Farmer Focus: Sunshine, fert spreading and photosynthesis

This is my favourite season of the year, with autumn being a close second.

To see new life evolving, with the birds pairing up and the light nights returning – with the sun on your back, it puts a spring in your step for the coming season.

Spring crops have been going into good seed-beds. 

Winter crops have all had a feed of nitrogen, which is then balanced out with a foliar feed, to keep the plant photosynthesising to change that nitrate into amino acids and subsequently into proteins.

See also: Fertiliser buying advice as Iran conflict squeezes supplies

About the author

Tim Parton

Tim Parton manages 300ha in South Staffordshire growing winter wheat, OSR, spring barley, beans, oats, lupins and wild flowers as part of a biological farming system. He grows cover crops and grass for haylage across sandy clay loam soils.

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This also feeds the microbes below ground as part of the rhizophagy cycle.

This allows the plant to secrete proteins, carbohydrates, amino acids, hormones, signalling chemicals and organic acids.

The plant uses this to shift pH within the vicinity of its roots, by as much as two points, to mobilize the minerals it requires.

Then you also get mucilage, a sticky gel secreted by the root tips which binds soil particles and microbes together.

It also increases the water holding capacity, which is important in these dry years we seem to be experiencing.

There are also phytosiderophores that mobilise iron, zinc, copper and manganese.

The plant has the capacity to reach out and take what it needs from the soil with the help of biology, which it has been doing for millions of years.

This system works so well if the plant has the right nutrition and is not overloaded with nitrate, fuelling low brix readings (measuring the sugars within the plant).

In a healthy plant that is working well, 70% of its photosynthesised carbon can be put down as root exudates.

This is where a healthy plant has the energy to look after itself and keep pathogens at bay.

However, an unhealthy plant is the opposite, which is going to require a lot of expensive synthetic inputs to keep it healthy.

With fuel and fertiliser prices rising daily, pressure once again is mounting on farms. We must be one of the few industries where we cannot put our prices up accordingly.

It certainly would not look attractive to investors if you were trying to sell the model. But let’s focus on having a nice spring.