Farmer Perspectives: Reducing N. Joel Williams at Groundswell 2019

well congratulations you've done well to make it to the 5:00 p.m. closing slots we'll try to make this as engaging as possible and OnPoint as possible so that so as not to delay everyone's arrival at the earth where mom's I'm sure I'll be looking forward to a beverage myself so we have a panel for today on the topic of reducing nitrogen inputs and how we're going to kind of flow this session is I'm just going to say a few things to kick off then we'll hear from each of our three farmer panelists Andy Howard Tim Parton and Kristy after that I've got a selection of very brief just kind of pinpoint bullet point couple of comments case studies from Twitter so I put out a post on Twitter and asked for to hear what farmers are doing and many replied so I'm just going to share a few quick stories from Twitter then we will slide into having a bit of a discussion about whatever comes up in the next 30 odd minutes we'll see we'll have a quick discussion of that and then open open that up for to the floor to hear from you guys to ask questions to our panelists let's keep a little discussion base very happy it's not too busy in the room so very happy for us to have some time for a discussion there at the end and and equally from any of you in the audience I mean some of you might not have seen my tweet if you've got something to tell if you have a case study that belongs up here that we haven't happened to end up discussing please chime in in the in the final question discussion there if you've just got a contribution to make of something that you've done that we haven't covered that doesn't come up please share it I want to hear equally from your perspectives the farmers out there in the audience right now as well as now a couple up on stage so so please do chime in and make this an inclusive kind of discussion so let's get started the reason that this topic comes up of course is that nitrogen is our nitrogen inputs of course are notoriously reactive in the soil and in the environment and we typically see nitrogen use efficiency x' hovering around this 50 odd percent mark okay you know it adds and flows forty to sixty percent you hear all sorts of different figures but really there's a lot of kind of studies have been done on this there's a lot of evidence that supports this kind of overall figure of around about fifty percent nitrogen use efficiency so clearly all that very states to me very clearly is that there's a lot of opportunity for us to to do better to improve what we're doing now are we ever going to get one to 100 percent efficiency probably probably not no but there's plenty of room for improvement is how I interpret that number hence why the suggestion to put together this kind of topic in this panel discussion today so nitrogen is a big issue in the environment it's not only from a economic point of view and optimizing your profitability on the farm of course this reactive nitrogen that is highly leachable highly volatile izybelle it enters into the ecosystem where it can cause a lot of ecosystem degradation and so there was a study here just published in 2017 looking at the nitrates down the nitrate leaching and particularly the reservoirs down in our ground waters and down in our bedrock and we see these kind of media lines like this one here scale of the nitrate timebomb revealed there's a significant reserves of nitrates down in the bedrock that are working their way down progressively ultimately ending up in our you know ground waters and water systems etc so particularly from the point of view of nitrates there's a very strong and direct concern about the effects of these in the ecosystem so again another good reason why we should be having this discussion it's good for your economics and it will be good for the environment if we can begin this process of improving those efficiencies and minimizing those leaching and nitrogen losses so this is kind of the global picture this is what we see the red is the real hot spots this is specifically looking at nitrate leaching again just on this particular topic and you can see the real hot spots here in North America Western Europe and various parts of Asia there are kind of the real hot spots of nitrogen leaching and so this is the problem that we face you can see it's a rather significant problem a global problem and definitely something that is of course on the agenda it is on the agenda there's there's a lot of conversations around this but lots there lots of room for improvement that we need to do and part of this discussion involves or a part of this problem I think that we've see this such a just an eminent problem that we see is that you know we've been drilled this idea about you know plants taking up nitrogen and that they take up the nitrate and ammonium form and you know this is all of our learning all of our thinking all of our nutrient management it's dominated in this these two pieces of the puzzle or how do we optimize these how do we manage these the role of these two nutrients in plant nutrition there's such a dominant kind of narrative around nitrate and ammonium but plants use all other sorts of nitrogen as well organic sources of nitrogen amino acids indeed they do absorb proteins they absorb your ear of course is another compound that they also absorb that they can use as part of plant nutrition so opening up this dialogue and including some of the missing pieces amino acids proteins and how they fit into the picture is also got to be as part of part of the dialogue and part of the discussion and of course it comes down to then the obvious things nitrogen fixation legumes so we there's a lot of opportunity there for the use of legumes I'm sure this will come up now in our discussion but some very basic things like making sure that we have the right species of nitrogen fixing bacteria and the right Rhizobium species matched to the right crop you know there are some fundamentals there that we can be looking out for and also then thinking about some of the other factors that govern nitrogen fixation of course not a fixation being a critical tool that we can use in this story and understanding the role of nutrition and the minerals which help the the nitrogen