Thanks @rosybenson - this is great. I'd be up for a visit or a London meet

Dear Rosy
Groundswell 2018
It was very good to meet you on Thursday at Groundswell with Bee. Thank you for all the comment in your message. You show that there is no better way to enable one to get up to speed on Conservation Agriculture [CA] than to attend the two day Groundswell event.
Informing the OurField investors is not the main purpose of the event but it is a privilege to attend and meet so many farmers from across the world - committed to CA . They all have skin in the game.
John and Paul and the family have an extraordinary international network. They also command a very significant place in the UK farming community. The result is the vibrant and progressive annual Groundswell event at Weston..
I was very interested in the sessions that were designed to look at the scientific and political economy contexts in which the adoption, or not, of CA takes place. CA is a disruptive approach to arable food production. It disrupts the majority of the farming community who plough and use a lot of chemicals. It also contradicts the policies which public policy has embraced for decades. It especially disrupts the corporates who want to sell big ploughs, big tractors and tonnes of chemicals, pesticides and herbicides. The science community does not help because science aligns with those who provide the research funds - namely the corporates and the research councils. There are no big corporate players in CA and there are no university courses and little interest in CA in the universities.
The farmer led movement at Groundswell is very important indeed.
Best Tony (Allan)

Thanks for that update @rosybenson
I agree, the event at @johncherry’s last week was brilliant. It is so good to see so many farmers looking closely at how they can farm better, and to consider soil health and not only going for yield.

The reduced cost of using less inputs is a motivator but the context includes the falling price of food over the last few decades which leads to and stems from food being treated as a commodity to be traded like any other. Like books and mobile telephones, like cars and clothes. It does mean some food items are cheaper. But the impact on farm businesses has been as dramatic as the impact on our soils.
The farm business survey conducted annually shows the trend over the years has been to bigger farms and less farmers. Efficiency is the watchword and the language is all about ‘driving down costs’. Very little discussion on quality other than food safety.

And it’s in the context of all this that we’ve started putting the UK Grain Lab concept together. More detail on this as time goes on but essentially this is a collaborative project with me from OF&G and Ed Dickin of Harper Adams University and commercial partners including Small Food Bakery and Hodmedods and the farmer collective, Organic Arable.

The event on Tuesday you kindly refer to, National Organic Combinable Crops, will bring Grain Lab partners together with others in the low-input regenerative farming and food community To literally break bread together, from the fields of the host farm.

What makes great flavour and nutritious bread and where do the raw ingredients come from and how were they produced?

Dear Steven
Very many thanks for your comments. Your point about food prices is important. Food prices have been falling for 200 years after centuries of rising price trend. [See attachment 2] They fell mainly as a consequence of new technologies. But they have not reflected the full costs of farmer production and stewardship services or the costs of degrading the natural resources of water, biodiversity and the atmosphere. A recent prediction of OECD [attachment 1] is that food prices will continue to fall. So things will not get easier on the farm budget front unless there is a change in public policy. OECD economists, and economists in general, predicted a new normal of higher and volatile food prices in their comments in the 2011-2015 period when there was a commodities price spike. But they seem to have accepted the evidence that constant international food prices have - since 2014 - resumed their long term trend of falling by 1% per year.

Best Tony (Allan)

Thanks for all these messages and suggestions and I'm sorry @rosybenson for describing you all as enthusiastic Londoners which could easily be seen as a term of abuse.

I am very embarrassed by condition of the field, but in this dry spell, there is nothing we can do to improve things. We've got some more seed standing by to reseed the covers as soon as there is any rain to allow it to chit, but it's best off in the shed at the moment. We could feed hay on the field, but all our hay is full of grass seeds so we might be creating a bit of a weed problem for next years crop. I'd rather wait and see what happens, weather wise. We can look at the pitiful covers as an old fashioned fallow as in the old three course rotation...

But @abbyrose is right, we want to decide as soon as possible what we want to grow next year, so that we can lay our hands on some seed and be sure to get it established at the ideal time. Many thanks to @johnanthonyallan for outlining how hopeless the farmers position is too, I'm currently in Spain relaxing and trying to work out a sensible way to fix the broken food system (which is why I'm not at NOCC @stevenjacobs ...hope it goes well); growing non-commodity crops seems the best starting point! More decisions needed...

