Agrii iFarm Event; Stow Longa Technology Centre, March 8th

[Shutesy]

I have kindly been invited by Agrii to attend an ‘Early Spring Agronomy Discussion’ event at one of their iFarm’s located at Stow Longa in Cambridgeshire.

The event will run both a morning and afternoon session starting at 9.30AM and 12.45PM respectively. A range of discussion topics with Agrii experts will be covered out in the field including:

‘Cover crops’ our experiences to date on heavy land in a blackgrass situation.
– Steve Corbett, Agrii Trials Manager

Cultivation strategies, drilling dates and the use of cover crops across rotation choices including Winter wheat, Spring wheat, Winter Oats, Winter beans, Fallow and their impact on blackgrass levels.
– Colin Lloyd, Agrii Head of Agronomy

Nutrition programmes across winter wheat and spring wheat drilled late autumn plus spring wheat drilled in March – a new piece of work for Stow Longa in 2015/16.
– David Felce, Agrii Regional Technical Advisor

Agrii have also offered 5 more places to this invite only event for fellow TFF members who might be interested in coming along and learning more on the above topics. If you are interested in coming to what I am sure will be a very interesting event please reply on here.

As a farmer who farms heavy land and now that I am venturing into cover crops more and more each year I have a personal interest in the work that Agrii are undertaking to see whether the experiences and results found from the trial work and the knowledge of their team of experts can be transferred onto my farm and into my fields through events such as this.

 

[Mr Charisma]

I will hopefully be there as well , as 'one of those' who buys his chemicals through serviced agromony I try to make the most of these events and find them very interesting

 

[RTK Farmer]

I attended 2 visits last year, well worth going to. Some interesting CC work on heavy land.

 

[Longneck]

This is just up the road from me and I try to get to as many meeting as possible. The work that Colin and the guys have been doing up there has really helped me to get on top of the Blackgrass on my farm.

 

[spikeislander]

Who you kidding @Longneck two words "free food!"

 

[Longneck]

Ha!! Pot.. Kettle..??

 

[spikeislander]

Fair point not sure I will make this one though. You can have my burger!

 

[Longneck]

That depends if @clanger boy gets there before me!

 

[Mr Charisma]

I will be there , you will be able to recognise me by my agrovista cap. ,

 

[Shutesy]

Any other TFF members who would like a place at this event please let me know.

 

[spikeislander]

That depends if @clanger boy gets there before me!

This is true!

 

[Rosco]

l visited this site many years ago will be great to go back.Blackgrass was a big problem even then

 

[Shutesy]

l visited this site many years ago will be great to go back. Blackgrass was a big problem even then

Have you got your own invite from Agrii @Rosco or would you like me to add you to the TFF attendees list?

 

[Mr Charisma]

Very interesting afternoon , bleedin cold tho !!!!!!

 

[Shutesy]

I have had a couple of requests to update this thread with a small report and my thoughts on the day.

So back on March the 8th I headed off to attend my first technical event hosted by Agrii focusing on spring agronomy, cover cropping and the range of trials work going on at Agrii’s Stow Longa iFarm. Once everybody had arrived, introductions and the agenda for the morning were announced and we were sent off in 3 groups to our first of the 3 discussion areas. Walking across the Stow Longa site I noted two things that morning before the talking had even started, first the wind was flipping cold, which made sending tweets annoyingly difficult with frozen fingers! And second there was a good amount of Blackgrass growing nearly everywhere across the site, so ideal for a trial site!


Lots of Blackgrass!

Our groups first trial discussion was with David Felce, one of Agrii’s regional technical advisors, looking at a new piece of work Agrii had just begun. The trial David was presenting covered a considerable range of scenarios which could just about represent in one way or another how most farmers will establish and manage their wheat crops. We started off looking at the plough based system before moving onto a min-till system and finally onto a direct drill system drilling into catch crops. Each establishment method used is then split into further trials looking at management of the crop from a nutritional point of view, these included using N, P and K fertilisers plus micro nutrients, N, P and K on there own and N on its own. From all of this work the main result obtained will be yield. Variations in yield can then be used with the establishment and nutrition costs of each plot to work out a margin for that trial per/ha or per/t and should make interesting reading when the work is complete, especially when there is such focus on trying to reduce costs of production with grain prices in their current state.


