Farming methods and the ethos of OurField Weston

Golly, what a lot of catching up to do...
Grahame has rightly closed the thread about deciding what to grow, but @johnanthonyallan had posted a lot of questions for us on that thread, so I'll answer here, which seems more appropriate anyway.

Tony started off on weeds. Traditionally controlled by cultivation...simple hoeing will work if you get a dry spell afterwards so the roots can't access water. Total inversion ploughing, like digging a garden, turns the top layer of soil upside down thus smothering the weeds that were growing on the surface. This requires very accurate ploughing, as any weed which can see daylight will make a break for it. It also has the side-effect of scattering any weed seeds that were on the surface, through the soil profile. This means they may germinate at unexpected times. Thus seeds buried deep last year may be brought up by the plough and pop up when the new crop is planted. One of the theories of no-till is that seeds are left on the surface where the vast majority perish or get eaten, before getting a chance to germinate. Perversely we are now finding as our soil gets healthier that weed seeds are being buried by our enormous earthworms throwing worm-casts up, burying the seed and creating a perfect germinating environment for them. So it's not all straightforward...

Pastures are associated with healthy soils and shoe-horning a grazed ley (typically a four year long grass/legume pasture) into a seven or eight year rotation is a typical way organic farmers maintain their soil fertility. However there are good pastures and better ones, but we'll save that for another day.

Unhealthy soils will indeed have many fewer worms and creatures even lower in the food chain, in them; soil livestock is a very good and easy way of quickly gauging soil health. A high yielding crop will be grown in healthy soil with minimal competition. Strangely though, not all weeds are that competitive with the crop. The more we find out about plant to plant associations, the less the old Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' dogma makes sense...again, one for another day.

Conservation Agriculture (CA), or what we call no-till, has three basic tenets: minimal disturbance of the soil; total covering of the soil (by living plants or plant debris) and diversity. The first tends to mean merely carving a slot in the soil and dropping seed into it and then covering it over. Preferably leaving the slot at least partially covered by bits of straw or clover groundcover, or whatever. The diversity means having a good crop rotation, this prevents build up of disease, feeds different microbes in the soil (as different plants will form different associations with fungi in particular)...the ideal is to grow lots of different things at once (like the pasture, or our proposed multi-species cover crop) or, as mentioned above, selected weeds or even companion crops which can be harvested simultaneously and separated post harvest (like beans and wheat).

CA if done correctly will improve water (rain) infiltration, but isn't 100% effective on weed control...in theory, once you get rid of the surface weed seed bank, then your troubles are over. Nature isn't that soft...if you try growing monocultures, she'll add a bit of diversity. I'm hoping that if we grow a diverse mix, she won't bother adding more. Time will tell if I'm the soft one.

Which brings us to herbicides...there are lots of different herbicides that farmers use, depending on what they are growing, or hoping to grow. Some will kill grass weeds in broadleaved crops, some will act on broadleaved weeds in grain crops and a lot will kill grass weeds in grain crops. The problem grain farmers have created for themselves is that, through a variety of reasons mostly to do with lazy farming, they've allowed blackgrass to breed itself into immunity to nearly all herbicides on the market. Glyphosate kills all grasses and broadleaves, although where farmers have over-used it (like in Roundup-Ready GM crops around the world...luckily we aren't allowed GM here), immunity to glyphosate has appeared in several different species. Not blackgrass yet.

Because it kills everything, it is extremely handy for no-till farmers to clean the stubble before planting their crops and so give the crops a cracking start. I appreciate that there are concerns about glyphosate's effects on soil flora and fauna, but I honestly think that there should be much more concern about the damage tillage does to our soil, in terms of Carbon dioxide release, soil erosion, soil destruction, nitrate and phosphate release to rivers etc. Just because something has been done for thousands of years, it doesn't mean that there isn't a better way of doing it. All previous civilisations have degraded, if not destroyed, their soils before they themselves collapsed. It is not a coincidence.

Anyway, that's probably enough for now
John

Oh, and thanks @lucybradley1 for your message. Funnily enough Richard the agronomist suggested, when I said I expected the collective would rather not use glyphosate as a burn-down before we plant our covers, that we allow the blackgrass, brome and volunteer spelt which is growing in the field at the moment to grow on a bit and then be grazed off as they come to flower. This should kill them. The problem will be that we'll lose half the summer in terms of bulking up the covers and gaining maximum benefit. It also may not work. I've asked a few farmers who blew raspberries at the suggestion. Another little decision that is looming. I'll do more research.
John

Thanks for this @johncherry and, like Abby said, taking the time to share your experience and research.
I have a couple of other questions relating to the cover that your reply prompted.
The first being when do we need to plant the cover out by? And then, what sort of timeframe do you start seeing the cover having an impact, and ideally how long would the cover stay in place?

@lucybradley1 Really, the sooner the better in terms of getting maximum biomass growth, which is where we'll get the benefit from. In reality, as long as the cover is established by the time of the summer solstice so it can make good use of the long summer days, then we should be fine. A lot depends on rain and how we clear the weeds that are there now. We need to focus on getting a good start for next years wheat crop, which will want going in in mid to late September

Dear John

Your comments are as always a very good page turning read. The information content is extraordinary.

Very many thanks.

TonyA

Thanks @johncherry for filling us in on all the different possibilities. It's great to hear more about conservation agriculture and I guess it makes sense that ploughing in many ways is just as destructive as glyphosate as they are both killing much of what is in the top layer of the soil, and above it. Do you go out and spray glyphosate yourself? and if so do you never worry for your own health when doing that? or the health of other large predators on the farm?

I guess a key concern for me would be that we need to find the balance - between ideology and the reality of growing a profitable crop. I am all for taking risks but I also think we need to balance it with ensuring some successes along the way otherwise it will be difficult to keep momentum up both with the collective but also I hope it's not demoralising for John too! So @johncherry please do keep posting your thoughts here, and those of Richard. It really is super helpful to help us weigh up the risks that are worth taking and those that aren't. Plus learning so much all the time, thank you for taking the time to share!

I used to spray the roundup myself, but now I lack the suitable qualifications (you need a fistful of paperwork before you're allowed to drive a sprayer now). To be honest, I'm far more worried about artificial fertiliser rather than most sprays, in terms of soil health and sustainable farming. There is a widespread panic about tiny amounts of chemicals in food or water and then people slap weird chemicals all over their bodies to make them smell different. I don't understand it....

@oliverrubinstein I know you have worked quite a bit in organics. What are your thoughts on conservation agriculture and using glyphosate vs tilling? How would you think to terminate a cover crop in this instance?

Yep, it's a tough one. I've kind of come full circle in terms of my thinking about the use of chemicals like glyphosate. When I first starting working on an organic farm I was shocked about how much ploughing went on, to keep weeds under control. Not only does this release carbon from the soil as organic matter is oxidised - as well as damaging earthworms and other biota - there's the tractor fuel useage to think about too. On the other hand though, you're not using chemcials.

Living in Cambridgeshire, you see huge clouds of topsoil being blown off during the winter and also washed off during heavy rain, so for me, anything we can do to limit soil disturbance is a good thing. If there was a mechanical (or animal) way of getting rid of weeds or a cover crop I'd be in favour of that I think. John Pawsey in Suffolk does some amazing things in terms of profitable mechanical and animal (sheep) weed control on his organic farm in Suffolk, so it might be worth looking at that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYagENcSuAQ

Basically, growing organic cereal crops is hard (especially if you want to do no-till). Hence why the area of organic arable in the UK is so tiny yet the demand for organic produce keeps growing and growing.