Water Focus: Thames Water (Direct Driller Issue 4)

Creating a Smarter Water Catchment in the Evenlode - Thames Water No Till & Cover Crop trial

Thames Water has recently started a No Till and Cover Crop trial in the Evenlode river catchment as part of its ‘Smarter Water Catchments’ initiative. The company’s work, alongside colleagues from Atkins and Natural England, is helping to encourage water sensitive farming across the Evenlode catchment and to reduce run-off of phosphorus from farms and fields into local watercourses. The project has a number of components in addition to the No Till trial, including an agri-environment grant scheme and advice service.

The River Evenlode catchment lies to the west of Oxford and is in the Thames river basin, partly within the Cotswolds AONB, with the river flowing from Moreton-in-Marsh to Eynsham over a distance of more than 75km. Thames Water is particularly interested in exploring whether a ‘no till’ approach reduces the loss of soil and, in particular, phosphorus, to watercourses, while improving soil health. The company is also interested in whether the approach can increase farm profitability and efficiency. The trial started in September 2018 and is designed to run for five years, with research support from Innovative Farmers. The trial is farmer-led, allowing participants to test additional topics such as soil health, nutrient application and cost vs yield. Thames Water is supporting its trial farmers in exploring the challenges and benefits of the no till and cover crop approach by offering funding for machinery costs and cover crop seed provision for the no till fields. The aim of this is to remove some of the risk involved in trialling the approach.

Field scale soil and water quality monitoring has commenced and will continue throughout the trial. The company looks forward to reporting on some of the initial results from this project in future publications. If the trial is successful, Thames Water will be looking to work with other farmers and land managers to promote this approach in other parts of the Thames River Basin.

For more information, please contact the Evenlode project team from Atkins and Natural England. Jay Neale, Atkins ([email protected]) or Sarah Olney, Natural England (sarah.olney@ naturalengland.org.uk)

You can read the Full Magazine in our E-Reader here - https://issuu.com/directdriller/docs/direct_driller_magazine_issue_4_pro

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

Affinity Water have been running a similar project in the Upper Lee catchment for several years now. I listened to Andrew Bott of Bennington Hall Farms, just East of Stevenage, talk about his no-till cover cropping last week at the Lee catchment conference.

As part of the same Affinity project Dr Andrea Momblach is running trials at Cranfield to measure the benefits of cover crops and coming up with very positive results.

Imho no-till and cover cropping should be a key "public good" offered incentives under NELMS.

 

[teslacoils]

There are around one hundred, billion studies of no till and phosphorus mobility in soil. Including many from the UK and Europe.

They should be looking at placing p at drilling rather than broadcasting too.

 

[holwellcourtfarm]

There are around one hundred, billion studies of no till and phosphorus mobility in soil. Including many from the UK and Europe.

They should be looking at placing p at drilling rather than broadcasting too.

I had that conversation with Affinity Water's agriculture policy manager this morning. He did a presenting on soil health and cover cropping trials they are running. I said it should be a key part of the new Ag Bill and of NELMS. He said more trials are needed. I replied that there are plenty of foreign studies that prove it works and this scale is benefits.

 

[teslacoils]

Absolutely no trials needed.

Water co could work with farmers to do catchment wide, free soil testing. Then buy a bredall and offer a spreading service to replace broadcast reactive P with slow release fibrophos. And a service to match fym producers with those needing om. Then incentives for combination seed / p placement. Restriction on maize growing on sloping fields / under topping with grass. Then pay for any high risk erosion fields to be grassed or direct drilled.

They can do it overseas quite easily. I suspect TW etc are waiting to convince rpa that this should be in elms IE we pay for it ourselves rather than *ahem* their sovereign wealth fund / tax sheltered venture capitalist owners.

 

[matthewizod]

We are part of this trial, erosion already reduced after 18 months of the field being cover cropped and direct drilled.

Hoping that the new ag bill will encourage new methods of farming so that there is a smaller financial risk when farmers choose a new way of farming. I've expressed this to many of the people that have spoke to us during the trial. I think there is a real place for big business's to spend some money on uk farmers and give them the opportunities to try new methods without taking all of the financial risk. i don't think we would of tried direct drilling without some outside influence.

 

[Chris F]

We are part of this trial, erosion already reduced after 18 months of the field being cover cropped and direct drilled.

Hoping that the new ag bill will encourage new methods of farming so that there is a smaller financial risk when farmers choose a new way of farming. I've expressed this to many of the people that have spoke to us during the trial. I think there is a real place for big business's to spend some money on uk farmers and give them the opportunities to try new methods without taking all of the financial risk. i don't think we would of tried direct drilling without some outside influence.

We are hoping to get an update written up in the next issue of Direct Driller - interesting to hear your experiences of the trial.