Organic no till system ?

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Could this work ?

100% spring crops - milling wheat

Fertility building (legumes) break crop established at harvest then destroyed via sheep grazing or crimper roller on frosts (Or both)

Wheats drilled low disturbance on wide rows and hoe used to control weeds ?
It's been known to happen down here - sometimes it ends up as feed wheat instead of high grade (but it's still wheat)

The man says he always puts more effort and thought into the cover crops (& management of) than his cash crops - it's quite a mindset change in this respect

I should add they don't expect to have a cashcrop from each acre each year, either, but there are a lot of livestock involved
 

fred.950

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Dorset/Wiltshire
Could this work ?

100% spring crops - milling wheat

Fertility building (legumes) break crop established at harvest then destroyed via sheep grazing or crimper roller on frosts (Or both)

Wheats drilled low disturbance on wide rows and hoe used to control weeds ?
Was the 12m Avatar not originally designed to work in an organic system with the Horsche hoe? The idea being wider row spaces making it easier to hoe and a higher plant population in the actual row to smother weeds.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
Was the 12m Avatar not originally designed to work in an organic system with the Horsche hoe? The idea being wider row spaces making it easier to hoe and a higher plant population in the actual row to smother weeds.

One of many things that have planted a small seed in my head

If we loose glyphosate I think it would be one if the few potential options
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
I really like the idea of a hybrid type farm, not organic necessarily but using the soil to grow soil.

that's where we are now really but unlike organic there is no premuim on what we sell and we are still quite dependent upon herbicides


I'm starting to think next step, maybe a few years from now or if we loose key herbicides like glyphosate
 

Bury the Trash

Member
Mixed Farmer
No but they will keep them down enough to impinge their rampant development.... :unsure:

Trouble is sneaky stuff then grows shorter and runs to seed quicker to beat the grazing ( like annual meadow grass not that I veiw that as a particularly bad weed as it is some sort of ground cover and def. Will not smother out the crop...like say wild oats will .(n)
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
how though - from what I can see the way to make money from milk involves robots and cows never seeing a field ? its also huge investment for very low returns
You can make money from sheep if your good at it. All forage fed no need for any fancy stuff just a mobile handling system, electric fencing, IBC tanks for water, quad, stock trailer to go behind the pickup you probably already have a dog and a stick. Not much to it really. You could even get a contractor in to do all of it and they would have all the gear already.
If you were closer if be interested in running some sheep on your place but I bet there are plenty of other people that would do it.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
You can make money from sheep if your good at it. All forage fed no need for any fancy stuff just a mobile handling system, electric fencing, IBC tanks for water, quad, stock trailer to go behind the pickup you probably already have a dog and a stick. Not much to it really. You could even get a contractor in to do all of it and they would have all the gear already.
If you were closer if be interested in running some sheep on your place but I bet there are plenty of other people that would do it.


trouble is i'm just not interested in farming livestock for a living and it's not within my skill set - I can see the benefit of livestock but if I ever did anything it would have to be with a partner who knew that side of the job
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
trouble is i'm just not interested in farming livestock for a living and it's not within my skill set - I can see the benefit of livestock but if I ever did anything it would have to be with a partner who knew that side of the job
I didn't think you would run your own stock that was just an example of how it could be done in the cheap.
There would be plenty of people willing to do it for you though (y)
 

fred.950

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Dorset/Wiltshire
that's where we are now really but unlike organic there is no premuim on what we sell and we are still quite dependent upon herbicides


I'm starting to think next step, maybe a few years from now or if we loose key herbicides like glyphosate
Have you ever tested your harvested crops for residues of Glyphosate? Is that even possible? There would surely be a market for “Glyphosate residue free” flour. It wouldn’t need much of a premium to pay for the testing and allow you to carry on farming in the way that’s working for you. Too late perhaps (n)
 

Kiwi Pete

Member
Livestock Farmer
Just a thought, where’s the market for all these ruminants if the arable sector adopted this. [emoji848]
Probably the same place that it is now?

No reason that arable-farm-grazed stock cannot beat grass-farm-grazed stock in terms of performance nor COP, sure they may pay stupid money for land but isn't that the idea behind organics - so the consumers and processors pay stupid money for food?

It's all a numbers game, whatever sector - if you're largely self-sufficient in CC seeds to drill and no-till then costs should be reasonably favourable compared to some of the "proper livestock farms" with their endless array of kit depreciating - ten years from now these proper farms may not exist as such, they certainly wouldn't in our economic climate
 

PSQ

Member
Arable Farmer
Repeated hoeing of crops is a very bad idea. My late Dad discussed it with Mike Calvert, boss of Co-op farming in the early 90's, as they had just completed an experiment with hoeing in a bid to reduce herbicide use. Mikes views at the time were something along the lines of : "A great idea in theory, but if you were looking for a way to remove every ground nesting bird from a field then this would be it. It was a disaster, we wont be carrying on with it".

edit - Sp.
 
Last edited:

jonnyjon

Member
Could this work ?

100% spring crops - milling wheat

Fertility building (legumes) break crop established at harvest then destroyed via sheep grazing or crimper roller on frosts (Or both)

Wheats drilled low disturbance on wide rows and hoe used to control weeds ?
I think about this a lot, no easy answer's, I have given myself a couple more years to learn to farm without roundup or find something else to do. Thoughts are constant ground cover using micro clover with multi variety, multi species crops dd in, or early harvested winter crops followed by high biomass warm season cc that will winter kill, helped by a crimper, for complete ground cover followed by another winter sown dd crop
 

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