FEATURE
FARMER FOCUS
TIM PARTON Tim Parton looks to the future in farming and sees microbes taking a leading part in crop and animal production To quote Rudyard Kipling, “If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs….” – seems quite appropriate at the moment. Something, as farmers, we are good at living with, is uncertainty: weather conditions - out of our control; corn prices – out of our control; government legislation out of our control; DEFRA subsidies out of our control. I could rattle on about the suffering and anxiety surrounding the weather, the harvest and re-drilling. Instead, I chose to focus on what I am doing to “keep my head”; concentrating on the things I have control over: Buying my staff breakfast, or an evening drink on those long days of harvest: Thanking Pontesbury Tractors for coming out of hours to repair machinery, so I can get on harvesting in the dry weather before the next downfall of rain: Turning around the disappointment that crop yields are down (remember wet winter and baking Spring?), trusting my gut feeling wheat prices will rise, thus leading to an increased return for my low yield crops.
extenuating circumstances can be an awakening for the human caretaker. On the farm here I have been modifying the 750a (yet again!) with the addition of an air pump on the drill liquid system. This is for two reasons; the first being to keep the biological brew aerated, the second to keep the mix agitated to stop any settling out in the bottom of the tank. This has been done with the help of Trevor Tappin (TT Engineering) and has so far worked well. Another new move for me has been the introduction of the Johnson Su static bio reactor, with thanks to Andrew Jackson for the introduction to the regenerating soil diversity system. This is to make a richer microbial compost over the next 12 months in order to apply as a drench at drilling, through the peristaltic pumps: in addition to making compost teas. The real magic of the system is that you only really need two kilogrammes per hectare which will reintroduce a varied biology back into the soil, which mimics the process that would occur on land had it been grazed with livestock. Thus, resulting in improved soil fertility. As Dr David Johnson, molecular biologist and research scientist says “…. microbes are the backbone of every
Challenges faced head on can reveal new ways of working with nature, seeing how nature survives through
28 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
ISSUE 11 | OCTOBER 2020
