Soil Farmer of the Year announced at Groundswell – Tillage and Soils

The winners and runners up of the 2024 Soil Farmer of the Year competition have been announced at Groundswell, with all the finalists speaking about how they have prioritised soil management and the results achieved by doing so.

Tracy Russell and David Newman from Bucksum at Shabbington Fields Farm in Buckinghamshire claimed the top spot, with Ed Horton from SS Horton & Sons in Gloucestershire in second place and Ben Richards from Middle Trelan Farm Ltd in Cornwall placed third.

Bucksum is predominantly a market garden business, which uses a four-year rotation, taking a cash crop once every four years while building soil health and fertility by using herbal leys grazed by sheep for the other three years in the rotation.

Deborah Crossan, head of soils and natural resources at Innovation for Agriculture and one of the competition judges, shares that she was impressed by the diversity of approaches taken to improve soil health at Bucksum.

“During the judging visit Tracy and David shared how they are using chickens to clear the ground under the agroforestry fruit tree lines and how the agroforestry, together with the introduction of sheep grazing in the fields, has brought more natural predators to the farm,” she says.

“They are also making their own soil improver using their own green waste, composted wood chippings from a local tree surgeon and spent hops from a nearby brewery,”
she adds.

The Soil Farmer of the Year competition is jointly run by Farm Carbon Toolkit and Innovation for Agriculture, and kindly sponsored by Cotswold Seeds and Hutchinsons.