Sometimes you have to disagree

A couple of articles caught my interest in the July additional of this Magazine, First What’s Your Colour written by James Warne and Farmer Focus by Andrew Ward. The theme of both is somewhat similar in questionable understanding the principle of how soil degradation works and putting in place appropriate practice to start a sequence of improving organic matter and resulting biology.

Since the evolvement of tillage mainly to establish a single species crop with reduce competition from other species - a weed, mass food production evolved highly successfully. What we now understand is that success was based on what some compared to mining products from the soil. The way soil evolved over millions of years to work before man’s intervention vegetation growth and subsequent die back were in

Written by Tony Gent

balance I.E., organic carbon, fertility and nutrition release were at the same rate with no artificial soil movement taking place.

When soil fertility is naturally high soil movement results in robust crops due to the cultivation induced increased rate of nutrition release. This is particularly so as soil movement technology gets more and more aggressive particularly with development of inversion tillage such as the plough. What we now have as a

For the perfect seed placement - let’s get straight to the point

We all know that the key to good plant establishment is perfect planting depth control and excellent seed/soil contact.

So bring on the Primera DMC direct seeder which does both of those things by the bucket load.

With a huge clearance from point to point, the chisel openers perfectly follow every little contour and cope with any amount of trash, so the Primera DMC is ideal for working in a cover crop, after a cover crop, after a cash crop or just well - drilling!

So if you are looking for a direct seeder that will cope with life’s up and downs - look no further than the Primera DMC.

Each individual hard-faced chisel opener is guided at the perfect planting depth by the following Reflex rollers.

result of cultivation causing instance of retention and release is soil which is out of balance with its biology resulting in degradation or as we say total mining of the soil-based resource.

The dilemma so many farmers are faced with, with soil in this situation is putting in place practices that turn the corner towards restoration of biology and protecting the short-term risk as they see it to the income stream from the farm. Also, judgement and assessment of what’s happening can become massively clouded and confusing with reduced soil movement reducing artificial soil structural correction, but which still compromises natural biological build up.

Particularly farmers with heavily degraded soil that has been vigorously attacked with more and more power and forced soil manipulating technology for timelier establishment and finer seed beds. The awareness of what other farmers have achieved in a No-Till position where they are growing very respectable cost-effective crops doing nothing. Their thought process is all too often that’s ok but I think there is an opportunity to do less, but if I continue to do something it’s got to be better than doing nothing. We have learned that again particularly with heavily degraded soil that logic is partly correct, but it must be applied from a different standpoint. It doesn’t work if just removing some elements of what you are doing now and leave others in is “OK I’m doing less”. The problem is that what you were doing even with so-called min-till had an element of primary tillage or initial soil breaking in it, followed by seedbed preparation either prior to drilling or in conjunction with drilling. The problem as I have described is often a bad compromise first not achieving carrying soil along in its degraded state or doing a suitable operation to not compromise biology recovery and so just bumping along in the tough of doing neither of artificially doing natures job completely or treating the soil correctly to allow biology to recover and the soil and moving to a point of soil largely looking after itself as nature intended.

The first absolute rule in all this is do nothing if it is not needed and then only in suitable weather and rotational situations and opportunity. Also experience has shown us that grass related crops I,E, cereals have much stronger rooting than many break crops and usually tolerate heavily degraded soil with little or no

Helping to solve your problems in the field for 70 years.

CONTOUR ROLLS

With a horizontally folding frame and the heaviest weight per metre in our range, the Countour HD HZ Rolls offer excellent ground following.

Working width 8.4m to 18.4m

22" , 24" or 26" ring options

7 section models available

Optional brakes

Optional Springboard Levelling Tines

Selected models in stock

loss of yield, so long as establishment is robust and there are no compaction or drainage issues. Break crops such as oil seed rape and beans though are weaker rooting and soon show their dislike to less than reasonable soil structure.

