FEATURE
FARMER FOCUS
DAVID WHITE Thoughts and lessons learned from the season. Where to start???
Well the earth on the farm went from very wet over winter to very dry. April was the sunniest it’s been since 1929 I believe, with the drought being broken towards the end of the month by some very welcome rain. We have been treated to the clearest air and the bluest skies that anyone has seen for many decades. It’s a shame that it’s taken a global pandemic and shutdown of industrial operations and carefree travel to make the change to the environment that we have been aware is needed for a while now. May continued dry and we start to think that we need some vapour trails and upper air pollution to create conditions for rain to happen again! Whilst we do all we can to improve soil heath and structure and increase SOM to improve drought resistance still on light land the effect of insufficient precipitation combined with high temperatures and high winds have drained yield potential. So thoughts turn to combating drought and coincidentally on the internet popped up an article The Drought Myth, An Absence of Water is Not the Problem by William Albrecht. www.appropedia.org/Drought_Myth which discusses the role of nutrition in combating drought. I have been adding trace elements to spray applications at every opportunity but have still found that the absence of water is a big problem. More work needed here. Even the more specialist bio extracts appears to have made no difference. Soil structure and subsoil is no doubt very important and I’m always reminded of this by the route of a pipeline which crossed a field well over twenty years ago. The crop is always stunted and looks hungry (see pic) but the same soil was replaced in the trench that was removed, just in a different order. On the worst field I have for “hot spots” (see pic) the
Pipeline route
difference in crop changes dramatically in just a few inches. You would not think it was possible as we expect roots to roam for moisture and nutrition on top of their increased efficiency through association with Arbuscular Mycorrhiza Fungi. I will taking soil samples from 0-300mm and 300-600 analysed to see what differences can be found.
On top of how we physically farm the soil we are trying to reduce crop inputs, jump off the treadmill of nannying crops with insurance PPPs and let crops on our healthier soils with an increased number of beneficials stand up for themselves. I have had success with this approach again this year with insecticide free crops of wheat and rape but less success with reducing fungicides. Learning where we can successfully cut back is still a work in progress. I refuse to be persuaded to apply a T0 to wheat preferring it to stand on its own feet but it’s surprising how quickly patches of yellow rust started to appear on my varieties of GP1 wheats. These being Zyatt, Solstice or Skyfall or a blend of the three. A T1 needed to be applied very swiftly, and to keep on top of the problem a well timed T2. Nothing saved there then! Autumn insecticides are avoided when ever possible but we do need to be aware of the risks from the green bridge between crops, and on one field of wheat the aphid population that inhabited the volunteer oats and possibly were living in the excessive amount of wet chopped straw has infected the wheat fairly badly despite a poorly timed (with hindsight) insecticide application. As part of our IPM we really need to be able to get aphids tested to see what disease they are carrying and have regional data on this.
Hot spots
60 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
Spring seedbeds were a challenge following the excessive ISSUE 10 | JULY 2020
