UK farm productivity - ADAS Presentation to Parliamentary group

[Bogweevil]

How to raise UK farm productivity - God, this is going to get some people on here going:

High yields are possible on most farms
−Yields strongly influenced by ‘Farm Factor’
• It’s less about what you spend, more about …
‘Attention to Detail’
• High yields associated with
− Wheat crops with more ears than average & high biomass
− Husbandry factors associated with high yields included:
…following a break crop
…narrow row widths
…applying slurry
…adequate use of N, fungicides & several PGRs

Next Steps • The YEN approach is proving successful for; − Engaging farmers − Generating meaningful data − Benchmarking − Identifying constraints − Developing ideas and reliable tests for improving productivity • For greater & wider impact need to; − Scale up to 1000s farmers, 100,000s fields − Expand metrics to include sustainability (carbon, water, nutrient, biodiversity) and economic − Further develop benchmarking approach to allow comparison with anyone with any metric − Initiate a culture of on-farm testing to optimise crop management for individual farms/fields − Integrate with learnings from other approaches, e.g. ‘What Works’ approach

http://www.appg-agscience.org.uk/linkedfiles/Pete Berry ADAS - 2July19.pdf

 

[Gong Farmer]

All based on YEN? Not a fan of YEN so holding my tongue for this.

 

[AndrewM]

a lot of their correlation work looks iffy to me. saw one post where they said nitrogen rates didn't have a big correlation with yield. trying to correlate n and yield when all the farms are putting on what they believe is the optimum n for their situation. if you put an N dose trial in the field you would see a big correlation with yield.

i also dont understand what their "maximum theoretical yield" model is based on always shows sw with massive theoretical yield, doesn't stack with the real world

 

[warksfarmer]

How to raise UK farm productivity - God, this is going to get some people on here going:

High yields are possible on most farms
−Yields strongly influenced by ‘Farm Factor’
• It’s less about what you spend, more about …
‘Attention to Detail’
• High yields associated with
− Wheat crops with more ears than average & high biomass
− Husbandry factors associated with high yields included:
…following a break crop
…narrow row widths
…applying slurry
…adequate use of N, fungicides & several PGRs

Next Steps • The YEN approach is proving successful for; − Engaging farmers − Generating meaningful data − Benchmarking − Identifying constraints − Developing ideas and reliable tests for improving productivity • For greater & wider impact need to; − Scale up to 1000s farmers, 100,000s fields − Expand metrics to include sustainability (carbon, water, nutrient, biodiversity) and economic − Further develop benchmarking approach to allow comparison with anyone with any metric − Initiate a culture of on-farm testing to optimise crop management for individual farms/fields − Integrate with learnings from other approaches, e.g. ‘What Works’ approach

http://www.appg-agscience.org.uk/linkedfiles/Pete Berry ADAS - 2July19.pdf

Looks like a load of tosh from people behind desks with no proper understanding of agriculture and the environment.

 

[l'ordinary bonville]

Looks like a load of tosh from people behind desks with no proper understanding of agriculture and the environment.

Which bit do you disagree with?

 

[John Slejpner]

The shorter version goes...

ADAS is fabulous
YEN is a fantastic resource
We need to scale it up massively, and increase our communication impact
Give us more money.

 

[ajd132]

This really annoys me. YEN does not mention any economic figures whatsoever, it’s based around ludicrous variable cost spend and bigging up Tim Lammyman. look at the companies who sponsor it.

 

[Watchman]

They should be using the AHDB benchmarking data

Not historical YEN as the information could be skewed as ajd132 states

 

[An Gof]

This really annoys me. YEN does not mention any economic figures whatsoever, it’s based around ludicrous variable cost spend and bigging up Tim Lammyman. look at the companies who sponsor it.

Take Tim out of the equation and I find YEN useful in helping to explore boundaries and possibilities. I have leaned quite a bit from it.
As for Tim he is in a league above the rest of us. I’m not sure it matters what it costs at present he is demonstrating what is possible and where the current limits are. Add to that that he has been consistent in those achievements over a number of years and I am sure we could all learn something from him.

 

[Still Farming]

Aberystwyth University's been doing farm business reports for years for Government
Whats new?

