- Location
- Ceredigion
Why did Big Bud retire
Min Till shot him dead
Min Till shot him dead
Will No till put paid to the plough ? asks a piece in the FT.
- Thread starter Bury the Trash
- Start date
- Location
- Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
Yes, soil does improve with DD. No doubt about that.
The bit I will have to replant has only been doing DD for a couple of years and hasn’t had time to improve enough yet. It was in effect the last third of the entire farm we converted to DD, so as not to hit that 3rd year wall all in one go and is mostly on the heavier side of the land we have got.
Exactly the same has happened with our next door neighbour but one with his conversion to DD. Though we have both noticed an explosion in earth worm activity, even on that what now looks like mostly bare land.
Despite the fact that the crop food not cope with that amount of rain
The neighbour in the middle caught his just right conventionally and mostly looks a picture.
Though it now terrifies me about the time and what it has cost him. Except for the fact that his farm is rather smaller than either of ours.
Where we caught ours at about the right time (being about 2 weeks earlier) it looks equally such a good picture.
My kit list
A fancy expensive disc drill ...... 4yrs old and will do at least another 10 here
A cheap home made tine drill ....... plus expensive front hopper, will be here at least another 10years
A set of carrier discs 12 years old - do maybe 5% of our area every year, will be here at least another 10 years (becuse one size doesn't fit all !)
A 12m set of simba rolls 1993 vintage , will be here at least another 10years, might paint them even !
a old simba subsoiler flatliner - cant recall when we last used though (or even where we left it !)
All the above are worth more than was paid for them. ^^^
A fancy 4 year old trailer sprayer, will run for the next 10years at least
A big 12m lexion combine - horrible expensive thing but needs must ! historically changed on a 5yr cycle
2 x Fendt 724's. 4k hours and 9khrs ......... will probably swap for 1x tractor when times comes, don't really need 2 anymore but its "handy"
a JCB telehadler - 2013 I think, mint / low hours and will last another 10 no problem
2x big high speed grain trailers - 10 year min in them and will still be worth more that was paid I expect !
a Amazone solid fert spreader - bought used, rarely used as we are liquid mainly
1.25 full time employees - not exactly over worked !!
the above is capable of farming cereals / managing SFi on 4-5k acres (we don't do that much anymore however !)
I reckon I can farm pretty cheap now !
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- Location
- Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
I tend to agree.
IMO, if you are going down the DD route with cereals on a mostly or all-arable farm, you have got to stick with DD and not keep pressing the ‘Reset’ button.
You may well hit that 3rd year wall where land hasn’t quite acclimatised to DD and yields will drop off for a year or 2.
But once you are through it, there is no looking back.
Though it does mean you have really got to get your timing right on drilling.
Once you are through that barrier, even Spring DD’ing will work quite happily.
its a bit like snakes and ladders ! most years I have seen improvement but every now and then you get a extreme year thats a step backwards
Don't stop plying the game though for one snake !
- Location
- Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
Unfortunately for me, the former owner of this estate, now deceased, wouldn’t allow that sort of luxury.
His son is a lot more understanding, but I’m trying to be as determined as possible to keep up with the principal of running a tight ship on the occupied with farm machinery space, front.
We have sold:
6 furrow KV Variwidth plough
3M Shakerator
3M Sumo Trio,
4M Kuhn Power Harrow
4M Kuhn Venta Combi Liner Drill.
3M set of Discs
5M set of Springtines
6M set of Zig-zag Harrows
Still to sell:
6M set of Hyd folding Cambridge Rolls
3M Furrow press.
ALL REPLACED WITH ONE 2nd hand 3M Weaving GD drill!
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Blimey, that's some cut back!
Risky strategy, but very lean.
SilliamWhale
Member
Because of the erosion coming out of the estuaries
I took on a farm that had been dd'ing some fields for 7 years, with advice from a well known consultant you would know, jam tomorrow springs to mind. crops were getting worse and spring cereals a disaster, it was not sustainable. it was a valuable learning experience and made me step back from being a zealot.
I love no till and direct drilling, and still do a lot. but I like making money more and I think our hybrid system is a good balance that still allows us to maximise SFI payments and keep a very low cost base (scale has a lot to do with this also to be fair).
- Location
- Moreton-in-Marsh, Glos
Risk is the name of the game though.
To truly cut back on risk, take as much advantage as possible of CS and SFI on the dodgier fields.
