Buckinghamshire & Bedfordshire Monitor Farm Launch Meeting

You are invited to the Buckinghamshire & Bedfordshire Monitor Farm Launch Meeting.

We look forward to welcoming you on-farm to look at the plan for Dollars Grove Farm as the farm joins the Monitor Farm Scheme. It is the ambition of the Buckinghamshire and Bedfordshire monitor farm to share information and generate discussion to help make informed decisions; that help our businesses thrive.

What will this meeting discuss?

• Launch the monitor farm

• Discuss the aim of the monitor farm programme

• Consider the challenges facing the business

• Explore the farm's priorities and where the focus of the winter meetings programme should be

• Learning about and experimenting with new ideas

• Farm size and layout

• Other enterprises

• Staffing

• Soil type, average temperatures and rainfall

• Rotation, cultivations and cropping

• Challenges facing the business

• Environmental aspects (stewardship schemes etc.)

• Plans for the monitor farm programme and what we would like everyone to get out of it

• Benchmarking

Farm Walk to include:

• Current cropping and rotation including reasons behind it – winter wheat, winter oilseed rape, winter barley, spring barley, winter beans, spring linseed
• Cropping plans for 2022/2023
• Discussion on current situation, crop condition
• Crop challenges
• Crop nutrition including soil testing
• Soil and soil health goals
• Drainage
• Discuss drilling strategy including direct drills
• Use of technology (precision farming – yield mapping) and how to use data
• Yield Enhancement Network
• Changing the rotation
• Role of cover crops
• Potential and practicalities of bringing in livestock
• Environmental stewardship and changes to payment schemes
• Grain storage and drying
• Include discussion of machinery used for field operations; and potential changes
• Machinery costs in Farmbench
• Contracting

Registration is at 3:30pm for a 4pm start.