When you stop tillage of degraded soil so long as the previous crop and this is by far the best way to judge the structural state of a field was robust and suffered no signs of compaction or drainage problems and no severe damage was done to the soil removing the previous crop, then it’s completely rational to expect if its grown one successful robust crop why shouldn’t it grow another one, without any interference with the soil. With the first year or two of No-Till that’s usually the case. But after that an element of weather luck and rotational circumstances creep in. The soil starts to forget the artificial structuring help you have been giving it and as I have said is yet to be at the stage to compensate for this. In practice and this is where weather luck starts to play a part usually with our maritime climate a wet sowing period compromises crop establishment and results in a less than ideal robust crop. Because soil recovery relies on the soil being active and full of roots and activity,

We have found the approach to the doing something to help for us has been low disturbance vertical tillage. With us there are two stages to this - repair and get soil going in the right direction and the much more laid-back simple rotation opportunistic rotational maintenance, of which as biology increases you need less and less. Very important you must not confuse soil hard or firmness with soil compaction – soil is naturally hard or firm, particularly in dryer conditions, but with the honeycomb built up as biology is restored firmness is not a problem. The big big misconception is trying replicate this structure with cultivation, it does not work like that. The more you cultivate the soil structural the weaker it becomes and wet and dry conditions and trafficking it just slumps together into one big hard lump or slush, and the cycle of obliterating it with cultivation must begin again. Also worms and microbes have no chance in this cycle of obliteration to slump.

Methods of establishment also plays a part in this with a fixed tine or disc approach. Tines range from the type

that moves all or most of soil creating an affect that’s basically one pass cultivation and obviously compromises massively No-till and biology recovery to a very narrow low disturbance tine which is much better, but most still have some element of disruption and inversion effect on the soil. All tines have the disadvantage of blockage in residue, especially in cover crops. Discs generally have much lower surface disturbance and are much better at handling residue and as with tines there are various different approaches to design. The main difference is that most create the opening by displacement of the soil sideways soil against soil, which results in compression soil damage and smear in wet conditions that is synonymous with most design limitations. An under-cut disc such as the Weaving GD is much kinder to the soil as there is little or no sideways movement and the opening is created with a natural sleight upwards action, resulting in minimal disturbance and pressure on the soil allowing the seed to be placed under the tilth. Soil friction is generally less than a tine because the disc rotates with the soil flow, resulting in less pressure needed to firm the soil around the seed leading to reduced shrinkage and slot opening, also the seed is predominantly placed to the side away from the primary cut therefore generally slightly away from any hair pinned residue.

Recently the theory of cover cops has come to the forefront, which is great, and no doubt could help with particularly the transition enormously, but the practicality has many challenges, particularly with the establishment window. As I write - ok its early and we have plenty of time and opportunity, but no moisture and as we have seen with small seed crops if you put them in the ground and they don’t immediately grow they lose vigour and often are a complete failure, even when it does eventually rain. Wet seasons often are cold and late also which compromises establishment before the autumn growing period tails of into winter. Also, with a later harvest workload becomes a compromise and cash crops must take precedence.

By all means embrace no-till, especially to address soil degradation and make sure your methods facilitate an improvement in soil biology. This is absolutely vital to allow the soil to recover, some appropriate help maybe needed to win in the long term, together with a little patience.

DRILL MANUFACTURERS

IN FOCUS...

HORSCH AVATAR 12.25 SD UPDATED WITH NEW EQUIPMENT OPTIONS

The latest 12m HORSCH Avatar 12.25 SD, launched in early 2022, has been updated with new equipment options, including a new control concept. The intuitive handling system is based on ISOBUS and makes it easier for the farmer to adjust, operate and monitor the drill. The terminal interface can be adapted to the user’s requirements and, with the new hardware and software, HORSCH has created a platform which can supply an almost unlimited number of components when metering.

Thanks to the well-proven folding design the transport dimensions are very compact. With an outside width of 3 metres, it is also ideal for road transport. There are various tyre versions from 520 to 900 tyres and twin tyres.

The newly developed seed hopper platform has a capacity of 6500 litres and can be ordered as a double hopper with a 60:40 ratio. To increase the range further, especially for rape seed, a MiniDrill G&F is now available as an option. This additional hopper has a capacity of 400 litres and is often used for seed, granulates or slug pellets. Filling stops can be reduced and up to 3 components can be metered at the same time.

The seed wagon layout increases the drilling window with the large tyre widths reducing compaction even in wet soil conditions. The double support wheels at the wings ensure low tracks and optimum adaption to the soil. With its 1-row design with SingleDisc coulters and a row spacing of 25cm, the Avatar 12.25 SD is ideal for mechanical population control, but also for the most different sowing methods, such as direct seed, mulch seed and into standing catch crops.

The new LED headlight system, WorkLight Pro, allows for driving at night and, like all HORSCH Avatar models, the HM skid as well as the newly developed HM Plus skid provide enormous stability and longevity of the seed coulter.