Farmer Focus: New to the AHDB Monitor Farm crew

Exciting and big news for me this month as I have been named as the AHDB Monitor Farmer for the Cambridge area.

I am really looking forward to getting stuck in with the programme, sharing what I am doing, what has worked and what hasn’t, and learning from all of the other participants.

About the author

Matt Redman

Farmer Focus writer

Matt Redman farms 370ha just north of Cambridge and operates a contracting business specialising in spraying and direct-drilling. He also grows cereals on a small area of tenancy land and was Farm Sprayer Operator of the Year in 2014.

Contact:

Email: office@mattredmanag.co.uk

X: http://www.twitter.com/@redmanmatt

Read more articles by Matt Redman

I’ll be disappointed at the end of my three years if I haven’t made changes to my farming business. I urge you to find your local Monitor Farm and get involved. If you are local, my launch meeting is on 6 July.

See also: How to build a Johnson-Su bioreactor to produce your own on-farm biology

As for everyone else, it has been a very dry April, which made finishing the spring drilling easy, but has probably now started to reduce the potential of winter and spring crops.

Lack of rain won’t be doing the new woodland areas that were planted during the winter much good either.

Since taking on my tenancy in 2017 the usual weather patterns seem to have been replaced with extended periods of wet or dry – with nothing in between.

It also cements the need for more resilience in the farming system, something I hope we can discuss and address during my Monitor Farm meetings.

Fertiliser has been a hot topic in the past few months. Next season is a serious unknown, unless you’re brave enough to buy at the current prices.

I have undertaken a few tramline trials of reduced rates, from 50% of the farm standard, using a leaf tester to gauge crop nitrogen requirement. Hopefully, the yield maps will show some differences.

However, I think I’ll need to be mindful of results for future use due to the dry winter we had – which affected the amount of nitrogen available this year – compared with a wet winter like the last one.

It’s now the time of year where time passes very quickly and the to-do list grows even faster.

Top of the list is some more infrastructure improvements to aid harvest.

With a new dryer for this year, I need to be able to deal with wet and dry grain sensibly without causing a headache in the yard when busy.

This is a task that is more difficult with the limited grain storage available this harvest.