Also just to say I do love @rosybensons idea of planting trees in OurField and turning it into an agroforestry operation similar to Stephen Briggs. You could still use the same machines etc, but would have rows of trees every 24m or so...would that ever be a possibility @johncherry ? Hmmm hadn't thought about grass seeds causing a weed problem. I am meeting Abi G in a few weeks to discuss what grain she has available. Another option also is to try growing the WakelynsORC population that @rosybenson @stevenjacobs and I saw yesterday at NOCC. It's not a heritage grain, but a hugely diverse polyculture of genetics of modern wheat varieties, and therefore much more resilient than a monoculture grain. It also adapts over time to your location. However the over-riding message yesterday and as @oliverrubinstein pointed out, we need to find a buyer and plant something that we have basically already sold. Would be good to chat to Hodmedods again and see what's possible there!

Also just thinking we should probably start a new thread to begin to discuss what to plant this Autumn so everyone can easily get involved and see the conversation!

Thank you, @johnanthonyallan

I agree new technologies had and still have a role but from my perspective the driver for falling food prices was commercial interest. That's a large area to discuss and maybe not for here right now but the commodification of food is a problem. Its a problem for our health and our economy. When people seem happy with the high price of 'mineral' water and the low price of milk we can see that retailers use certain products to engage with our wallets.
But we can engage with our motivations though we do need to recognise that need. Seems to me that people saying some food items, such as organic, are too much money doesn't square with the amount spent elsewhere on things like gadgets and fashion, on broadband and entertainment. And food commodification is a dead-end street. Using the world's resources to supply food, half of which goes in the bin at one point or another, is wasteful. And yet it is profitable for certain businesses, and disastrous for others. And all the while farmers and food buyers, people like us, lose out.

Yes @abbyrose
I agree that @oliverrubinstein is right about the value of finding a buyer before committing to a crop. That would be a good move, certainly best to do before harvest.
But the markets available for grain are 'commodity' or ‘other'. In the ‘other' bracket we need something that gives our produce an edge, a marketable story. OurField as a project is a good start. And so are grain qualities such as flavour.
My experience is mainly to do with organic. I know that some businesses are expanding, like Hodmedods with these concepts of provenance, quality, flavour. Being organic helps find such markets. But until we have more organic land in the UK then we can look at reduced inputs and other agro-ecological factors. As @johncherry is doing.

Thanks @johncherry

The event, which was yesterday, went so well I’m really pleased though feeling a little tired this morning.
But even after 11 years of doing this I am still be blown away by the overwhelming positivity from our guests. We get over 200 folk coming, just over half are farmers, mostly organic but not all, and this year we went the extra mile with the most excellent team from the Small Food Bakery led by the wonderful Kimberley Bell doing all the catering. We had tasters in the form of little biscuits in the field alongside the trail crops. The idea was as one farmer commented, genius.

Dear Steve Jacobs
Your comments on postings by myself, Abby and John Cherry were very interesting indeed. My point is that we need to understand the food system and food prices. You very usefully highlight the power of the corporates to exploit the lack of vigilance of consumers. And you note that consumers, and others, waste food and the costly inputs and the costly impacts of food production. Consumers - including the members of the OurField collective - need to recognise that we must give politicians the political space to take a sustainable approach to providing sustainable, effectively priced food to properly paid people. For the past two hundred years or more the imperative has been to provide (a lot of) under priced food to (a lot of) under paid people. Best Tony (Allan)

Hi all, I hope that I am writing in the correct thread. I just came across a recent report by PAN on alternatives to herbicides, focusing on alternatives to glyphosate, that I thought could be useful in the ongoing discussions: https://www.pan-europe.info/press-releases/2018/07/new-report-alternatives-glyphosate. I also attended a presentation by the head of agro-ecology europe, who said that he was at first sceptical about the possibility of no-tillage agriculture without herbicides, but they have tried it on several farms and it works.

My preference would be to try out these kind of things - also on the topic of the ethos of OurField, it is surely part of the strength of this model that we can try out new techniques that are aimed at sustainability, that a single farmer could find too risky?

