Milk price - for budgeting

WIth folk cutting right back on nitrogen purchases and not using as much N in general I believe it can't be long before livestock ground starts to show a gradual reduction in total fresh yields of forage across the country in general.
Excluding those whom have gone down The very exciting foliar feed/liquid nitrogen route or have massively increased their nitrogen fixing clover element. I can’t understand what people think they are gaining from some of the drastic reductions in N use I have seen.
 
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Won’t be the case if you’ve changed to foliar.

It will be interesting to see. Give it a few years and we will see. There is a heck of a lot of fertility in land that has been farmed with livestock for a long time and I'd venture that people may well have obtained good grass yields from very little if any inputs this year, particularly as normal growth was somewhat curtailed by the dry weather. But it is no secret that big crops of grass and maize will eat into these reserves of fertility in time.
 

vantage

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Pembs
It will be interesting to see. Give it a few years and we will see. There is a heck of a lot of fertility in land that has been farmed with livestock for a long time and I'd venture that people may well have obtained good grass yields from very little if any inputs this year, particularly as normal growth was somewhat curtailed by the dry weather. But it is no secret that big crops of grass and maize will eat into these reserves of fertility in time.
All I can say, is the chap who set my machine up this Spring, is eight years into foliar, had sufficient feed in early May for his not insignificant sized herd, yet hadn’t applied anything till then. My trial fields, four years in, have shown better growth than other paddocks on the farm. My take is the soil biology isn’t been drowned by excess N, it begins to work again. The foliar is not detrimental to its health.
 

easy farming

Member
Livestock Farmer
All I can say, is the chap who set my machine up this Spring, is eight years into foliar, had sufficient feed in early May for his not insignificant sized herd, yet hadn’t applied anything till then. My trial fields, four years in, have shown better growth than other paddocks on the farm. My take is the soil biology isn’t been drowned by excess N, it begins to work again. The foliar is not detrimental to its health.
Hope that you are correct, we are going down that route next year.
 

som farmer

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
somerset
Hope that you are correct, we are going down that route next year.
looking at it.
one thing l have found, clover has grown exceedingly well, with less N, still growing

what we don't know, is how much residual fertility is in our soils.
cut back N use when we went into NVZ, and it didn't make any difference in yield.
and perhaps we do use more N than necessary, if that turns out to be correct, just think of all the money we wasted, by putting to much on.

now it's a case of affording the stuff.
 

easy farming

Member
Livestock Farmer
looking at it.
one thing l have found, clover has grown exceedingly well, with less N, still growing

what we don't know, is how much residual fertility is in our soils.
cut back N use when we went into NVZ, and it didn't make any difference in yield.
and perhaps we do use more N than necessary, if that turns out to be correct, just think of all the money we wasted, by putting to much on.

now it's a case of affording the stuff.
We have been expecting a carbon tax for years, so it has come about, just not the way we expected it.
 

upnortheast

Member
Livestock Farmer
Location
Northumberland
WIth folk cutting right back on nitrogen purchases and not using as much N in general I believe it can't be long before livestock ground starts to show a gradual reduction in total fresh yields of forage across the country in general.
Some round here were bragging in June how much grass they had grown with no N.. - "must have been wasting money all these years "

Same fellows fields have had bugger all grass on the last few months
 

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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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