How to make the transition to more sustainable farming practices – Agronomist & Arable Farmer
Rising costs, changes to farm support, and increasingly extreme weather events have hastened the need to build more resilient production systems that harness natural processes ...
The quest for answers on how the transition to more sustainable farming practices can be achieved was reflected in the over-subscribed Hutchinsons inaugural Agroecology Conference in November, where industry leading experts and growers shared their views on how to make the transition to regenerative farming practices.
Chairing the conference, Hutchinsons head of agroecology Ed Brown pointed out that agroecology is not something to be considered in isolation but should be encompassed into best practice and can be achieved through a well thought out step-by-step transition process, that starts with asking – why?
“Whether you’re a farmer that has already moved to a more resilient farming model, or are just starting out, the most important question is to ask yourself why. Why are you doing what you are doing and how will changing this benefit your farm?
“Then set yourself an action plan – don’t try to do everything at once and avoid jumping onto trends. There is no silver bullet as every business has different aspirations and skill sets.”
Everything starts with the soil
Soil health is widely recognised as a cornerstone of sustainable farming systems, and establishing a baseline measurement will allow you to make the best decisions to move forward, said Hutchinsons head of soils Ian Robertson.
Being in a position to reduce inputs, change cultivation techniques or understand how cover or catch crops might benefit the soil, has to start with the soil, he said.
“I always say the machine is irrelevant – it is what the soil needs that should drive the decision, for example a change in cultivation strategy.
“So before making any significant structural or operational changes, it is crucial to understand the physical, chemical and biological make-up of the soil. These factors make up the unholy soil alliance and each is as important as the other.”
“You cannot manage what you don’t measure. Creating a baseline measurement of the soil removes the guesswork and helps to avoid making fundamentally wrong decisions,” he says.
Creating a soil benchmark will allow you to:
- Understand the difference between pH and buffer pH – allows for an understanding of soil function
- Know the cation exchange capacity – how big is your soil?
- Bulk density and texture – what is your soils structure, chocolate sponge cake or brownie?
- Organic matter – different layers from LOI OM, dumnas carbon, active carbon, carbon to clay layer and C:N ratio
- Extractable nutrients – what are your reserves? Focus on cycle rather than ‘more-on’. How is soil structure affecting this?
- VESS physical soil structure test, water infiltration, worm count
“It is possible to do all of this using a Healthy Soils assessment and build on this using the unique data from TerraMap, said Mr Robertson, and encouraged the audience to take advantage of these services.
However, for a clearer picture of the levels of biology in the soil, Mr Robertson suggested the Soil Life Monitor (PLFA) test, which is a lab test measuring the levels of bacteria, fungi and protozoa in the soil, as well as the diversity of microbial biomass.
“This is a very useful test to see how diverse your soil biology really is; the more diverse, the better nutrient cycling and the more the soil will give you back.”
“Once a baseline of all these factors has been established, create a report or action plan that all the teams across the business are fully engaged with.
“Highlight the shortcomings and find ways of overcoming them, be realistic about speed of change and introduce changes over an eight to 10-year rotation. Most of all, get started!
Efficiency substitution and redesign
Internationally renowned agroecology consultant Joel Williams presented a technical insight into a methodology to help make the transition from conventional farming practices to a more sustainable agroecological approach.
“Efficiency is about ensuring that any conventional practices are implemented to their optimum. Substitution is the replacing of these conventional practices by more alternative practices or ecologically intensive models. Redesign is the final stage where the practices are completely decoupled from input dependency to being compatible with nature conservation and establishing a reliance on biodiversity and natural regulation,” he explained.
“The first two steps are very important, but it is redesign that will make the bigger impact and change to the farming system, so it’s important not to get trapped in these initial stages,“ he warned.
Case study – Joel Williams
Plants need nitrogen to build proteins and for this they convert the nitrogen into a useable form, ie of amino acids. However, nitrogen is generally applied to the plant in the form of inorganic bagged forms of ammonium or nitrate, on which the plant then expends energy converting into organic forms.
“So it would make sense to provide the plant with organic forms of nitrogen to reduce the energy needed for this process, making it more efficient,” said Mr Williams.
“There are two ways of doing this; by reducing losses or using a different form of nitrogen, for example, foliar nitrogen”, he said.
“Foliar applications bypass soil imbalances, there are no nutrient lockups to navigate, no leaching, less volatilisation, and foliage can continue absorption when root uptake is poor. So this generally means less N is required and the overall process is more efficient.”
He acknowledged there are many variables that impact foliar efficiency around formulation, application, crop characteristics and environmental conditions.
“There is also a high nutrient requirement for this process,” he added.
“If we are to take this further than simply improving the efficiency of the products we are using and look at a substitute for fertiliser, this can be achieved using liquid forms such as biofertilisers, fish hydrolysates or through a dry soil based application of compost or manure.”
However, it is important not to get stuck in this stage or to react too quickly to poor results and to recognise that this substitution stage can be unreliable,” he said.
“For example, we know that there can be issues with consistency of some of these products and there are mineral constraints which can limit biological nitrogen fixation.
“So whatever the system or practice, it has to be managed and, importantly, the product has to go into the system that is designed for it to work.”
Mr Williams pointed out that to take the next step to redesign, consider a practice that decouples from input dependency, which in this example could be diversification with legumes into the system through field margins, or in the field with cover crops.
“How can legumes really help reduce N dependency? he asked.
“It’s not just about integrating them as cover crops so they release their Non decay. It is also possible to share N in real time from legume to cash crop through companion cropping or intercropping. As legumes grow they are releasing root exudates, some of which are amino acids, so when a legume root system and non-legume root system grow side by side, the legume releases amino acids as root exudates and the non-legume companion can scavenge these.”
He pointed out this is emerging work and not yet truly optimised. “There is more work to be done on this and we are finding new answers all the time to help redesign systems to help the transitional process.”
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