Changes Arable Insights farmers are making for next season

Defra’s recently published Farming Roadmap hasn’t created any immediate impetus for change on our Arable Insights farmer panel’s farms, indeed most of the panel in the week following publication hadn’t thought it as an immediate priority to consider.

Instead, changes on the farms for next season range from tweaking cropping in response to environmental conditions, to larger-scale changes to systems to help weather the changing economic challenges within arable farming.

See also: No-till farm evolves to combat frequent flooding

Scotland

David Aglen, Inverarity Farms, Cransley, Fowlis, Angus

This autumn will see a major change to both rotation and establishment method as farm manager David Aglen continues to implement changes at Inverarity Farms in Angus.

The current rotation is split into three blocks of winter wheat, two oats and one of vining peas across the 500ha farm, but from this autumn effectively one of the wheat blocks is being dropped in favour of oilseed rape.

The switch will add a needed alternative break crop into the system, but crucially also helps with a transition away from a plough, power harrow, drill establishment regime, David explains.

“Our soils are very susceptible to erosion, so minimum disturbance has to be the order of the day.”

After trialling a Claydon strip-till drill last autumn with positive results, David bought a second-hand one over winter. “In theory, by adjusting the rotation, we will be able to have five years of direct-drilling before we plough again for vining peas.”

He has chosen the Claydon system for two main reasons, both connected to spreading chicken manure that comes from hiring out the chicken sheds on the farm to a third party.

“Because a lot of manure is spread in the autumn, I think if we used a disc drill, we would end up with huge compaction problems,” he says.

Secondly, there is a requirement that chicken manure should be incorporated within 24 hours of spreading to minimise odour and ammonia emissions.

“I think if we drill with the Claydon behind the dung spreader, we can do two jobs in one – incorporating the hen pen and drilling the crop in one pass.”

Flea beetles eating summer-sown cover crops has left David unsure whether cabbage stem flea beetles will be a problem this autumn, despite the farm not growing oilseed rape for more than 20 years.

“Because of the change in rotation we don’t have much flexibility in drilling date, it will have to go in after wheat. I’d like to have the flexibility to drill earlier, so we will have to see how it pans out,” he says. “But we will check plenty of fertility at it and hope it grows away from any pests.”

South

Andy Meecham, St Giles Farm, Shaftesbury Estate, Wimborne St Giles, Dorset

Rotational changes are afoot at St Giles Farm in Dorset, where the plan is to switch from a 50:50 split between winter and spring cropping to one a little more in favour of winter cropping.

“Next year, we’ll have a 60:40 split due to these extreme spring weathers,” farm manager Andy Meecham says. “We were a bit later getting the spring crops in and they’re not faring well [in dry and latterly hot weather].”

But the switch isn’t to grow more winter wheat or winter oilseed rape. Instead, he is looking at growing 50ha of winter linseed at the expense of some spring barley, where both demand and prices have dropped.

Having removed oilseed rape from the rotation about four seasons ago as establishment became difficult, he is still not confident enough in the crop to return, he says.

But filling the same September drilling window as oilseed rape with winter linseed is part of what he likes around the crop, he says. “It will be grown on a contract.”

The switch does require some thought around managing drilling capacity, with typically the farm drilling the winter area in about 18 days.

“Drilling windows are getting tighter, so we’re considering options to help.”

While buying a second-hand drill is one option that could be a solution, the plan for this autumn is more likely to be seek the help of neighbouring farms.

“We’ve approached some to see whether they might have scope to do some contracting to help make sure we drill crops in the prime autumn drilling window, and then possibly help get the spring crops in a bit quicker.”

North West

Martin Caunce, Brow Farm, Ormskirk, Lancashire

Constantly looking for ways to add value or find alternative markets for crops grown on the 50ha farm, Martin Caunce’s latest potential scheme is working with a local Lancashire company to sell cold pressed oilseed rape oil.

The conversation that started with a question about Martin potentially supplying oilseed rape for the firm to press could end up with the firm working out of one the buildings on the farm, Martin says.

“We will grow the crop and get it ready all the way up to actually crushing it, and I’ve offered one of our buildings to see if we can keep it all on the farm.”

The resulting cold-pressed oil will likely be marketed with the Brow Farm brand.

