Guy Shelby has been achieving record high yields while farming difficult soils at sea level and getting on top of a blackgrass problem. Guy puts this success down to his switch to strip-tillage three years ago when he bought a Mzuri Pro-Til 3T. The move resulted in considerable cost savings and soil improvement. Subsequently, he has been achieving 5t/ha yields on oilseed rape and over 10t/ha on wheat which is quite an achievement, given that Guy is dealing with difficult soils at sea level and a blackgrass problem.
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Arable farming isn’t just about growing crops, believes Staffordshire farming partners Tom Collier and Richard Clarke.
Livestock plays a key part in the system they run on the 1,000 acres their families own land – and the additional land they contract farm – from Tixall Heath Farm and Brick House Farm in Staffordshire, where medium light soils are interspersed with heavy clay patches.
That acreage includes 865 acres of arable land run on a five year rotation, with some 145 acres of grassland, which supports 500 ewes and their progeny.
They run a five year rotation – winter wheat; winter oilseed rape, winter wheat, spring barley and spring beans – and switched to strip tillage three years ago.
While their previous system – based around a one pass cultivator and cultivator drill – was performing well, they felt they could achieve several benefits by moving to strip till drilling using a 3m Pro-Til drill from Mzuri.
This drill uses a leading tine to cultivate a vertical strip and restructure the immediate root zone, before placing the seed in a pocket of tilth while leaving most of the ground un-worked:
There were elements of labour and cost-saving in making the switch, but our main motivation was a desire to improve soil structure”, says Tom.
We ploughed everything until about eight years ago, but felt we were depleting the soil to such an extent that it was becoming hard, compacted and lifeless.
We moved to a non-inversion system based on one cultivation pass and a cultivator drill as a first step to improve soil structure.
That worked well, but we felt there was further room for improvement. In effect, we felt we could achieve more by working the soil less
Using strip tillage is showing several practical benefits, he says: “Our costs are definitely lower and labour greatly reduced, which is helping us achieve better timeliness of drilling.
Yields have remained consistent, even though we have been through some pretty extreme and difficult seasons. We have been very pleased with the drill, and with company which is very good to work with.
But the drill is just one component in the operation; it is the farming system around it that really makes the difference.
Mixing autumn and spring sown crops is a key element in that. Their rotation helps and ensures clean crops – important as they aim for milling markets with their wheat; malting markets for the barley and beans are grown for human consumption:
Growing two successive spring crops gives us the opportunity to deal with problem weeds. We plant winter oats as cover crops ahead of them, and let the sheep graze them off over the winter, after which they can rarely green up enough in the spring to survive.
Bromes have always been a bit of a problem and we have noticed groundsel becoming more of an issue recently.
We mow a 3m strip around the crop and the headland several times during the year so we don’t move grass and weed seeds into the crop. It is time consuming but it works.
Black-grass is not a major problem. It tends to build up slowly over time. It only really builds up if you fail to do anything effective about it
Strip tillage is also having the expected benefits on soils: “We certainly have better worm populations and soil structure is much better. The drill is becoming easier to pull each year, and we don’t have to run the leading tines as deep as we did at first
Since switching to strip tillage in the spring of 2012, RP Collier Farms in Sta ffordshire has seen its costs and labour go down signi ficantly. The farm’s main motivation for investing in a new drill, however, was the desire to improve the soil structure, an objective which has been more than achieved according to the farm owner.
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Strip tillage is having an addictive effect in one part of the English/Welsh border.
John Joseph introduced it on his own farm a few years ago – and now drills crops for a number of farmers in the area who looked at his fields and liked what they saw!
And there is much to be liked, too.
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Ditching a conventional tillage system for a one-pass strip-till drill is helping one Yorks farmer get his tired soils into shape.
“Knocking heavy, unyielding clay soils into an acceptable-looking seedbed is rarely an easy or cheap task.But when you’re based in a wetter-than-ideal location with poor land drainage, the job is even less entertaining…”
Find out how it’s bedding in.
Any farmer who expects a switch to direct drilling to sort out soil structure problems by itself needs to re-think their approach, and make sure they give this potentially valuable technique a go says independent consultant Philip Wright.
“Point number one: plan to start direct drilling where soil structure is already good. The biggest mistake you can make is trying to direct drill ropey fields.
“But if soil structure is not in good condition then you are relying on nature and plant roots to put it right, and that will take a number of years, during which time yields and margins will be lower than optimum”.
Rushing to judgement on the potential benefits of the technique on the basis of a trial in unsuitable conditions could lead to farmers rejecting it without giving it a chance: “Sometimes you may need to make a mechanical intervention. That may seem a little counter-intuitive, but if there is a problem that needs resolving then the right operation should help direct drilling work. Additionally there are other ways of giving nature a hand”.
He warns against starting to direct drill just because the technique seems to offer a low-cost option for establishing crops: “There is a real danger that if you don’t try the technique on soils that are already well structured then you may dismiss it on a false premise. If you do want to assess direct drilling on your own farm, choose a field that you know is well structured with no physical problems that may inhibit crop development, and give it fair trial.
“Ultimately nature will correct your soil structure problems, providing you don’t carry on creating them. Employing cover crops of the appropriate mix to help structure the soil also accelerates the move to good yields. Also, never miss the opportunity to build roots, as these ultimately provide resilience in all soils”.