FEATURE
AGRONOMIST IN FOCUS
MARK DEWES Stones or Beatles? Oasis or Blur? Cereals or Groundswell? It’s a lazy way to categorise farmers but I’m not the first person to compare and contrast the diversity of ideas showcased at the two leading events for arable farming. An even cruder test would be to ask if our farming problems will be solved by the wizardry of gene editing or by following the prophecy of a soil health guru? In most previous winters I’ve been like most agronomists who sit through presentations on fungicide responses and resistance shifts. This winter Bill Clarke slipped off the top spot in the charts and there won’t be many agronomists who haven’t been engaging with webinars on soil microbiology and regen ag. Many of us are re-learning the empathy for soil and crops which had been demoted during a time when synthetic interventions have ruled. We’ve been busy putting names to things we thought we knew but couldn’t explain or quantify. Whether an understanding of concepts like the effects of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungus on soil aggregation will help us to achieve more resilient soils remains to be seen. The language may be new to some of us, but the practices have their origins in good farming, and what has been will be again. Amongst this excellent work is some material which I have found much more challenging. Having listened to John Kempf’s webinar on total immunity of healthy plants to pest and disease attack, I found myself trying to keep my mind open without letting my brain fall out. We are on a more determined route to a more sustainable future now than at any time in my career, precisely because the systems which we have adopted are falling down more frequently. It’s easy to be hard on your younger self and I now look back with a wry smile to 1997 when I discovered that all I needed to do was get drilled up by the end of September and pick an appropriate programme of sprays to deal with any problems. In fairness to that arrogant youth I was right for a few years, but a system propped up on inputs has started to crumble very quickly, particularly when rainfall distribution has challenged the system further. It seems appropriate that the word humility is derived from the Latin humus for earth. Humility is perhaps something we should apply to our farming now to balance some of the hubris of recent decades The species diversity that is part of many farmers’ approach to more sustainable farming Is not the only diversity worth considering. I’ve been lucky to have the opportunity to look around at worldwide agronomy through a Nuffield Farming Scholarship study tour and taking influence from a diversity of sources has been a good experience. One that sticks in my mind was at the United Nations Committee on World Food Security where I heard a delegate from Rwanda describe farmers as priests in the marriage between food security and climate change. If I could live up to that description, it may be as close as I get to working in the clergy, but it reminded me 28 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
that not all the answers will come from middle-aged white blokes in checked shirts like me. Sustainability is defined for my purposes as those methods with which we can continue into the future, profitably and with acceptable external costs. Farmers had been adapting their systems for a long time before they discovered the need for an agronomist to navigate the complexity of crop protection choice. Agronomists play a part in the decision-making on farms but the principal role for which we originally trained and took instructions from our clients is diminishing; we need to continue to bring something to the table before our chair is removed. There is still a job to be done in organising a sensible crop protection programme, but as that programme becomes simpler and less effective, our skill set needs to evolve. I was humbled last autumn as I realised that some of the most important decisions my customers were making were those which I’m not well qualified to help make. In two situations a few days apart, I contributed to the decision on whether or not to drill in poor conditions. In one case I said drill and the other I said don’t. As you might have predicted, both were drilled and, on reflection, I think I was wrong in both cases. It demonstrated to me that some of the things I need to do now are different from those I needed 20 years ago and I’m better qualified for the latter than the former. So, an agronomist needs to adapt just like our customers do. This realisation seems to have hit home recently, and it’s been rewarding to see agronomists from the independent and trade sector alike raising their game regarding training and application to a rapidly evolving reality. Our customers want as much input from us on the way to integrate stewardship scheme options to their arable rotation as they do on herbicide regimes. Advising customers to build more resilient systems by growing fewer cash crops and more species rich pasture doesn’t come easily to all agronomists but alongside the adoption of new technologies and conventional chemistry it’s the blend between Cereals and Groundswell which will be increasingly important to get right. ISSUE 13 | APRIL 2021
