SHARING THE STRATEGIC FARM RESULTS
Teresa Meadows, AHDB Knowledge Exchange Manager, East Anglia, takes a look through the season and findings from the Strategic Cereal Farm East and West demonstrations for harvest 2020. As we come into the autumn time, it gives an opportunity to look back on the last harvest – yields, costs, margins and wider improvements to soils or biodiversity achieved over the previous year. Whilst harvest 2020 will be a year to forget in so many ways, there are always lessons that can be learnt along the way. Reflecting on the last season of results from our AHDB Strategic Cereal Farms in the East and the West, this is certainly the case for them too. The difficult conditions in autumn 2019 and spring 2020 meant that establishing a crop was a real challenge for Rob Fox, Strategic Farm West host in Warwickshire. With much of the OSR area needing to be re-drilled and wheat not able to be drilled at all, alternative solutions were sought to take advantage of the situation. This included the establishment of a summer catch crop area to look at the advantage of having cover in place vs the stubble for the following crop establishment, nutrient uptake and more. Over in the East, Brian Barker, the farm host in Suffolk had patchy establishment in some areas, challenges to spray off cover crops with enough time to drill the following crop and making decisions on what to do with the opportunity to lower inputs in what resulted in a largely low disease pressure year.
The results from the findings of these trials and demonstrations and other longer running demonstrations on-farm, can be found summarised below. Full details including the reports, graphs and costs are available to download from the links at: https://ahdb.org.uk/sfweekwinter-2020.
STRATEGIC CEREAL FARM EAST
How to manage lowering fungicide, trace element and biostimulant inputs and harnessing varietal resistance This trial has been looking at how to use varietal resistance as a way of reducing fungicide inputs. Five varieties were assessed (Siskin, Crispin, Santiago, Graham and Shabras) and four programmes of increasing cost were overlaid (untreated, low, medium and high). As harvest 2020 was a low disease pressure season, the results showed that growing more resistant varieties with a low input regime gave the best net margin in this year. There was a minimal yield response to increasing fungicide spend on the resistant varieties with the low inputs, showing the best net margins. In this year, the highest percentage of septoria was seen on the most susceptible variety, Santiago. The more resistant varieties (i.e. Graham and Siskin) tended to hold onto green leaf area for longer. Varying programmes according to the season, looking at, knowing and harnessing the varietal resistance can certainly work in this kind of season.
Boosting early crop biomass This demonstration has been looking at whether using a starter fertiliser, either placed or broadcast, is effective at boosting biomass in the autumn. Establishing crops later in the autumn, due to black-grass and BYDV pressure is balanced with the knowledge that crops that yield well have good biomass from the autumn. This demonstration was looking at if it was possible to boost this further with later-drilled autumn crops. The results from this year showed that there may be yield benefits from broadcasting kieserite and possibly TSP at planting where soil nutrient indices are low. However, established plant populations in both fields were fairly low and crop development was slow over winter, due to the season.
Beans and barley summer catch crop at the Strategic Farm West
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On one of the fields, broadcast kieserite and TSP appeared to increase yield by up to 0.4t\ha, whilst polysulphate showed no yield benefit compared to standard farm practice. The results from this work haven’t drawn large conclusions in terms of final yield results, but will be something to bear in mind as we go forward about ISSUE 12 | JANUARY 2021
