What are the main obstacles preventing you from pulse/legume cropping?

[sarahm]

Hello everyone!

Here at LEAF, we are helping on the NCS project by driving farmer recruitment and would love to hear your diverse insights and experiences already with integrating legumes and pulses into your crop rotations. As we know, legumes and pulses can fix atmospheric nitrogen, which not only benefits our soil but reduces the need for synthetic fertilisers.

Best Practices: What strategies have you found the most effective for incorporating legumes and pulses into your rotations? Do you follow specific sequencing/yield patterns or intercropping to maximize the nitrogen impact and wider benefits?

Crop Selection: Which legumes or pulses have you found to be most beneficial in your rotations? Are there any varieties that have worked particularly well in your region’s soil and climate/ones that have not?

Challenges and Solutions: Have you encountered any challenges whilst integrating these crops into your rotations? How have you faced any additional issues such as pest management?

Looking forward to learning from your experiences and ideas!

We are also keen to gauge information on what obstacles may stop you from (re)integrating legumes into your crop management systems and thus your future participation in this project. This will help gather wider perspectives and offer indication on how we can work towards increasing farmer uptake across the project timeline. Please complete the poll below.

 

[Farmer Roy]

none . .

Pulses count for about 50% of my cropping area

this year, I had 270 ha of mung beans ( warm season crop, worth $1300 / tonne ) & have just finished planting 330 ha of chickpeas ( cool season crop, worth about $900 / t )


edit - I am in Australia

 

[Clive]

Pathetic average gross margin vs SFI option - i think you need another option ?

 

[Northdowns Martin]

We have a parasithic weed in our soil and on neighbouring farms called Broomrape. Growing pulses/legumes in a short term cover crop situaton is fine and infact can help control as a bait crop, as long as they are taken out before the Broomrape flowers. When we first identified the weed and reported to Defra and PRGO there wasn't much support. I have read that Australia Agriculture have classed it as a notifiable weed which would certainly be a wise move for the UK. I am about to spray out our AB15 crop after finding Broomrape amongst the clover, The fields are 4-5 miles away from the main farm where we originally found it so thought safe distance away from wind borne seed spread. Would be helpful for agencies like LEAF, PGRO to name a few that could support farmers in my situation. Making growers aware of Broomrape's existance, research into ways to control it and most importantly avoid its spreading throughout the wider area.

 

[Farmer Roy]

Pathetic average gross margin vs SFI option - i think you need another option ?

Pulses are probably my most profitable crops here

certainly better GM than wheat, and have benefits to following crops

 

[britt]

Their unreliability. We are on heavy land.
I grow spring rather than winter beans so that I can get a reliable clean up of grass weeds with glyphosate in spring. But often they are planted late due to the weather, then they don't get enough rain to grow a decent crop. I'm looking at other drills that will go in wetter soils to plant earlier.

 

[SilliamWhale]

none . .

Pulses count for about 50% of my cropping area

this year, I had 270 ha of mung beans ( warm season crop, worth $1300 / tonne ) & have just finished planting 330 ha of chickpeas ( cool season crop, worth about $900 / t )


edit - I am in Australia

Faba Beans here worth maybe £200 /ton

 

[Farmer Roy]

Faba Beans here worth maybe £200 /ton

I love growing faba beans, one of my favourite crops, but yes, I haven’t grown them for more than 10 years due to the price.

the thing with pulses - ones grown for stock feed ( such as fabas ) have to compete with all the other feed grains & downgraded grains

pulses grown for human consumption ( such as chickpeas or mung beans ) are where the money is

here anyway . . .

 

[SilliamWhale]

I love growing faba beans, one of my favourite crops, but yes, I haven’t grown them for more than 10 years due to the price.

the thing with pulses - ones grown for stock feed ( such as fabas ) have to compete with all the other feed grains & downgraded grains

pulses grown for human consumption ( such as chickpeas or mung beans ) are where the money is

here anyway . . .

HC beans may get a £30 premium. Hard to harvest them dry here

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

The option(s) you missed off were:

Lack of financial return or gross margin and

Unreliable performance.

In other words, taking too much risk for not enough reward

 

[sarahm]

The option(s) you missed off were:

Lack of financial return or gross margin and

Unreliable performance.

In other words, taking too much risk for not enough reward

Thank you for your response! Do you find these reasons stop you completely from growing pulses/legumes i.e. if they were more financially viable would this be a practice that you would be interested in trialling due to the environmental benefits that they can pose? or do you find their unreliability a complete deterrent?

 

[sarahm]

none . .

