SAM2 Mulitspecies cover, who is doing it and what's your plan?

[farmerm]

Can you not Graze ?

Yes. Though I bet sheep will ignore the beans and graze the wheat . I’ve fully grazed out OSR from my barley this winter or rather I’ve grazed out the bit of OSR that survived in the volunteer barley which is now plan b crop!

 

[farmerm]

yes ,we are but those fields have stubble turnips and ww or wb in them as the mix and are destined for sp beans or temp grass the others arnt stock proof as with all this sfi its making it fit around individual farms ,cheers

Leccy fence.

 

[farmerm]

Surely the point of SAM2 is to establish a winter cover crop post harvest one year and keep it until spring sowing the following year, hence the payment for having 6 months out of production, its not really meant to give you income in addition to a cash crop already grown. If everyone uses SFI how it's meant to be then the rates will stay, sadly you can already see people trying to use it as income generation rather than income foregone so they will probably decrease.

Point is irrelevant it’s about meeting the specified aims. Multi species winter cover was a mandatory part of the original sfi that got ditched. SFI is not just payment for income foregone it is intended to go beyond that. Only with this option can I get anywhere close to claiming an SFI that comes anywhere close to SFP.

 

[DairyNerd]

@farmerm don't agree I'm afraid. The point isn't to add the payments up to replace your BPS. BPS was a disaster, a lot of wealthy people getting money for doing nothing often providing a lovely income or pension while lots of actual farmers couldn't grow businesses or get a foothold due to people holding onto land. I could find numerous examples very close to us. Clue is the name, it's an incentive to farm sustainably not an incentive to replace BPS. I find it ridiculous we can 'replace our BPS' so easily with this to be honest.

 

[DieselRob]

Yes. Though I bet sheep will ignore the beans and graze the wheat . I’ve fully grazed out OSR from my barley this winter or rather I’ve grazed out the bit of OSR that survived in the volunteer barley which is now plan b crop!

I’m currently grazing wheat with volunteer beans in there and the sheep are eating the beans no problem, not even leaving them as a last resort either

 

[Zippy768]

Point is irrelevant it’s about meeting the specified aims. Multi species winter cover was a mandatory part of the original sfi that got ditched. SFI is not just payment for income foregone it is intended to go beyond that. Only with this option can I get anywhere close to claiming an SFI that comes anywhere close to SFP

I agree. If I remove any sfi income that is coming from taking land out of production, I am simply not close enough to the previous sfp.
I am gonna have to push the limits of some of these options. Aims will be met - or strived to be met.
But I will be including options that no doubt, under tighter guidelines, couldn't work.
Admittedly I am minimising risk the first year. Not all land will be going into options, therefore if it becomes apparent i cannot meet the aims my way and can half the needed acerage the following 2 years. If it goes well, there is no limit to how much more ground I can put things into.

 

[4course]

Leccy fence.

could do but near the urban fringe/bridle ways footpaths etc dont work as the feckers complain about fido getting shocked , steal the batteries or smash the unit , usually on a sat afternoon or sunday morning

 

[Simon Chiles]

my plan was buckwheat with OSR and spin the beans on before combi drilling the wheat on early ploughed ground or plough beans down on later ploughed ground

Planning on SAM2 before all spring crops going forward. Will be sowing a low rate of phacelia and linseed, plus possibly a 3rd seed depending on cost. Any seed will have to go through a small seed applicator which will be on top of a sumo type cultivator ASAP after harvest. Following crops will be spring barley, spring beans or NUM3.

It’s very unlikely that the buckwheat will still be around until February, it disappeared a couple of months ago in my cover crops and at the beginning it looked 100% buckwheat when you drove past. Phacelia also stands a big risk of not making it through to February, I’d choose both of them in a cover but wouldn’t expect either of them to make it through to the spring.

 

[farmerm]

@farmerm don't agree I'm afraid. The point isn't to add the payments up to replace your BPS. BPS was a disaster, a lot of wealthy people getting money for doing nothing often providing a lovely income or pension while lots of actual farmers couldn't grow businesses or get a foothold due to people holding onto land. I could find numerous examples very close to us. Clue is the name, it's an incentive to farm sustainably not an incentive to replace BPS. I find it ridiculous we can 'replace our BPS' so easily with this to be honest.

My point was really more that the pot of money available is about the same as bps. If they don’t allow us to put together a package of options than come close to the sum we got under bps then they aren’t going to come close to distributing the pot as promised. If family farms like ours aren’t given any chance to hold on to land then the only entities left holding land will be big corporations and good lifers who retired at 40 having made 50 million in the city

 

[Farmer_England]

I am looking at entering SAM2 within my SFI application, but I am considering all the cons.
My farm has an awful rabbit population, so one of my queries is if I chose a , mustard, raddish, phacelia mix, would rabbits destroy them & then not gaining the benefits of the said cover crop.

If anyone has any reasonable priced other mixtures which are rabbit hardy, I am all ears.
Currently the mix above is working out around £3.50 per kg.

TIA

 

[ploughman1963]

Yet my neighbour was told by the helpline volunteer beans would be fine, if thick enough.

How thick is thick enough???? Does it state a desired plant population? I’ve not seen one yet

 

[Luke Cropwalker]

Planning on using Phacelia / Linseed and Buckwheat through a Sumo mounted applicator at around 3Kg/Ha followed by either spring barley / spring beans or NUM3.

 

[Zippy768]

I'm just gonna chuck some oats in with the Winter Barley. Wild oats spray will control some, the rest won't do any harm as all kept for feed.