Direct Drilling post glyphosate

Douglasmn

Member
Can't speak for direct drilling, but conventional farming without roundup would cause absolutely no issues at all. It is relied on far too much just now.
 

DrivingDig

Member
Location
Wiltshire
Can't speak for direct drilling, but conventional farming without roundup would cause absolutely no issues at all. It is relied on far too much just now.

Maybe depends where you are and what soil type you have? In the North and West in normal seasons pre-harvest use essential to be able to harvest crops in reasonable time. Also you seem to misunderstand that DD is part of conventional farming. For me Glyphosate loss would radically change my cultivations regime from min-till to ploughing because min-till relies on reliable seedbed weed control. Not a good prospect for my costs of production or soil health. Before long I suspect weeds like onion couch grass will return to give me no end of problem. Much of my heavy flint ground would become unviable for arable crops (unless prices in the mid 200s) and I would lose the ability to farm a larger more efficient area. Glyphosate has been around so long and so successfully it is easy to be blind as to its positive benefits.
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
I've been thinking about this the last two days while doing my DD barley whole crop and I think I know what I'll do here (livestock but growing our own cereals and forage crops) without glyphosate at least.
Late summer year one leave the grass to grow long for winter and keep cattle on it so they mostly kill the grass by standing on it over winter being careful not to poach it too badly. Do cows count as cultivation?
Spring year two nibble whatever grows back to the ground with sheep in early spring and if it needs it around feeding areas a light level off with my old Ransomes disc or an old pig tail cultivator thing I drafted in out of the nettles a few weeks ago. To level the ground that's been wrecked NOT to cultivate the whole field. Then as soon as it's warm enough go straight in dd with either oats or triticale something that will grow very quickly and get away from any weeds and hopefully smother most of them. Peas might be an option too they are pretty good at smothering things. That would probably be taken as whole crop in July and then a forage rape or turnip drilled straight into the stubble. Sheep grazing that over winter will do a pretty good job of killing anything underneath that and it would hopefully be clean enough either for a straight to grass and clover reseed or another cereal or forage crop. If it needed weeding it could have a light Harrow or some sort maybe the pigtail thing I rescued even.
I haven't given up on pasture cropping yet either if I could overseed oats and kale into permanent pasture without killing the grass that grows underneath I wouldn't bother with anything else.
As for what you arable lot are going to do I dont know but I don't envy you one bit of it does get banned
 

newjames

Member
I've been thinking about this the last two days while doing my DD barley whole crop and I think I know what I'll do here (livestock but growing our own cereals and forage crops) without glyphosate at least.
Late summer year one leave the grass to grow long for winter and keep cattle on it so they mostly kill the grass by standing on it over winter being careful not to poach it too badly. Do cows count as cultivation?
Spring year two nibble whatever grows back to the ground with sheep in early spring and if it needs it around feeding areas a light level off with my old Ransomes disc or an old pig tail cultivator thing I drafted in out of the nettles a few weeks ago. To level the ground that's been wrecked NOT to cultivate the whole field. Then as soon as it's warm enough go straight in dd with either oats or triticale something that will grow very quickly and get away from any weeds and hopefully smother most of them. Peas might be an option too they are pretty good at smothering things. That would probably be taken as whole crop in July and then a forage rape or turnip drilled straight into the stubble. Sheep grazing that over winter will do a pretty good job of killing anything underneath that and it would hopefully be clean enough either for a straight to grass and clover reseed or another cereal or forage crop. If it needed weeding it could have a light Harrow or some sort maybe the pigtail thing I rescued even.
I haven't given up on pasture cropping yet either if I could overseed oats and kale into permanent pasture without killing the grass that grows underneath I wouldn't bother with anything else.
As for what you arable lot are going to do I dont know but I don't envy you one bit of it does get banned
I have thought for a long time about using some very prostrate growing clover and drilling wheat into that maybe just a squirt of something in the sowing band to give the wheat a chance to get away, could be a very cheap crop, no herbicide as clover would smother any germinating weeds no N required and perhaps just a cheap fungicide as less disease pressure as no bagged N, not sure if pgr would be needed, wouldnt be four tonnes an acre but could be far more profitable which is the aim
 

hendrebc

Member
Livestock Farmer
I have thought for a long time about using some very prostrate growing clover and drilling wheat into that maybe just a squirt of something in the sowing band to give the wheat a chance to get away, could be a very cheap crop, no herbicide as clover would smother any germinating weeds no N required and perhaps just a cheap fungicide as less disease pressure as no bagged N, not sure if pgr would be needed, wouldnt be four tonnes an acre but could be far more profitable which is the aim
There was a thread on this not long ago. It might have been @Hartwig that wanted to do similar drilling cereal into cliver. With some sheep you might not even need to spray anything to keep the clover down
 

Samcowman

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Cornwall
There was a thread on this not long ago. It might have been @Hartwig that wanted to do similar drilling cereal into cliver. With some sheep you might not even need to spray anything to keep the clover down
I agree. Hammer the clover with sheep just after drilling should give the wheat a chance to come through. Just need someone to do a proper trial of it.
 

neilo

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Montgomeryshire
Stubble turnips or other cover crop and sugar beet tops grazed off by the sheep leave me with a clean start in the spring. Then drill sugar beet and Spring barley. The sheep then graze the beet tops which again leaves a clean start. The Spring barley doesn't harbour as many grass weeds as winter cereals.

I think I could live without glyphosate using cover crops and the sheep to graze them down, but there can be soil erosion issues and poaching in a wet winter which could be a bigger problem than the effects of glyphosate.

I also looking at the viability of winter sown cereals. Spring barley now offers just as good a yield as winter barley here with less weed pressure, less herbicide cost and the opportunity of a "cleaning" over winter catch crop for grazing and under sowing for rotational grass leys.

Keeping the ground busy / covered all year is the answer.

I think we do tend to use a lot more glyphosate than we actually need. And often it just doesn't work on Cranesbill and such like anyway, so I need a different approach.

You can't get a decent chit of anything before winter cereals so again, spraying off before drilling winter cereals or OSR only does half a job, particularly with sterile brome etc. But leave it to green up in the autumn, graze off over winter and you will flush out a lot of these difficult to control weeds.

I don’t generally need to spray pre-drilling if following grazed crops. You need to be following winter cereals to get a decent cover/catch crop in though, unless you take the ground out of production instead by planting swedes, etc.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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  • Up to 25%

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    Votes: 30 16.1%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 6 3.2%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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