A diverse rotation can support the improvement of soil health, reduction of inputs and development of climate and business resilience in an arable enterprise. Speaking in a recent ‘Cultivating climate resilience’ webinar, Andrew Court shared how rotation planning and plant nutrition have been key to cultivating resilience in his family farm business.

Andrew and his family took on the management of their 274-acre mixed farm in 2020. They started out with a relatively blank canvas. The farm had been a dairy until 2010 before converting to a suckler herd.

With Andrew’s interest in arable and his brother’s in livestock, they settled on a 200-acre arable rotation, with beef cattle grazing on the permanent pasture and integrated into the arable rotation. They also aspire that everything that leaves the farm is for the human consumption markets.

“We’re not interested in growing for energy or to feed animals, we want to sell high quality, nutrient rich produce, but not to the detriment of our soil or our land,” says Andrew.  

Baselining farm carbon

Straight away, they got involved with a research project through LEAF and baselined the farm. The farm is on a light, sandy soil which determines a lot of farm management decisions. They looked at the carbon emissions after a year and a half in business, which helped inform what they wanted to do next.  

Despite finding the baselining process useful, Andrew does suggest caution when using carbon calculators and recommends delving deeper than the top line value. “We found that the carbon emissions for our arable enterprise looked atrocious, but it was calculated based entirely on the yield of the crops, and the measurements were taken in a year when the yield was low but the quality high. By choosing to produce a high-quality milling wheat that would go for human consumption market, our carbon emissions looked worse than if we had grown feed wheat,” he explains.

Climate smart rotations 

Andrew’s priority was to create an arable rotation which supported the enhancement of soil health, with thriving biology and fungal activity and less requirement for inputs. From a business resilience perspective, this would lower input costs and reduce the number of operations required, saving fossil fuel and further reducing costs. Healthy soil could also enable crops to ‘ride out’ the climate related challenges such as drought and increased frequency of storms.

On the arable side of the business, creating climate resilience started with looking at the rotation. Knowing he did not want continuous cereals, Andrew has developed a diverse rotation which last year included winter wheat, winter beans or spring peas, winter barley, oilseed rape and spring oats. They are also using blends of cereal crops, which helps reduce disease risk.

This year sunflowers have been introduced as a break crop. These were chosen because there are very few disease issues and they help to remove green bridges, supporting a reduction in pesticide use.

Intertwined with the focus on rotation is the frequent use of cover crops. The farm is located within a groundwater catchment zone, so funding for cover crops comes from Severn Trent. This is because the plants capture nutrients in the soil preventing them from leaching into the borehole. Saving large sums of money on water treatment.

Andrew shares that he has seen soil structure improve year-on-year. “In drought years our barley has continued to grow for longer than our neighbours, we’ve used less fertilisers every year and our quality has certainly increased,” he says.

“We started off with proteins at 12.5% when we grew our first milling wheat three years ago, now we’re at proteins of 13.8% and Hagberg Falling Numbers of 280 on average, so we’re hugely pleased, and that’s using less fertiliser and less pesticides,” he adds.

Crop nutrition

Andrew shares that this year they have adjusted the strategy, as they had reached the point where they could not reduce pesticide use further by focusing on how crops were grown. Instead, they have switched the focus to crop nutrition.

“Generally, as farmers we give crops what they need to survive,” he says. “If a crop develops yellow rust and you can see rust it’s already too late, the plant is already sick. So why can’t we treat the crop like we would our children; by giving the nutrients they need to avoid the issue in the first place?”

This has led to exploring both micro and macro nutrient requirements. They are looking at using compost teas and have recently bought a second-hand sprayer, which will enable them to try new approaches without trying to find a contractor who is willing to try novel approaches.

They are also growing a Wildfarmed crop of wheat for this season, which has meant bycropping wheat and beans together. From a nutritional perspective this works well, as there is a nitrogen fixing crop along with the wheat. It does mean adjustments to the rotation as it means beans can no longer follow the wheat, as well. A different crop is needed to prevent green bridges.

After growing sunflowers for the first time this year, they will be one option to follow the Wildfarmed crop, but Andrew is also interested in pumpkins.

“We grow 15 million pumpkins in the UK every year, and they all go to have faces carved into them, with few used for human consumption,” he says. “But pumpkins also have the most oil-rich seed in the world, so why can’t we grow pumpkins for oil and use that as an alternative to oilseed rape?”

Ongoing farm resilience

Andrew shares that they have planted 1.5km of new hedgerows across the farm. Once fully established these will provide effective windbreaks, providing shelter for livestock and keeping fields warm.

They also think carefully about any investment in machinery. Key considerations include:

  • Does it need to be that big? Bigger machinery can be more costly to run, and reduces potential operational windows when field conditions deteriorate.
  • Do we need that machine? Having their own machinery can open opportunities, such as spraying compost teas, but there are other operations where using a contractor can be more cost-effective.
  • What are the unconsidered costs of using a contractor? When it has been very wet, having the flexibility to combine when you need to rather than when the contractor is available could be more economic.

Andrew expects to switch to electronic telehandlers once the current machine is ready for replacement. Production of solar power on the farm would become viable once they have made that switch, which would change how they look at the role of electricity in the farm business.

To find out more about Andrew’s approach to creating resilience in the farm business, including the beef enterprise, watch the full webinar here.