What is wrong with returning to ploughing?

[ajd132]

There’s a part of me that thinks a lot of smaller growers like ploughing as it fills the days up with busyness and they are maybe unwilling to embrace no till as they may well become part time farmers, which is a subject many could not face, ignoring that the free time could be used to earn money which could ensure their survival, it’s going to be tough the next few years as support drops no doubt.

I used to like ploughing when I was a young hourly paid tractor driver ploughing 1000acres a year with a 5f Rev on a 125hp tractor, although it wrecked my back, now I’m a bit older, have a family and am responsible for the farm making money I only use the plough for some contracting on an organic farm, or to be precise my Tractor driver ploughs on contract, I did a weekend four years ago on a plough and would happily never use one again, I also would not like to go back to the period in my life after ploughing that consisted of Baling everything, Solo or Topdown light soils, then pressing and rolling them just to get the Rapid to work, looking back that was madness too, I’m now dd OSR and beans, single shallow cult for WW (mainly for BG and slugs) and SB, I’ve not bought any kit to do this other than a set of VOS openers for the drill, any CC’s are paid for under CS and grazed off with sheep, KISS is the aim here !!

1000 acres or less can be farmed no till by one person with loads of free time. 500 acres or less would be a genuine part time job.

 

[ajd132]

It was mentioned somewhere above that you could change your mind re cultivation if the season dictated. Not on clay land you can't. All our cultivation needs to be done as early as possible in order to get any semblance of a seed bed. We need to commit early on what we are going to do, or you can forget winter cropping.
I am moving towards a very min till route rather than pure DD. It will move no more soil than a sprinter with narrow openers in good conditions, in poor conditions the openers would leave an open slot on much of our land. We need to have a bit of tilth to close the opening IMO, and not have a slot which becomes a slug motorway. There is no point saving £20 ha in cultivation and spending the same on slug pellets.

It is interesting out shooting walking on heavy land and walking on heavy land. What I mean is that there is heavy land and some 'pure' clay. The two are very different.

Tried that with a joker for a few years, for us it was pointless and the joker is gone. It made blackgrass worse and quickly turns to slop.

 

[Brisel]

That's not how I remember the net margin figures, but I will stand corrected.
There was not much in it though, but I think that the Cherry's admitted to not paying enough attention to the farm as they were too busy organising Groundswell. As the DD/regenerative sample size was so small their figures perhaps skewed the result.

TBF the figures were from the droughty 2018 harvest IIRC and as you say, from a small sample. Very telling that the best no tillers were able to shave their fixed costs back to more than cover the lost output.

It was mentioned somewhere above that you could change your mind re cultivation if the season dictated. Not on clay land you can't. All our cultivation needs to be done as early as possible in order to get any semblance of a seed bed. We need to commit early on what we are going to do, or you can forget winter cropping.
I am moving towards a very min till route rather than pure DD. It will move no more soil than a sprinter with narrow openers in good conditions, in poor conditions the openers would leave an open slot on much of our land. We need to have a bit of tilth to close the opening IMO, and not have a slot which becomes a slug motorway. There is no point saving £20 ha in cultivation and spending the same on slug pellets.

It is interesting out shooting walking on heavy land and walking on heavy land. What I mean is that there is heavy land and some 'pure' clay. The two are very different.

Please may you describe what you mean by a "very min till route?" Is your land just heavy or pure clay?

 

[7610 super q]

There’s a part of me that thinks a lot of smaller growers like ploughing as it fills the days up with busyness and they are maybe unwilling to embrace no till as they may well become part time farmers, which is a subject many could not face, ignoring that the free time could be used to earn money which could ensure their survival, it’s going to be tough the next few years as support drops no doubt.

I used to like ploughing when I was a young hourly paid tractor driver ploughing 1000acres a year with a 5f Rev on a 125hp tractor, although it wrecked my back, now I’m a bit older, have a family and am responsible for the farm making money I only use the plough for some contracting on an organic farm, or to be precise my Tractor driver ploughs on contract, I did a weekend four years ago on a plough and would happily never use one again, I also would not like to go back to the period in my life after ploughing that consisted of Baling everything, Solo or Topdown light soils, then pressing and rolling them just to get the Rapid to work, looking back that was madness too, I’m now dd OSR and beans, single shallow cult for WW (mainly for BG and slugs) and SB, I’ve not bought any kit to do this other than a set of VOS openers for the drill, any CC’s are paid for under CS and grazed off with sheep, KISS is the aim here !!

