Borders dairy farm saved fertiliser use by up to £70/ha

A large dairy and arable farm in Berwickshire has turned to the Omnia digital farming platform to help improve nutrient management and record-keeping across the business.

S Hardy Ltd nears Duns, is run by Robert McDonald and milks some 900 cows, supplying more than 30,000 litres of milk each day to Muller on the Tesco contract, alongside 730 ha of mixed arable cropping and 180 ha of grassland.

The business started using Omnia in November 2023, and Mr McDonald has been working with Omnia Digital Farming Manager, Aidan Monaghan, to make some significant improvements to nutrient management practices, which are helping drive efficiency while meeting regulatory requirements.

© Aidan Monaghan

“A key driver for starting to use Omnia on the farm was to have everything in one place for manure and nutrient management and precision farming,” says Mr Monaghan.

“The farm has been doing variable nitrogen applications and soil scanning for variable seed rates for a number of years, so it was a natural succession to take this further and get more from the data with Omnia.”

Prior to setting up Omnia, Mr McDonald used a third party to do his manure management, but says he was keen to pull everything together into one place to get the best out of the data.

“Simplifying things, having everything in one place, and continuing to work with Mr Monaghan were key drivers for switching to Omnia,” he says.

“Our farm operator also values the extra detail contained within the Omnia application files, which is improving day-to-day tasks.”

Managing manure better

The Omnia system has made a real difference to record keeping and nutrition planning, providing accurate, instantly accessible records of dates, times, quantities, and the types of manure, slurry and fertilisers applied to individual fields.

Around 25,000 m3 of slurry and over 3,500 tonnes of manure is generated by the dairy unit and youngstock each year, stored in a 11,000 m3 lagoon, plus two tanks of 3,500 m3 and 5,500 m3.

This is mostly applied to the arable area early in the season, via either an umbilical system or tankers with dribble bars, to reduce reliance on artificial fertilisers.

The manure management part of Omnia includes five key aspects, including risk maps, farm and field limits, storage capacity and imports and exports.

Within these legal boundaries, users can generate organic manure maps for each field, which can be overlaid with other map layers (e.g. soil type), ensuring manure or slurry is only applied where needed.

This maximises the benefits from manure and slurry use, reduces environmental risks, and minimises the management time needed to comply with all necessary regulations.

Indeed, all of the farm lies within a Nitrate Vulnerable Zone (NVZ), so using any nutrients as efficiently as possible and having accurate records is essential.

Demonstrating environmental responsibility is also coming under increasing scrutiny among milk buyers across the dairy sector, Mr McDonald adds.

“There’s loads I have to do, including an annual soil diversity plan and an annual biodiversity plan, along with many other requirements.”

© HL Hutchinson Ltd

Fertiliser saving

In addition to easier record keeping, another benefit of the Omnia system is its ability to automatically calculate the nutrient breakdown of any organic materials applied, allowing subsequent fertiliser applications to be more accurately tailored to what has already been applied and crop requirements.

NDVI satellite imagery downloaded directly through Omnia provides an additional layer of information to inform fertiliser planning decisions further.

Mr McDonald says these refinements to fertiliser practice have already resulted in considerable fertiliser savings of up to 70 kg N/ha in some fields, equivalent to around £70/ha.

Over time, he has also noticed that crops have become more even, and yield better.

“There is a cost to slurry application which needs to be accounted for however,” Mr McDonald notes.

“Equally, there is also a large value of P, K and other nutrients and organic matter in slurry and farmyard manure which is hugely beneficial.”

In addition to the new data going into the Omnia system, Mr Monaghan points out that he was also able to easily import eight years’ worth of historical GPS grid sampling soil data and conductivity scans into Omnia, which the farm uses as the basis for variable seed rates and other agronomy decisions.

“Omnia allows us to bring data in from a range of sources and maximise the value from it by having everything in one place. It makes it easier to make better decisions,” he says.

Mr McDonald agrees: “It feels as though we are now managing crops and inputs much more efficiently. Using organic forms of nitrogen more effectively will become much more important too moving forward, to help reduce the costs of inorganic nitrogen, and to help manage our carbon footprint, etc.”

S Hardy Ltd