GROUNDSWELL 2021
CHANGE THE WAY YOU SEE THINGS Gabe Brown often quotes his friend Don Campbell’s aphorism: ‘If you want to make small changes, change the way you do things. If you want to make major changes, then change the way you see things.’ This nutty little saying encapsulates so much wisdom, but it is much easier said than done. We all have our own little prejudices or theories about how the world works, or more crucially about why we farm the way we do. It is surprisingly hard to stand back and look at our operations and really see what is going on and how it could change for the better.
The great thing about the whole Regenerative Agriculture movement is that it is almost completely farmerled. There are plenty of suppliers who are now producing drills and other products which the pioneer farmers have created a demand for. There are also more than enough suppliers trying to jump on the bandwagon and flog us stuff that we don’t need. The habit of looking for solutions in bottles and bags seems to be ingrained in farmers, but, as readers of this publication will know, most of us need fewer inputs the longer we direct drill and we have resigned from the More-on club. All that we need to do now on our farm, is ramp our yields up a bit, without ‘buying’ them and we’ll be even better off. Or...we could take advantage of some of the lessons that Lockdown has taught us and work at growing crops and other produce that local people want to buy and sell direct to them. Grow less and sell for more.
The trouble with trying to increase production is that we keep making mistakes, like ignoring the golden rule that no-tilled crops want to go in a fortnight earlier than with ‘conventional’ establishment in the autumn and a fortnight later in the spring. Last autumn we held off drilling oats until the wheat volunteers had chitted...and then it started raining. A bit like the year before. We
eventually sowed them on a frost in mid February (it’s kind ground where they’ve gone) and it looks like we’ve got away with it, as the weather postdrilling has been kind to the seeds. As I’m writing this, at the end of February, we’re drilling Mulika spring wheat into the remnants of a cover crop on more kind ground. The soil is in fantastic condition and the forecast is good, so the seed should be able to get away before any horrific rain event tries to drown it. Some of our later drilled winter wheats spent most of the winter looking a bit miserable with wet feet. Some patches we’ll end up having to redrill or over-drill with Mulika. Time will tell if we will pay for this
Affinity Water Catchment Hub
18 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
Jay Fuhrer, USDA, presents the damaging effects of rainfall on bare soil
ISSUE 13 | APRIL 2021