The direct drilled plot straight into the catch crop which had be sown off the back of a cultivator, can just see the ploughed plots on the left of the picture.

We also observed water infiltration tests on each plot.

Once the first half an hour or so had disappeared rather too quickly we moved on to chat with Steve Corbett, Agrii’s trials manager. Steve was presenting the cover crop trial work he was undertaking on some pretty heavy ex-airfield clay land that had large amounts of Blackgrass. The trial was entering its 3rd year of cropping so the talk was focused on what had been found from the 2nd year of the trial (2014/2015). The area was split into 2 main areas, one side was winter wheat and the other spring wheat. Each half was then split 7 ways with each of the 7 sections being a different trial area. The 7 sections were; ploughed and pressed, a stale seedbed using a DD or ribbed type roll, a stale seedbed using a stubble rake, Oil Radish, Black Oats and vetch, Phacelia and finally White Mustard. The winter wheat was drilled at the end of October 2014 and the Spring Wheat in April 2015 using a low disturbance disc drill. Through the use of large pictures printed out for us to see, Steve showed us what they had found was going on in the soil around the time that the winter wheat was sown for each different trial plot. Encouragingly to those of us venturing down the cover crop route ourselves there were some remarkable differences in soil structure, friability, soil moisture and above ground Blackgrass numbers, between the all the plots. However in my view to get the best idea of exactly what we were being shown and then discussing on the day I would advise going to see Steve and this cover crop trial when Agrii host future events here at The Stow Longa iFarm site. I can’t begin to go into the detail he went into on the day on this short write up.


Steve in full flow.

So with Steve’s talk over and my head full of more questions than answers, we headed over to the final discussion of the morning presented by Colin Lloyd, Head of Agronomy at Agrii. Colin walked us through the largest trial in terms of area at the Stow Longa site which was using different cultivation methods and cover/catch crops across a wide crop rotation scenario. The trial area was split lengthways into 3 strips consisting of a min-till system, a plough based system and a direct drilled cover crop system. Those 3 strips were then split widthways into a crop rotation consisting of winter beans, winter oats, spring barley and spring and winter wheat and finally fallow. The idea being that each year the crops would move along the rotation strips 1 place until after 6 years the area would have completed 1 full rotation. Each crop was drilled with the same drill across all the cultivation methods in that trial strip so as an example the winter beans were strip-till drilled into the sprayed off cover crop, the ploughed and cultivated seedbed and the min-till seedbed all at the same time. From walking across the plots it was quickly visible which methods had given greater or worse Black-grass control with substantially differing numbers of plants/m2. As with the other trials on the site it will be interesting to re-visit this over the next couple of years when Colin and his team have a few more years of data to show what happens to Blackgrass numbers and what effect both rotation and cultivation strategy can have on the Blackgrass seed bank over time.


Back in the warm!

Everybody enjoying the warmth of some soup! (not the greatest picture!)

I very much enjoyed my morning out at the Stow Longa site and would thoroughly recommend it to anybody remotely interested in cover cropping or perhaps looking for advice on different establishment methods or nutrition plans to take back to their own farms. Many of the questions that modern arable farmers will be asking should hopefully be answered by the trial work that Agrii are undertaking here over the next few years.

My only drawback of the day was that it was not long enough! Despite the cold I could quite happily have spent twice as long at the site asking questions that were popping into my head all the time throughout the 3 presentations and discussing them further with Agrii’s team of experts. There was so much to take in that by the time we got back to the shed and the warmth of a few cups of soup I couldn’t remember all I wanted to ask. I will definitely be re-visiting if I get the chance in the future.