 

[ajd132]

Take Tim out of the equation and I find YEN useful in helping to explore boundaries and possibilities. I have leaned quite a bit from it.
As for Tim he is in a league above the rest of us. I’m not sure it matters what it costs at present he is demonstrating what is possible and where the current limits are. Add to that that he has been consistent in those achievements over a number of years and I am sure we could all learn something from him.

@Clive did a breakdown comparing his osr world record to a commercial crop on his low fixed cost farm. I’m sure the outcome was fairly similar margin wise with much less capital deployed and risked.
Yen seems to push a high input system with no thoughts about cost. How is this going to help us going forward with resistance, legislation, environmental challenges etc. It’s basically making small tweaks to the system we have chased for years and is really not particularly ground breaking. The main suggestions on the original post were right row spacings and using nitrogen, fungicide and growth regs at the correct time, not particularly inspiring I’m afraid.

 

[ajd132]

I will also add that there is too many vested interest sponsoring it who do very well out of the high input agronomic model.

 

[l'ordinary bonville]

I sat in one of the consultation meetings prior to this report being published.

The findings presented to us were that it is not about total spend.What they were trying to find out was why some farms yield more with apparently similar soils, climate and inputs.

I also did not experience any evidence of support for certain "extreme" approaches to high yield

The thing that surprised me most was that they were trying to work out how much comes from a more obsessive approach to management of timings, spray quality, etc.

I for one, am interested to follow their research

 

[ajd132]

I sat in one of the consultation meetings prior to this report being published.

The findings presented to us were that it is not about total spend.What they were trying to find out was why some farms yield more with apparently similar soils, climate and inputs.

I also did not experience any evidence of support for certain "extreme" approaches to high yield

The thing that surprised me most was that they were trying to work out how much comes from a more obsessive approach to management of timings, spray quality, etc.

I for one, am interested to follow their research

I’m not dismissing the research and I will get involved next year. Probably my main concern is it’s all based around tweaks to the current farming model, which is based around nitrogen and chemicals which are either stopping working, being banned or being regulated. Hopefully they will start looking into different stuff rather than saying get you’re timings of inputs correct which any professional should be doing anyway. It doesn’t take all this research to tell us that some farmers are better than others!

 

[ajd132]

I sat in one of the consultation meetings prior to this report being published.

The findings presented to us were that it is not about total spend.What they were trying to find out was why some farms yield more with apparently similar soils, climate and inputs.

I also did not experience any evidence of support for certain "extreme" approaches to high yield

The thing that surprised me most was that they were trying to work out how much comes from a more obsessive approach to management of timings, spray quality, etc.

I for one, am interested to follow their research

I saw the figures for osr world record growers costs and I think it was £800/ha on VCs, that is extreme.

 

[ollie989898]

Ah yes, yield enhancement network.

This can be translated into: 'making farmers spend money money chasing the rainbow'.

How about a profitability enhancement network whereby farmers spend less and retain more of their hard-earned wonga rather than adding it some shareholder's dividend which ends up in the Cayman islands?

 

[ollie989898]

I will also add that there is too many vested interest sponsoring it who do very well out of the high input agronomic model.

Nonsense, you disbeliever you. A lot of people will do very well out of a high input rainbow-chasing approach, it just won't be you or 90% of farmers doing it....

 

[ajd132]

https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/fw-osr-masters-event.261914/page-2

Il just put this thread up here as a reminder. It shows what is extreme VC spends, overly high fixed costs and then some naughty rent/finance chucked in for scare mongering as that’s all different on various farms. The lammyman system is making about £50quid/ha off a 5t/ha osr Crop. This is poor business and incredibly dangerous path to promote to uk farmers.

 

[l'ordinary bonville]

I saw the figures for osr world record growers costs and I think it was £800/ha on VCs, that is extreme.

Someone may have achieved better than his "official" record. And many times close to the record.

All with very normal inputs.

This is the sort of thing that the YEN project is trying to investigate

 

[ajd132]

Someone may have achieved better than his "official" record. And many times close to the record.

All with very normal inputs.

This is the sort of thing that the YEN project is trying to investigate

Still just tweaking a system that has served a purpose and is coming to an end, nothing ground breaking.