Hereford Monitor Farm meeting: Wheat growing for the future: thinking outside the box

Conventional arable farming is changing. How might we approach farming when we lose our chemical options?   What lessons can we learn from organic farming to apply to our systems? Could we be thinking more ‘outside the box’?

Join us at the Hereford Monitor Farm where John Pawsey, Shimpling Park Farms, Suffolk will talk through his successful organic farming system. Hear how John uses leys, sheep and cropping in the rotation to boost fertility and manage nutrients. John has a series of inventive machinery to manage his disease and weed control while keeping a keen eye on costs.

Also with us is Simon Cowell, Essex Farmer and Soil Farmer of the Year 2018, who will also discuss how he has reduced inputs across his arable farm, used blended varieites within the system and generally improved the soils. 

With the potential changes ahead in the outlook of agriculture, join this meeting to be ahead of the curve and take-home lessons for your farm business.

Speakers

John Pawsey, Shimpling Park Farm, Suffolk

John Pawsey converted his farm at Shimpling to organic production in 1999 for business reasons as well as concerns about soil health and decline in farmland wildlife species. John Has managed to halt and in some cases reverse wildlife decline, improve soil health and keep the farm profitable since that initial conversion. Since then John has increased his organically farmed area from 650 hectares to 1,760 delivering similar results to neighbouring farmers.

Simon Cowell, Motts Farm, Essex

Simon Cowell won the 2018 Soil farmer of The Year competition organised by Farm Carbon Cutting Toolkit and Innovation for Agriculture. He started getting interested in soil and its biology twenty years ago and has been improving his heavy clay soils by stopping all tillage, making and applying highly biologically active compost and building mycorrhizal fungi populations. To prove the theory that a balanced soil food web can provide all the nutrients a crop needs, he hasn’t applied any phosphate or potash fertilisers in all that time and has started experimenting with cutting out nitrogen applications as well.