Lancs veg grower scoops Soil Farmer of the Year Award
Left to right: Chris Molyneux, Paul Baker and Colin Chappell © David Jones Two to three years of herbal leys gives enough fertility to Chris Molyneux’s south Lancashire soils to grow a string of vegetable crops without nitrogen, helping him to win the coveted Soil Farmer of the Year Awards for 2026.
A move from ploughing to min-tillage and then on to strip tillage opened Chris’s mind on how to cut costs, and then he started to build soil fertility by using herbal leys.
See also: Beet armyworm outbreaks put maize growers on alert
Using a good mixture in his herbal leys by focusing on legumes and not too much grass, helped build soil fertility to prepare for vegetable crops, which are drilled after the herbal leys are destroyed with glyphosate.
“The first vegetable crop of spring greens did not need any nitrogen and the second crop of kale also needed no fertiliser,” he said at the Soil Farmer of the Year Award announcement made at Groundswell.
His rotation of two to three years of herbal leys followed by two to three years of spring greens, kale and chard is proving a success as the high-value vegetable crops help offset the years when the ground is under herbal leys.
Chris farms 200ha at the Molyneux Kale Company on rich dark black sand soils near Ormskirk, some 10 miles north-east of Liverpool.
He first moved to minimal cultivation after working a gap year in Australia when a local said using a mouldboard plough, as Chris’s family farm was doing at the time, was so “19th century”.
With less artificial nitrogen applied to crops he says the spring greens and other vegetables are more resilient over winter, and clover often survives from the herbal leys to give good ground cover.
Second at the awards was Paul Baker of Wishay Farm, near Cullompton in Devon, who farms 136ha and has reduced his costs and cut his nitrogen rates on wheat by 50% by building up the fertility of his soils
Third was Colin Chappell from Gander Farm in north Lincolnshire who farms 645ha and uses minimal soil disturbance and managing nitrogen efficiency to produce 11-12t/ha wheat crops using only 165kg/ha of nitrogen.
The Awards are organised by Carbon Farm Toolkit and Innovation for Agriculture, and are sponsored by Hutchinsons and Cotswold Grass Seeds.
The Awards were announced at Groundswell, held at John and Paul Cherry’s Lannock Farm, Hitchin, Hertfordshire.