Can't speak for other " smaller growers ", but I like my system cos all my gear is bought and paid for. Whichever way you look at it, for me to start no till, I'm faced with spending at least £10k to get a working drill ( I don't mean getting something for £5k out of the nettles, then spending £££££££ on refurbishment ). Then there's the possibility of a bigger tractor to pull it. Then there's more hassle getting my spraying contractor to do the inevitable Roundup spray. Unless I spend yet more on my own sprayer......
I'm not knocking No-till, I have neighbours that do it successfully on similar ground. It works. My argument is the cost for me to change. I'd guess my elderly plough / PH / drill is worthless, so no money to go towards replacement equipment either.

 

[Bury the Trash]

I guess the variation in farms is the biggy.

Pratically maintaining and running a mixed farm in SW England , even a small one takes all the hours God sends it seems like sometimes.
Could always pay others to do a variety of tasks other than the main ones i guess then claim to be 'part time.' but i love it its what i wanted to do since 16yrs old leaving school and still do.


On driving through,... i do notice what a bland, soulless landscape Berks has,that one big arable field

 

[snarling bee]

We have some evil clay and some better land, but sometimes in the same field.
At the moment we are gradually moving from maxi till to min till, all non inversion. Where we have just moved the ground to about 50mm, the crops are every bit as good as where we are running minimal disturbance legs down to 150/200mm. The problem is that after a rain, or the winter, it takes longer to dry out and there are more wet patches. I am hoping in time the lower soil will improve enough to drain a bit more naturally. We only have about 7" of topsoil and then it goes into impervious clay, so it is not the easiest soil in which to establish crops, but good in a drought. Moledrainage is essential every 5 years or so, and I'm not sure how you DD into that without running with the moles and taking a 360 to the headlands. If we mole or subsoil we often end up with huge lumps on the headlands that then need sorting.

A nearby farmer, who is DDing, had well over a tonne per ha less of WW this last harvest than I did. Before he changed his system, over ten years ago, he often yielded more than I did. Its difficult to make business decisions when plenty one here say "It works, it works", when it often doesn't in other parts of the country and soil type.

 

[T Hectares]

On driving through,... i do notice what a bland, soulless landscape Berks has,that one big arable field
[/QUOTE]
Well that’s a subjective view !!
The farm here has 20% woodland, 20% unimproved grassland and 60% arable land, we have hedges !! We do have some lovely rolling arable fields too
We also have important chalk rivers like the Lambourn, ecologically rich grasslands along the Ridgeway all making up the North Wessex AONB, now that lot is far from soulless !!

 

[Bury the Trash]

oh yeah i forgot the ridgeway and them white horses ❤

 

[T Hectares]

oh yeah i forgot the ridgeway and them white horses ❤

 

[ajd132]

We have some evil clay and some better land, but sometimes in the same field.
At the moment we are gradually moving from maxi till to min till, all non inversion. Where we have just moved the ground to about 50mm, the crops are every bit as good as where we are running minimal disturbance legs down to 150/200mm. The problem is that after a rain, or the winter, it takes longer to dry out and there are more wet patches. I am hoping in time the lower soil will improve enough to drain a bit more naturally. We only have about 7" of topsoil and then it goes into impervious clay, so it is not the easiest soil in which to establish crops, but good in a drought. Moledrainage is essential every 5 years or so, and I'm not sure how you DD into that without running with the moles and taking a 360 to the headlands. If we mole or subsoil we often end up with huge lumps on the headlands that then need sorting.

A nearby farmer, who is DDing, had well over a tonne per ha less of WW this last harvest than I did. Before he changed his system, over ten years ago, he often yielded more than I did. Its difficult to make business decisions when plenty one here say "It works, it works", when it often doesn't in other parts of the country and soil type.

We now mole in the spring through spring crops with no damage, with a twin leg maidwell which we got in a sale for 5k. It can lift out very sympathetically without leaving huge lumps. Spring also makes much better moles and causes much less heave when it’s often to dry to mole in the summer. We do tend to roll after. Have drilled 130ha of winter barley into spring moled stuff with the sprinter no issue whatsoever

 

[ollie989898]

I don't like talk of yields this or that. The fact remains none of us actually know what a genuine and sensible target yield should be. We have got to the lofty 10-12t/ha by spending a lot of money and it may be in future years that these same inputs are unavailable or even banned. In fact, some of them might no longer actually work to gain you a economic yield response- due to pest resistance etc.

It could be that the actual economic optimum yield for winter wheat, without kicking the arsh out of all available technologies is actually only 8 tonne/ha. The fixed and variable cost structures for the industry may have to follow suit.

I've been saying for a long time that I thought European arable yields had reached their zenith. We have farmed in an unusual way that was out of kilter with the rest of the environment and a lot of chemical companies got rich from it whilst the EU was offering endless amounts of funny money to encourage it. Consider the net result of that, including grain mountains, intervention and a marketplace that saw wheat at barely £70/tonne.

Also the weather seems to be changing, it may well be that the more northern latitudes in Europe become too wet to continue out and out arable over the next 30-40 years.