Pulses count for about 50% of my cropping area

this year, I had 270 ha of mung beans ( warm season crop, worth $1300 / tonne ) & have just finished planting 330 ha of chickpeas ( cool season crop, worth about $900 / t )


edit - I am in Australia

wow that's a large proportion of your cropping area and you seem to have very positive opinions about the idea! what are the main benefits you find in undertaking this practice (environmental/economic etc?) Do you have any advice/best practice tips for people on this thread whom are a bit more wary of this or do you think this comes on an individual basis with regards to your local climate?

 

[sarahm]

We have a parasithic weed in our soil and on neighbouring farms called Broomrape. Growing pulses/legumes in a short term cover crop situaton is fine and infact can help control as a bait crop, as long as they are taken out before the Broomrape flowers. When we first identified the weed and reported to Defra and PRGO there wasn't much support. I have read that Australia Agriculture have classed it as a notifiable weed which would certainly be a wise move for the UK. I am about to spray out our AB15 crop after finding Broomrape amongst the clover, The fields are 4-5 miles away from the main farm where we originally found it so thought safe distance away from wind borne seed spread. Would be helpful for agencies like LEAF, PGRO to name a few that could support farmers in my situation. Making growers aware of Broomrape's existance, research into ways to control it and most importantly avoid its spreading throughout the wider area.

Sorry to hear about this issue but thank you for sharing this experience with us! We at LEAF would be more than happy to have a further discussion with you and help you find additional ways to overcome this issue/offer support. It may be a case of striking the perfect balance as you said, in controlling the Broomsrape and cultivating more pulses/legumes into your rotation if both economically and environmentally feasible.

 

[Tom @ BOFIN]

Thank you for your response! Do you find these reasons stop you completely from growing pulses/legumes i.e. if they were more financially viable would this be a practice that you would be interested in trialling due to the environmental benefits that they can pose? or do you find their unreliability a complete deterrent?

Unreliable performance is a big one for me. Also it’s not the best break crop for blackgrass.

I’m looking forward to getting a better understanding of how it fits into the rotation & contributes to soil health through my Pulse Pioneer trial.

 

[thorpe]

Hello everyone!

Here at LEAF, we are helping on the NCS project by driving farmer recruitment and would love to hear your diverse insights and experiences already with integrating legumes and pulses into your crop rotations. As we know, legumes and pulses can fix atmospheric nitrogen, which not only benefits our soil but reduces the need for synthetic fertilisers.

Best Practices: What strategies have you found the most effective for incorporating legumes and pulses into your rotations? Do you follow specific sequencing/yield patterns or intercropping to maximize the nitrogen impact and wider benefits?

Crop Selection: Which legumes or pulses have you found to be most beneficial in your rotations? Are there any varieties that have worked particularly well in your region’s soil and climate/ones that have not?

Challenges and Solutions: Have you encountered any challenges whilst integrating these crops into your rotations? How have you faced any additional issues such as pest management?

Looking forward to learning from your experiences and ideas!

We are also keen to gauge information on what obstacles may stop you from (re)integrating legumes into your crop management systems and thus your future participation in this project. This will help gather wider perspectives and offer indication on how we can work towards increasing farmer uptake across the project timeline. Please complete the poll below.

the deamon RYEGRASS!

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

Thank you for your response! Do you find these reasons stop you completely from growing pulses/legumes i.e. if they were more financially viable would this be a practice that you would be interested in trialling due to the environmental benefits that they can pose? or do you find their unreliability a complete deterrent?

The lack of profitability and the high risk don't stop me growing legumes. I try and grow as many as possible in cover crops and grazing swards. Costs are low (a kilo of clover seed goes a long way) and the benefits are high.

The only legume I have combined recently is vetch.

 

[Two Tone]

AB6 Enhanced Overwintered Stubbles make growing any break crop too risky.

 

[Farmer Roy]

the deamon RYEGRASS!

Err, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this comment, but growing pulses is a major strategy here to combat ryegrass resistance

we’ve had resistance to glypho, fops & dims for up to 20 years or more in some places . . .

 

[Gadget]

Err, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this comment, but growing pulses is a major strategy here to combat ryegrass resistance

we’ve had resistance to glypho, fops & dims for up to 20 years or more in some places . . .

We are just getting into the problems you describe, how do you control the ryegrass now?
Thanks

 

[thorpe]

Err, I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this comment, but growing pulses is a major strategy here to combat ryegrass resistance

we’ve had resistance to glypho, fops & dims for up to 20 years or more in some places . . .

how do you combat it when resistance to available chemistry?