I love spring. One week I am 400m up in the beautiful, but very snowy, Yorkshire Dales donning extra jumpers, and the next I am digging out my shorts back in Kent and everything is growing like crazy.

During my week away the later-drilled spring barley emerged on our heavier land. I’m a slow learner, but I’ve finally got a direct drilling result I am happy with.

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About the author

Andy Barr

Andy Barr farms 320ha in mid-Kent, aiming to farm as regeneratively as possible. He stopped ploughing 25 years ago and over this time restructured the business with less land farmed and increased the use of contractors, environmental areas and diversification projects.

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Using a single narrow tine, widely spaced rows and seed placed to a depth of 5-7cm, this will combat the (now inevitable) two months of dry weather immediately post-drilling.

I also love trying new techniques, but I’m afraid to say I am a little hesitant to try nudging inputs lower again this year, given this season’s ratio of grain price to nitrogen cost.

Although next year may be a different matter.

I would love to try widening my source of nitrogen as it seems there is evidence that a diversity of organic and inorganic sources can act synergistically, but I fear I’ll just be limited to whatever I can get hold of and I am seriously concerned about how much food we are going to produce.

Furthermore, my new Countryside Stewardship scheme agreement has just come through.

We have a solar farm, several hundred acres of previously rented land has gone into trees, and the local council needs to build thousands more houses.

Mr Eustace assured us all recently in the Saturday paper I read that there won’t be a problem.

However, we were also told we were going to have less red tape, and I have just had to fill in another form to register that I am a user of pesticides.

This is despite having recently been inspected by Red Tractor, the Environment Agency, the RPA and the HSE, and ensuring I have gained enough Basis points and my sprayer operator has his NRoSO points.