Totally agree. I'm sure no-till without glyphosate could become a viable option, it just needs more experimentation, to work out how to best implement it in the UK. Our Field is the ideal context to try things like this out.

Yes, perhaps ourfield is the ideal context to experiment with untried solutions..however you may need to ensure that all the members agree, as we are now in our second year when the likely return is going to be low. I think it is reasonable for the members to expect a profitable year in 2019 (I am not a member, but I raise the idea..)

Dear Harriet
Very many thanks for drawing this VERY INFORMATIVE and interesting report. I have asked JohnC, Richard Harding (the agronomist who advises John) and AmirK to comment if they have time. Best TonyA

Thanks @harriet13 for a very interesting report. There's lots of good ideas in there, some of which involve machinery which we don't (yet) have and which might not work on our soils. But I love the concept of finding new/old ways to deal with weeds, not least living with them in a biodiverse crop mix.
Will give this some thought.
John

THanks for sharing @harriet13 would love to experiment with some of these ideas on OurField!!!

Thanks for putting this report up Harriet. Lots of food for thought. I sent it to a farmer friend to ask his thoughts as he does allot of regenerative farming practices and is transitioning to low input methods. Below are his comments which I think are interesting and worth sharing here:

Some things I liked or agreed with or have experience of directly on farm:

Hooked on ag-chem, treadmill

Non-target impacts

Resistance: e.g. blackgrass

Impact on human health: Certainly the idea that we are dessicating crops using glyphosate is something the industry could quite quickly move away from without too much trouble.

What is a weed? Great question, have you read “weeds: the story of outlaw plants” by Richard Mabey. So much more than plants in the wrong place.

Pretty much the whole of section 7.1 “Preventative and cultural weed management” exceptional.

Some things I’m probably more cautious about:

Impact on ecosystem functions and soil:

I think there are a lot of sound management decisions which could be positively implemented that would have great (er) impacts on soil and ecosystem function than a more negative focus on the potentially detrimental effects of glyphosate. Habitat creation in buffer strips, cover cropping, inter-cropping, use of organic fertiliser (compost etc.) all have massive benefits for earthworms, soil microorganisms, plant resilience, pollinators & other beneficial. Moreover my implementation of these measures hasn’t increased my use of glyphosate, but it has certainly been key tool in their implementation within my system. There is a danger that a ban on glyphos would actually inhibit a roll out of these priniples in my opinion.

Good physical, mechanical, biological or ecological practice should be the foundation of any farming system. The problem for many of us farmers is that it is the accumulation of sound decisions over a number of years that builds a really resilient system which is less dependent on ag-chem. Weaning ourselves off artificial inputs is a difficult and long term process. I have had to focus on high value – low volume model to speed up this process. While we are hooked on ‘cheap food’ it is difficult to re-imagine broad-acre changes to farming systems IMO.

In general what I think I object to is this obsession with glyphosate. It is problematic for several reasons. But mainly it misses the point that by positively focusing on farming systems (accumulation of sound social, mechanical and biological decisions) we can hugely benefit ecological systems, and perhaps even less use of glyphosate. I’m not sure a focus on banning glyphosate will do anything to change the system positively, we will probably just end up using something else less bad and put up even higher defences around the next active ingredient.

I didn’t start by saying: I want to farm organically. I started by saying I want to create a rewarding, regenerative system focusing on soil up. And now I am doing a host of things listed in this handbook: lucerne is shifting my weed burden away from annual (arable) species, cover crops are boosting my soil ecosystem, pollen & nectar mixes on my least fertile arable areas, herbal (‘weedy’) leys because they are drought tolerant and more nutritious for my pigs, heritage varieties that can exploit my enhanced soil ecosystem better so eventually I can use less ag-chem inputs.

I wonder if I would have bothered with these ideas if I was told to implement them as ‘alternatives to glyphosate’.

