SOIL FARMER OF THE YEAR WINNERS ANNOUNCED
The Soil Farmer of the Year competition has been running now for the last five years and aims to find, promote and champion those farmers who are putting soil health at the centre of their farm business management. This year the competition has been slightly challenging to run due to the COVID pandemic and the inability to conduct judging in person. Our finalist farmers all did a magnificent job at creating videos detailing their individual farm journey to sustainable soil management as well as enduring a virtual grilling from the judging panel to decide the results. The top accolade this year has been awarded jointly to two farmers, Jake Freestone from Overbury Farms and Alex Brewster from Rotmell Farm. Both farmers were doing amazing things around soil management in very different locations and settings. Our third place farmer this year was John Martin, an arable farmer from Dorset who has been working on soil management for over 20 years. Normally by this time of year the farms walks have taken place and this article is a write up of the discussions that ensued, however this year things are a little different. The farm walks will be taking place in October, with some online and some in person with the required safety guidelines. All the information about the farm walks is available on the Farm Carbon Toolkit website (www.farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk). So its probably time to meet our winners for 2020! Jake Freestone has been managing Overbury Farms since 2003. The farm sits within the wider estate on the Gloucestershire / Worcestershire border and is a mixed farm with 1600 ha of farmland, both permanent pasture and arable cropping, some land let out for vegetable production and a flock of 1000 ewes. The soils are incredibly varied on the farm from Cotswold Brash to an Evesham Clay series, and the farm has a diverse and wide rotation to help deal with the variety. The rotation includes wheat, spring barley, oilseed rape, peas, beans, linseed and quinoa. Jake started focussing on soil health and looking at adapting management following his Nuffield scholarship, working on a reduction in cultivation, improving organic matter and diversifying the rotation.
“Switching to no till has given us huge soil health benefits on the farm,” Jake explains. “It’s enabled us to grow bigger and better cover crops, that we can drill straight into which is reducing our costs, but also improve the soil structure and the organic matter. Especially on our stonier soils, we aren’t having to move the stones as we were previously when we were cultivating conventionally, and the soil structure is also protected, helping with water infiltration which is key on this farm as we supply the nearby villages with drinking water. Other benefits come from a reduction in weed burdens and the ability for the farm to support enhanced biodiversity, so no till is really a crucial part of the jigsaw.”
Cover cropping is integral to the farm system that Jake is running. A diverse mix of species is planted which effectively captures sunshine, help structure the soil and feeds the soil biology. The cover crops are also helping to reduce soil erosion by effectively capturing rainfall. Future plans include more integration of the livestock into the system to graze the cover crops and optimise the benefits that they bring in terms of soil health and biology. Jake is seeing the benefits that these changes have made both in terms of improved soil health and structure but also
Alex Brewster
88 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
ISSUE 11 | OCTOBER 2020