“It’s something that we probably don’t have the time to push, but the lads who are keen to do it, feel that it would be better to have our name as a farm on the bottles. And if you do that, you should really be doing it in our yard,” he says.

“We’ll get a premium for our crop, and can back them to start with, so they don’t need to borrow.”

As well as oilseed rape, the company is also planning to produce both camelina and sunflower oil, he adds.

Other tweaks on the farm, include a firmer commitment to not use any fungicides or insecticides across the farm.

“This year, I was trying to not use them on at least 60% of the crops, but we’ve ended up at 100%, after biting the bullet and not using any when we weren’t sure if we needed to.

“That’s jumped us a year ahead of where I thought we would be. We’ll just find other ways to manage without them in the future,” he says.

Using wheat blends is one tactic he’s expanding the use of, with a plan to use eight variety blends in both spring and winter wheat for milling, after seeing reduced disease pressure from two- and four-way blends in recent seasons.

North

Richard Bramley, Manor Farm, Kelfield, Yorkshire

While no major changes are planned at Manor Farm for next season, the market environment currently surrounding sugar beet could see the area of beet reduced.

Without a price agreed between NFU Sugar and British Sugar for next season’s crop, and with both a surplus and low prices within the global sugar market likely to impact UK beet prices, he’s expecting to reduce his area next season.

That will likely be replaced by extra oilseed rape.

“But given we will be harvesting the winter barley which will be the entry for oilseed rape in early July, ideally I would know the beet price by then or shortly after,” Richard says.

If that doesn’t happen, the oilseed rape will likely be planted without certainty, he says.

“But I would like to know that I could take a holiday from some of the beet tonnage to return when it makes sense,” he says.

In the past he has grown high erucic acid rape (Hear), but with a surplus of that type of oilseed rape, contracts have been cut.

“We’ll be growing a conventional double-low variety. We haven’t grown Hear on those fields, but if we had, we would grow a Clearfield variety to take out any volunteers.”

East Anglia

James Porter, Porters Farms (Walpole), Halesworth, Suffolk

Only minimal changes for the coming season are currently planned by James Porter, who farms 600ha of owned and contract-farmed arable land in Suffolk.

The main change will be dropping about 40ha of spring linseed, grown for seed, split between the home farm and a contract farm, where dry springs have caused establishment challenges.

“It’s been getting worse and worse,” he says.

“This year, we have one field which established, while two other fields have failed. They chitted and then died in the dry weather. If we’d had just 5mm of rain after drilling that might have been enough, but we didn’t.”

The area will be put into either extra winter wheat or winter oilseed rape, James says, depending on rotational needs.

This year’s wheat area is currently split between about 50ha of Aintree grown for seed, with a further 170ha split mostly Dawsum, with a field of Scope.

“The Scope looks like a good variety,” James says. “We bought a tonne last year, so we’ll saving some and growing a bit more at the expense of Dawsum.”

After visiting a local trials demonstration, Challenger is another variety that is of interest. “But I’m not sure if we will get any seed,” he says.

East Midlands

Tess Lincoln, Burton Lazars Farms, Little Dalby Estate, Leicestershire

Discussions about using contractors for harvesting on the farm have ended in favour of contractors after calculations comparing fuel, repairs and labour costs against contractor fees showed a saving of about £8,000 for using contractors, Tess Lincoln says.

“I never dreamt we’d make a saving – I just thought we’d cover our costs,” she says.

“I don’t know if that is an indicator of the way agriculture is going.”

It has led to wider conversations about going much further with the use of contractors for the arable operations, which will leave Tess and husband Tom free to concentrate on expanding the livestock enterprise.

“It wasn’t a conversation we expected to have,” she admits.

“But labour issues on the farm have accelerated the talks.

“When a contractor has enough capacity to cover our arable workloads in around two days, it doesn’t make sense to compete with that,” she says.

While no deal has been agreed currently, different options are being considered ranging from stubble-to-stubble contracting to something not far off a shared farming agreement, Tess says.

Cashflow on the farm has been dealt a blow with the farm’s Sustainable Farming Incentive agreement on hold while the options chosen are being reviewed for overlaps with other agreements.

“We haven’t been paid for the past three months, which means we’re short by £18,000,” Tess says.

“You’re expecting SFI to be guaranteed income, so anytime something like that happens, it makes it much less attractive. We’re very much now trying to farm without any support.”