Wet season fails to dampen strategic cereal farmer spirits

Following one of the wettest growing seasons on record, Henny Lowth reflects on the impacts on the trials across our Strategic Cereal Farm network, ahead of the release of the latest results in November.

Our Strategic Cereal Farm hosts have an important thing in common: ‘bouncebackability’. They recover quickly from setbacks and learn from them.

The 2023/24 growing season provided a tough test for any grower; throw in the need to keep trials on track and it amplified the need for grit and determination to get crops safely through to harvest.

This whistle-stop tour provides an overview of the trials and indicates how they have fared to date. I want to whet your appetite for the release of this season’s results at the Strategic Cereal Farm Conference in November.

In the network, Strategic Cereal Farm Scotland (near Fife) has the most years under its belt (the fourth year of a six-year tenure).

Host farmer David Aglen is passionate about regenerative farming practices, soil health and responding to evidence. Like many farmers, he wants to better target inputs.

In one multi-season winter wheat trial, the farm’s standard ammonium nitrate (AN) rate is being compared with foliar nutrition. Treatments include two AN applications, a single AN application combined with two or five foliar-nitrogen applications and no AN with six foliar-nitrogen applications.

Another winter wheat trial uses in-crop measurements – derived from a Brix meter (which measures plant sugar status) and SPAD (which measures leaf nitrogen status) – to tailor nitrogen applications from the farm standard (160 kg/ha).

To assess the impact of tailored nutrition on disease levels, the trial also compares the farm’s standard fungicide programme with no fungicides. The impact of seaweed applications is also being assessed.

The farm now also has several years of data on cover crops used ahead of spring barley.

Working with SRUC, David is testing three drill dates, grazing and spraying off, and he is comparing results to a no-cover-crop control.

This year, one field needed re-drilling because of poor establishment (due to the bad weather). The earliest-drilled spring barley also had relatively high disease pressures.

Biodiversity is also being monitored across the farm to assess the impact of the various management approaches, which will also provide insight into how weather impacts pests and beneficial populations.

Strategic Cereal Farm North (in Shipton, just north of York) is hosted by David Blacker, who is keen to improve the farm’s economic margins. He has a plan that includes fine-tuning nitrogen management.

His plan is like the one at Strategic Cereal Farm Scotland. It also involves comparing the farm-standard granular nitrogen rate (200 kg/ha) with foliar-applied liquid nitrogen and considering the disease-pressure impact.

However, the season’s high rainfall had a big impact on the farm’s heavy land, which required the trial plans to be adapted.

This year, all treatments included a 70 kg/ha granular application of nitrogen at the first split. As a soil mineral nitrogen (SMN) test suggested that most of this was lost and because crop condition was patchy, the trial dropped the planned crop protection treatments and focused on the use of liquid nitrogen to help rescue the crop.

Improving soil condition is also a priority at the farm. In 2022, drainage was installed across one of David’s flood-prone fields at various widths (10 m, 15 m and 20 m), which also contain areas of old drainage and no drainage (for comparison).

In the first year, drainage improved winter wheat yields. The wet weather in the current season (second year) is providing a solid test of his infrastructure investment.

Crop growth (e.g. ripening) was highly variable across the sampling zones in July 2024, with much smaller plants in the no-drainage areas.

Rough economic estimates suggest that it will take about nine to 12 years to pay back the investment in drainage, based on yield alone.

We are also measuring the benefits to soil health, which will require several years of data to provide conclusive results.

For harvest 2024, we also attempted to establish a living legume mulch understory in strip trials, with and without compost, to bolster the farm’s earthworm populations.

This trial was a full-on casualty to the weather, with the mulch failing to establish and the ground too wet for compost applications and crop drilling.

The plan was put on ice until the harvest 2025 trials.

Worm populations also continue to disappoint. Despite this, plenty of earthworms were spotted in April – mostly juveniles, which had inevitably moved up from the lower soil layers to avoid drowning.

Our newest Strategic Cereal Farm is the second one in the East, this time in Norfolk at Morley Farms.

Farm Manager David Jones has a passion for sharing knowledge, particularly among his local peers, and regularly hosts on-farm events.

Once again, nutrient management investigations feature prominently in the trial line-up. This time, with a twist.

Thanks to its close ties with the Morley Agricultural Foundation (TMAF), the farm has Soil and Agronomic Monitoring Study (SAMS) sites. These provide an excellent source of site-specific, long-term (2018–23) soil health and yield data that cover high-, low- and variable-yielding areas.

The current trial will add to the data set, specifically investigating nitrogen use efficiency at three SAMS sites. As with other Strategic Cereal Farms, trials will also compare the farm standard (soil-applied) nitrogen with a foliar-applied product. These nitrogen trials have been relatively unaffected by the inclement weather.

Another trial focuses on BYDV management in winter wheat, which includes a comparison of a BYDV-resistant variety (RAGT Grouse) with a susceptible variety (KWS Dawsum) grown in adjacent fields.

The original plan also overlayed insecticide treatments, including farm-standard sprays, sprayed in response to decision support tools (BYDV tool and a potential new tool) and untreated.

The weather scuppered this plan, preventing all insecticide applications. This emphasises how important it is to stack IPM approaches (including resistant/tolerant varieties and later drilling) to reduce reliance on chemistry.

Strategic Cereal Farm South leaves the network this year, as host David Miller is moving on from Hampshire-based Wheatsheaf Farming.

David is an advocate for improving soil health, with a passion for reduced tillage and maintaining living roots.

He has a long-standing relationship with South East Water and the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), with cover crop trials being a staple on the farm for several years, prior to it becoming a Strategic Cereal Farm. He is also examining companion cropping.

The harvest 2024 cover crop trials fared well and delivered excellent ground cover and soil protection in the inclement weather. Over-year results show cover crops reduce nitrate leaching, with no negative impact on the performance of following crops. Cover has also boosted soil health (compared to no-cover control strips).

David also compares fields that have been direct drilled (under regenerative practices) for various periods of time. The healthier soils have coped much better with the wet conditions, compared to the more intensively cultivated soils. David believes it is critical to enhance soils so they are more resilient to wet-to-dry extremes. He is also testing grain to see how regenerative practices influence nutritional quality.

A three-way wheat variety blend is also being grown on the farm with no fungicides. It has come into its own during this high-disease-pressure season, with significantly less disease recorded than in his other crops.

The rebalancing of the system from one that is dependent on high levels of chemical inputs to one that is more biologically able to resist disease is one of David’s biggest success stories. He has seen his soils move from being dominated by bacteria to being more dominated by fungal communities.

The 2023/24 season provided a unique test for Strategic Cereal Farm trials. We are currently evaluating the results from the trials, which includes considering the influence of the great British weather.

Each autumn, we release the latest results from the farm network. This year, the findings from the 14 trials across the network will be launched at the inaugural Strategic Cereal Farm Conference (near York on 7 November 2024).

On-farm experience will be used to answer many key questions, including:

• How can nitrogen be reduced without unacceptable yield/quality penalties?
• How useful is the mechanical weed control of grass weeds?
• What is the best way to establish and destroy cover crops?

If you are unable to join us, don’t worry – our website and social channels will provide the main takeaway messages.