Ed Horton was awarded second place in the 2024 Soil Farmer of the Year competition. Find out more about the competition here.
Ed Horton manages 3,500 hectares spread across Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Hampshire. Predominantly an arable operation, there is also a joint venture sheep flock comprising of 2,500 ewes, a 125-head pedigree herd of beef shorthorns and a 5,500 pig finishing unit.
Since taking over the management of the farming operation nine years ago, Ed has improved the resilience of the farm business by looking after soil health. Practices implemented have included changes to manure management, cover cropping, reduced cultivations, a diversified rotation, integration of livestock onto arable land and weeding using a camera-guided hoeing system. Together, these have enabled a reduction in inputs, particularly herbicides and fungicides, which enhances overall profitability. There is also now more flexibility in the system, which allows Ed and his team to decide how to respond to challenging weather and soil conditions, rather being limited to growing large acreages of just a small number of crops that must be drilled within specific timeframes.
Soil management on Cotswold brash
Farming predominantly on Cotswold brash, the soil types on the farm span from very heavy Denchworth series clay through to light, rocky soils. When Ed first took over management, he found that he could lose a crop in the winter on a clay cap due to waterlogging, and at the other end of the same field, he could lose a crop to drought in June because of poor water holding capability, normally driven by lack of organic matter.
It was the vulnerability to losing crops due to excess or not enough water that led Ed to focus on building the organic matter composition of soils. He concentrated on getting the soils in better shape, so that on the heavier ground they could become more free draining to reduce waterlogging, and on the very light and rocky soils, they could hold onto moisture for longer during the growing season.
Reducing cultivations, use of cover cropping, diversifying the rotation, integration of livestock, mechanical weeding and a change of approach to manure management have all played a role in enhancing soil health across the farming operation.
Reducing cultivations
Cultivating soil releases carbon and prevents the accumulation of organic matter that can improve water holding capacity, reducing flood risk and increasing resilience to drought. Direct drilling therefore made sense for the farming operation. As remaining profitable was paramount, Ed took the approach of gradually reducing the amount of cultivations, which enabled the transition to a predominantly direct drilled system without the sudden yield shocks which can occur when the soil structure is not ready for it.
Rather than switching in one go, both the depth of tillage and frequency of cultivations were reduced over time, until the soils were ready to be direct drilled. This took approximately six years for the bulk of the farm, however there are still some heavy clays which are direct drilled for two or three years in a row, then very shallowly cultivated. For example, many of these soils flooded last winter, leaving areas that did not grow crops. These have had a light cultivation after harvest to improve their structure and water percolation, so they can be drilled this autumn with another crop and, weather allowing, get back into a direct drilling phase for a couple of years.
Cover cropping
Cover cropping can have a myriad of benefits, including benefits for soil health by inclusion of legumes to build fertility and deep rooting plants to improve drainage and bring nutrients up towards the surface. For Ed, the use of the field after a cover crop informs the mix that is used. Rather than using a mix of species that attempts to achieve everything at once, he selects from three mixtures which are put together in-house. These have three different aims:
- Use for animal grazing and nutrition
- Biodiversity and habitat creation
- Enhancing soil structure ahead of the next crop
He shares that selecting the cover crop mixture based on the next use of the field has proven to be a cost-effective approach which achieves the results he needs on a field-by-field basis.
Diversified rotation
The number of combinable crops grown across the farming operation has increased from four to 18 in the last nine years. These include spelt, einkorn, phacelia, buckwheat, crimson clover, triticale and milling rye, as well as peas, beans, oats, barley, wheat and oilseed rape. Having 18 crop options provides a huge amount of variation in root structure, drilling dates, disease and weed control options and in what each crop is being drilled into. For example, direct drilling behind a crop of phacelia is very different to direct drilling behind a crop of oats.
Having a massive variety of drilling dates allows Ed and his team to focus on reduction of the use of chemistry when it comes to disease control and weed control, as they have enough options that they can drill according to the conditions. The team starts drilling oilseed rape in late July, and will be drilling winter crops all the way through until January, before then drilling spring combinable crops once the weather allows. The diversity of crops enables the flexibility to pick and choose what goes where, so things can be moved around quickly and easily to make sure that fields are planted with suitable crops according to the weather and soil conditions.
Integrating livestock to arable
Integrating the sheep to the arable systems, rather than grazing them on separate land, has enabled Ed and his team to vastly reduce the use of fungicides, which in turn improves soil health and reduces input costs.
Using sheep to graze cereal crops removes latent infection on leaves, rather than relying on fungicides. Now, just 10-15% of the previous fungicide regime is used. Because the fungicides are not applied, the antifungal properties they contain no longer come into contact with the soil where they can damage soil fungi and impact soil health.
With the chemical toolbox available to farmers gradually getting smaller as products that are entering watercourse are banned, Ed takes the approach that it is preferable to learn to farm without them now and by choice, while there is still the fallback of a chemical option, rather than being in a position of being forced to learn to grow a crop once a certain active ingredient has been banned.
Camera guided hoeing
As with fungicide reduction, Ed and his team have also worked to reduce herbicide reliance, and now use by 45-50% less herbicides across the farming operation. This has been achieved by introducing camera-guided hoeing to remove weeds. This uses a hoe, built by CARRÉ, which is mounted on the back of a tractor. The 3-D camera array on the hoe can identify 3 rows of crop underneath it. It then steers itself independently of the tractor to make sure that the blades of its feet run perfectly between the rows of crop. It is slower than driving a sprayer at 36 meters through a crop, however once a weed has been uprooted and pulled to the surface it will die. Unlike a weed that gets a sub optimal dose of herbicide, that can become the start of a resistant population, there is no resistance to mechanical weeding. The reduction in the use of herbicides also means that there are no issues of leaching into watercourses.
Manure management
Having previously been spread as close to the cattle buildings and piggery as possible because it was quicker, cheaper, and easier, manure is now spread more strategically, ensuring it is used where the nutrients are needed. A large amount of capital investment has been made on the infrastructure needed to spread large volumes of slurry long distances from lagoons. Ed is now able to pump and spread slurry 4 km away from the main lagoon with only one operator needed. Not only has this helped make the most efficient use of nutrients available as part of a mixed farming system, it has also dramatically reduced his reliance on purchasing artificial N, P and K.
To conclude, Ed’s entire approach has been shaped by agroecological principles, blending conventional and innovative approaches to create resilience, while focusing on profit rather than yield. He has overcome barriers to innovation, for example by approaching local buyers to create direct supply chains for more specialist crops.
Interested in finding out more about how leading farmers have improved soil health and business profitability together? Read about how dairy farmer Ben Richards is transitioning from a bacterial soil to a fungal soil using agroforestry, or check out the Soil Farmer of the Year archives to read case studies about previous years winners.