Hi all, I'm finally catching up after months of silence due to issues being able to get onto Loomio. Please ignore my comments if they are untimely. Much of the conversation has been about alternatives to glyphosate but as far as I can see the option put forward and so far voted yes to by the majority to have a wheat crop with a pretreatment of glyphosate before drilling so I'm just wondering about the connection between the two? I was also wondering about wheat after spelt and a ley. Would a completely different crop not be better from a rotation point of view? Really interested and supportive of the ideas of agroforestry but realise that requires a longer term commitment than just year on year from us all and from the farm and also not sure what that would mean subsidy wise - both now and post Brexit? One of the previous comments was on the size of the field - is there any room for dividing up the field even for just one season, to plant two or even three different crops. One of these could be a wheat crop for the financial benefit. One could possibly be in discussion with Hodmedods if they are looking for specific crops as they have the means to process and market certain products? Again apologies if I am making suggestions that have already been discussed or are no longer relevant.
Keesje

Hi @keesje . You asked some good questions which have come up before but that's not a reason not to ask them again :)

I think we've all asked your question about glyphosate (if not out loud then in our heads) and if you go to the start of this thread @johncherry did a really good post about how he farms at Weston (5 months ago / Fri 13 April) which you might find useful (or maybe this link will work https://www.loomio.org/d/OPhYk7gV/farming-methods-and-the-ethos-of-ourfield-weston/9).

We considered splitting the field into different experiments last year but I think it would have ended up complicating things even more, if not for all of us then maybe just for John and all of the other fields he needs to manage. Please do say if I'm wrong on that though John.

Ideally we would get into the position where we can plan a few years crops so that the rotation and experiment side of things are covered but coordination has been hard for 40/60 people for one year, never mind several! Maybe one for our wonderful new coordination team once the current batch of tasks is out of the way.

glyphosate

@wendy @keesje @christinelewis1 @abbyrose I m wondering if there would be appetite for a thread just dedicated to the matter of glyphosate use in the no till environment; and especially to gather in one place several links and references for those like me who wish to read more..if it is banned, and if there is no viable alternative, I understand that no -till in the UK is dead in the water.

As an interested outsider looking on, I would be excited if after a profitable year, the group wished in the future to experiment with glyphosate-free no-till farming at Weston and so to try out some of the risky alternatives (risky not for health, but for the danger of severely reduced crops due to weed-swamping or clogged harvesters).
But I would also like to know more about it: much has been written in these threads, so my thought is that it may be useful for members and public viewers to find links and references in one place on this important topic.
If so, perhaps we could depute (even perhaps pay an honorarium to?) one knowledgeable person with an academic bent, to gather and present a resource list with comments.

Grahame I think it would be a valuable thread - there is a lot to understand and debate

I agree. I'm about to head into a debate with my local council about its use on our streets so more info would be good.

Me too. For me it would be really good to go through the possible alternatives to glyphosate to better understand why no-till farming would be challenging without it.

Thanks @keesje and your comments are all very relevant, especially now people are deciding how to vote. Do let us know if you have any more issues with Loomio, we know Loomio can be challenging at times. These decisions are always difficult. I voted yes because we really need to stabilise the 2017 funding which will run out before the 2019 crop provides a return on investment - we need to find a way to sell the 2017 Spelt. In 2017 we voted for Spelt because we wanted something different but didn't realise we hadn't worked out where to sell it. Hoping to eventually be able to consider a longer term view on something more interesting but need to make sure we have the finances to do so.

I discussion on glyphosate would be very useful. There are many angles. I have spoken with the Monsanto manager a few times and I was interested to learn from him that that Railtrack and agencies responsible for roadside management were major users of the herbicide. Tony

Info on the field itself

Could we start a thread with some basic information on the field itself - such as size, soil type, cropping history and recent yields? I think this would be of great help when considering future options and it would be good to have all this in one place. @johncherry any info you could provide, would be much appreciated. I'm guessing this information might be already on Loomio somewhere, but I can't find it.

Thank you Oliver. What you suggest is very helpful. We have a short report on a soil survey carried out in May 2017 by David Dent of UEA. It is very technical and not easily digested by the non-scientist. I asked John if we could post a reader friendly summary of the report. If he gives permission I shall get it posted on Loomio. Best Tony

@johnanthonyallan Please post

Dear John
Thank you for approving that David Dent's 2017 soil survey report on OurField can be posted. I shall discuss with David with view to editing it to make the report accessible to the non-specialist and the new version will be posted next week. I shall be meeting David next Monday. Best