Paper waste and sewage sludge

Farmer mk1

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Sheffield
Hi,
Does anyone use the paper waste for field nutrients. We have some land and there isn’t any body to the land, it ploughs like dust and just levels it’s self easy so want to put something back in to get some body in the land and can get paper locally and sewage sludge locally aswell so wondered if anyone uses this and gets on well with it.
We have access to chicken muck but few say it wants to go on in spring or for rape but we don’t grow anything other than grass and winter wheat.
Any input appreciated.
Mark
 

Flat 10

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Fen Edge
How lucky are you to have access to chicken muck?
I wouldn’t be worried about the physical characteristics of the soil IF it’s yielding well. There’s stuff like that locally that’s very good land. Equally it might be a beach crying out for OM.
 

Farmer mk1

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Sheffield
It’s our first time on this land with a new tenancy but it’s been dairy farmed for 30 year and this land hardly got any slurry or muck before. It just looks like it wants some muck on it to match the rest of the farm.
 

Farmer mk1

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Sheffield
It needs something more than a cover crop to get something in it. It’s not been ploughed for about 15 years and we thought it might plough up abit rough and it ploughed up easy and was like dust so just thought I’d try get some stuff to give it some soil structure
 
Soil test first. Looks can be deceiving but if the stuff ploughs up like a beach be prepared for it to have no backbone and probably no ability to hold on to nutrients. May suffer with magnesium or similar deficiency which may catch you out if you are used to farming different dirt.

I would have a rotation that aims to limit deep or serious tillage and start thinking about ways of adding organic matter. You may choose to chop the straw from cereal crops from this land (just an example) and I would definitely start looking at taking paper sludge and/or other materials like FYM or sewage sludge. Anything to get the soil life back working properly. Just don't go mad and chuck on crazy amounts of anything in one autumn and expect it to like it. You can upset your soil chemistry in a big way doing that kind of thing.

I would try to put applications on top of the soil and leave them there. The worms will do the rest.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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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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