Strategic Farm Summer 2021

What’s happening at a Strategic Cereals Farm in your region? - Watch the webinars

Hear about the research being put into practice on our Strategic Farms in the East, West and Scotland and watch the launch of our new Strategic Farm for the South. What messages can you take away to put into practice for the benefit of your farm business? If you missed our live webinars on Friday 4 June, you can catch up again here: 

Brian Barker and the team discuss how trials have progressed at Strategic Cereal Farm East. What programmes have the high and low treatments for disease control had so far? What are the effects of cover crops on water quality? And what are the pest and beneficial levels seen so far this year? 

Meet new host, David Miller, as we launch our new Strategic Cereal Farm South. Hear his vision for the next six years of trials at Folly Farm. David is striving to grow more nutritious food and looking at new ways to help enhance the environment.

At Strategic Cereal Farm West, the team have been running trials on; soil management for autumn crops, ways of reducing inputs on farm and managing weeds without herbicides. There are also ideas for reducing the impact of cabbage stem flea beetle through use of companion crops, organic amendments, and straw management. 

In order to measure the success of future trials, trials at Strategic Cereal Farm Scotland are baselining plant health, soil status and pest and beneficial levels. They are also looking at the benefits of responsive crop nutrition.

Interested in measuring and analysing your plant health? Heard about the measurements that can be used, for example tissue and sap testing, but not sure about the details or where to start? Our foundation workshop is for you. 

Watch the workshop

Have you started assessing your plant health on-farm? Have you been using tissue or sap testing or taking Brix measurements? Are you interested in taking these to the next stage?

Watch this workshop with the Strategic Cereal Farm Scotland team to discuss the intricacies of plant health.

Richard Pywell, (Centre for Ecology & Hydrology) and Julian Gold (Hendred Farming Partnership) talk through why you might consider using in-field flowering strips to help manage and control pests.

• What can pest and beneficials do to help the productivity of my cereal crops?
• Why would I use in-field flowering strips to encourage pest and beneficials?
• What are the best flower and grass species to grow for cereal pests?
• How do I get started?

Watch the workshop

Our Strategic Cereal Farms are looking at the effect that in-field flowering strips might have – on both numbers of pests and beneficials, and on the crop itself.

Reflecting on the information gathered from these trials, this workshop session will aim to help anyone looking to understand the equipment, knowledge and resources available to monitor and manage the impact of in-field flowering strips.

Watch this workshop 

This workshop is designed for those who are starting to think about optimising marginal land on-farm.

• Where might that be?
• What are the opportunities if you can identify it?
• How might you start and what data would be useful?

Watch the workshop

How do you define marginal land at the farm level? How does this change with a changing climate, market prices, ELMS policies, biodiversity net gain and public goods?

This workshop is designed for those who are already yield mapping and using software to know where their marginal land is, but would like to take it to the next stage.

Watch this workshop 

Questions? 

Please contact us via our Strategic Farm webpages if you have any questions

BASIS and NRoSO points are available for attending the webinars or workshops live.

You can also claim for watching the recordings on AHDB Cereals and Oilseeds YouTube channel. Please e-mail ke.events@ahdb.org.uk with your name, BASIS/NRoSO membership number and postcode to claim your points.