There is no rule book that says one should be able to grow 10 tonnes of wheat every year economically anywhere in the UK. A lot of other parts of the world cope with lower yields but are in an equal position economically.

 

[ajd132]

I don't like talk of yields this or that. The fact remains none of us actually know what a genuine and sensible target yield should be. We have got to the lofty 10-12t/ha by spending a lot of money and it may be in future years that these same inputs are unavailable or even banned. In fact, some of them might no longer actually work to gain you a economic yield response- due to pest resistance etc.

It could be that the actual economic optimum yield for winter wheat, without kicking the arsh out of all available technologies is actually only 8 tonne/ha. The fixed and variable cost structures for the industry may have to follow suit.

I've been saying for a long time that I thought European arable yields had reached their zenith. We have farmed in an unusual way that was out of kilter with the rest of the environment and a lot of chemical companies got rich from it whilst the EU was offering endless amounts of funny money to encourage it. Consider the net result of that, including grain mountains, intervention and a marketplace that saw wheat at barely £70/tonne.

Also the weather seems to be changing, it may well be that the more northern latitudes in Europe become too wet to continue out and out arable over the next 30-40 years.

There is no rule book that says one should be able to grow 10 tonnes of wheat every year economically anywhere in the UK. A lot of other parts of the world cope with lower yields but are in an equal position economically.

Just look at the amount of inputs some of these people use. 350kg N, 5/6 fungicides etc etc. Your post is spot on. We have pushed the absolute limit with the gear available and now varieties and chemicals only last a few years before being useless and we never learn.

 

[jh.]

Haven't read all the replies but I think a lot of us will need dragged away from our ploughs and combi drills , kicking and screaming. We chase yields with our old bought kit and to hell with anything else , it works .

I'm not sure where we will be in 10 years though. No more new cars and vans by 2030 , so how will that leave us with all fuels ? Diesel , kero and gas for the driers , even heating the house .

If it goes like it did with cigarettes they will just keep banging the price up . Yeah they give folk the choice but they will make us pay for it as the new tax for the non green option . Yield won't come into modern farming , we either make it work or move to something else .

 

[Boomerang]

You have a point but I can foresee future subs / legislation that will effectively ban ploughing. within the next decade

It's not good for soils or the environment and will become increasingly unacceptable. When others prove they can farm successfully without it will be hard for those that still want to make a case for ploughing to do so

How do you foresee the Growing of potatoes,carrots,veg without ploughing ?

 

[Andy26]

You have a point but I can foresee future subs / legislation that will effectively ban ploughing. within the next decade

It's not good for soils or the environment and will become increasingly unacceptable. When others prove they can farm successfully without it will be hard for those that still want to make a case for ploughing to do so

I think I can foresee future legislation that will effectively ban glyphosate within the next decade.

I think that statement is much more likely, whilst no doubt policy will encourage the use of fertility building cover crops etc., not sure they will ban a tillage tool that is used almost universally by every organic farmer in the land. A policy that encourages the use of glyphosate, slug pellets etc, not likely.

Farming goes in circles, just as your forefathers may of used Paraquat followed by a direct drill in the 1960's, Clive junior may use a Kverneland 14 furrow (robot farming never caught on) to deal with the massive weed and pest burden he's faced with

I wouldn't write the plough off yet.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Ah but he will develope a method without using Gly.

in the mean time....

poor example but if theres alsorts of things like drainage beendone or few wheelmarks around from hedgtrimming etc maintenance and on small fields, that sort of scenario well the plough levels , evens up and refreshes .....the parts that other methods can not reach .....

even kills Covid so they say

 

[Warp Land Farmer]

1000 acres or less can be farmed no till by one person with loads of free time. 500 acres or less would be a genuine part time job.

With what size kit? You are speaking from a very very fortunate position of comming into an established business that was, I think your words were, a Simba model farm, indicating a well kitted out starting point.

 

[ajd132]

With what size kit? You are speaking from a very very fortunate position of comming into an established business that was, I think your words were, a Simba model farm, indicating a well kitted out starting point.

Yes. But you can now buy large second hand kit that can no till much cheaper than smaller new machinery.

 

[Warp Land Farmer]

Yes. But you can now buy large second hand kit that can no till much cheaper than smaller new machinery.

That’s making the assumption that the farmer has the money to re-kit and HP of sufficient size to pull the larger kit. I have to say I dont see a lot / many at all large / medium or small no-till kit for sale.

 

[ajd132]

That’s making the assumption that the farmer has the money to re-kit and HP of sufficient size to pull the larger kit. I have to say I dont see a lot / many at all large / medium or small no-till kit for sale.

Horsch c08’s converted to a metcalf type point are cheaper than most things.
Cost of drills is another fallacy people tell themselves to convince themselves they can’t do it. I know some who have done it incredibly cheaply.