Risk and workload is about to nose dive here with the abandonment of break crops in favour of AB6 Enhanced Overwintered Stubbles at £589/Ha. The advantage of which is if crops suddenly look more financially viable, go back into them and don't declare your AB6 for that year.
But I very much doubt that will ever happen.
It is our EoY financial year today. We have been looking at our Cash Flows for the year ahead and are in the fortunate position that RPA moneys now exceed what the full BPS and CS came to, which reduces risk even more.
And that doesn’t include the new additional DD SFI of £73/ha yet either.
plant a multi species cover on that bare area this May when conditions are good - every year you do that it will get better and better, this is exactly what we did
nothing fixes soil better than. plants, cultivating it to "fix". just is a cycle of doom, cultivation often can create the need for cultivation, I bet if you didn't farm that soil at all it wouldn't remain bare for long !
- Location
- somerset
that is easy to prove.
we had an 18 month archaeological dig here, covering the whole farm, there has been continuous farming here, for 3,500 yrs.
when they dig a pit, they go down to the 'natural', or original soil level, some went down over 6ft, showing the soil loss/movement. And apparently we were pretty good ! The why, because the ancient field boundaries indicated big fields, we were stock orientated, arable had small fields.
Some farms had soil movement in excess of 20ft.
Add on run off, as we all know about, soil has been lost for centuries. Modern ploughing, in conjunction with EA failure to control, is why rivers need dredging. Some rivers have about 25% of volume, compared to 50yrs ago,
yes that would be interesting do /see done by a geologist.
was that dig /are you on levellish ground as a matter of interst?
Simon Chiles
DD Moderator
- Location
- Surrey/ Kent Border, UK
People just don’t seem to realise that spending 100k on a drill is no more likely to make them a successful no till farmer than you spending 25k on a plough and expecting to be the world ploughing champion!
There also isn’t a soil type that’s unsuitable for direct drilling, it’s only an excuse people use for their shortcomings in management.
99.8% of our autumn dd’ed crops this year look excellent on high Mg clay. Here’s a couple of photos of some triticale 1.5l glyphosate pre drilling, no starter fert, no insecticide.
We ploughed two fields this autumn, one we spread 7000 tonnes of silt on out of a pond and that is also 100% establishment. The other one was ploughed to clean it up, it hadn’t been cropped for a few years and that is only 80%.
- Location
- Huntingdon
**ideology !!
ah . a rare occasion where soil has been replaced where it washed from.
on that subject, i can tell those fields in yr pics would wash if enough rain at once and they were even a a bit more on a slope.
thats the arable conumdrum i suppose, all grass cover and not poached or overgrazed in winter and the soil there wouldn't move.
biggest worry here is wash, not blow we dont get anyof that , no level fields that i farm ,most with fair slope and some that are 'more severe '
land managers should have acut of point in their mind for establishing , fudging in /late drilling should be a thing of the past imo.wouldnt be any or few no tillers in that catorgory i guess.owing to earlier drilling being nesseceary
i nhate to see fine topsoil gpoing on the roads in the ditches and river
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Simon Chiles
DD Moderator
- Location
- Surrey/ Kent Border, UK
You’re spot on. When we used to plough we’d get washouts on the steeper ground as deep as your waist. It all stopped when we dd’ed them.
The field we spread the sludge on has been dd’ed for 20 years and it looks relatively flat. This year after ploughing it we’ve started to get soil erosion back on it. Fortunately it’s gone into a herbal ley so I expect it’ll be that for the next 15 years.
- Location
- somerset
undulating
it was the depth at the top of the slope, to the depth at the bottom that shocked me, and as said, this was a livestock unit.
the dig was all based on the 'continuous' farming, quite rare to find, so they said, personally wouldn't have a clue. But the information produced/discovered, was fascinating, nearly as good as the scantily dressed young ladies, on a hot day
altogether very interesting, as was the number of buildings, discovered under the soil, which we had no idea about. They recognised the 'main' hub of activity, was under the present farmstead, we never know what we will find, digging a post hole, or similar in the yard, plenty of stonework to hit !
was hopeful to get the whole farm into CSS, important archeologically site, £480 ha, that would have been 12 yrs ago. Had plenty of support, but turned down - to big an area !
I said similar to this the other day.
The arguments for no till till ploughing etc are all pointless.
We need to find away to allow us to drill earlier and stop all this f**king about in wet slop every autumn, it is not sustainable.