive. As always during demonstration, we have visits from the next door neighbour, some with positives comments and some not quite so. On one demonstration which I and the farmer where more than happy with, the visiting cousin was negative to say the least. After his departure, I spoke to the farmer about his...
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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.