fixation process so in the role of molybdenum iron and nickel you know three trace minerals which have a direct a specific role for the bacteria they need those three minerals to make the enzymes that help them grab the nitrogen and convert it and deliver it to the plants so I feel like I'm standing in front of everybody here molybdenum iron nickel should definitely be on our radar and I'm not talking for the plants I'm talking for the bacteria did the bacteria have enough molybdenum iron and nickel and okay if we move on to then legumes specifically the first three I'm talking about a nitrogen fixation across the board but then if we move into legumes well for rhizobia calcium also really important boron also real important cobalt copper phosphorus all of these minerals are critically required by the bacteria in order for them to deliver this job so question is are we managing these are these constraints - nitrogen fixation in some instances they may well be are they holding back the potential of that free nitrogen and of course we then need to go beyond that and Andrew and of course remember that well it's not just legumes that fix nitrogen all plants can indeed fix nitrogen through their associations with free-living nitrogen fixing bacteria bacteria that don't have to form the nodules and associate with legumes but bacteria that will happily hibernate live around the root system of any plant and receive the sugars and root exudates in exchange for fixing nitrogen this was one study here just published last year a fascinating one identifying these particular variety of maize a land race of maize come from cultured by the native peoples in Mexico and these very low nitrogen soils they've been seed saving for many successive generations and so over time the plant has evolved to develop these aerial roots and what the study last year showed is that these maize here is exuding this very specific new cyllage those root exudates you can see covering those aerial roots they develop these aerial roots and excrete this specific food source that recruits the free living nitrogen fixing bacteria so the maize itself is certainly forming that association with the free living and it has evolved these specific roots and specific root exudates to facilitate that process as the study showed this particular variety of maize has the ability to fix anywhere from 30 up to 80 percent of its total nitrogen requirements through the bacteria through the symbolic fixation okay so it's not just legumes we also need to think about how we can optimize this process for other plants as well okay so I just want to set the scene there this is our topic we will now this is not really about me at all I really want this to be about the farmers I want to hear from the farmers we want to have this discussion here so I just wanted to lay the story there and now if we can invite our first panelist up um Andy Howard will be kicking off first to share some of his experiences then we'll hear from Tim and Doug after that okay good afternoon for those who don't know me just to set the scene I am a farmer from Kent family farm just click through with mom and dad on the farm we've been no-till for since 2011 and stripped still since 2007 most none of our farm seen a player since 2001 and I don't actually know how to plow so that's a good start and we grow a wide variety of crops and some inter crops as well which I'll talk about in a minute and we also grow cover crops as well overwinter yep so just about five years ago when Joel well I started working with Joel on the farm he said I've got to the stage where my yields have what be staying the same but my costs were going up I was doing all this biological stuff I was all still still doing all the chemical stuff so I came to decision what we need to reduce our inputs so four years ago we decided to gradually attempts in every year reduce our inputs so we're now in year four so in terms of nitrogen I'm using now 40% less nitrogen on my crops and I explain how in a minute we've also reduced insecticides I've just done one three one three hectare field with insecticide this year on linseed and fungicides we're down below 50% what we were before so those two have been relatively easy the nitrogen is bit more fluid and not quite so easy to manage but I will say what I'm going to talk about as Joel said there's no magic bullet to this well I base everything we do on is a balanced soil healthy soil leading to a healthy plant which then doesn't need all the interventions including nitrogen and in my understanding nitrogen is the driver of disease nitrogen is the driver of insect pressure so a lot of the problems we have in our cropping is because we put far too much nitrogen on in my opinion so now I've started to reduce those things we see are less less disease pressure less stress in the plant there's many ways that I try to reduce our nitrogen inputs and this slide normally takes about half an hour I'm doing talks so I have to quickly whiz through them and hopefully we can sort of tease out more detail in the discussion afterwards one of the first thing as I said is in crowd encouraging soil biology and the growing own cover crops so I feel the cover crops were keeping the nitrogen in the system so people say to me our cover crops worth growing I say well the studies done by Kings reckon that you save about you don't lose about seventy kilograms of in per hectare overwinter if you had bare fallow so that seventy 70 kilos for me is then in the system for my spring barley or spring oats so yes in terms of nitrogen cover crops are definitely worth growing just we're getting that root in to hold it I don't believe that cover crops necessarily fix much nitrogen but I think they're more of a scavenger so that's another method intercropping which is my pet subject I did enough of scholarship on it and I'll talk a bit more about it in a minute on my last slide because it's one the one thing I think eventually once it works all the nuances out will be the thing that really mean we'll be able to reduce our nitrogen just by using the Simba symbiotic relationships between plants living mulch which this is if you were here for Frederick Thomas he was talking about growing a permanent understory of alfalfa lucerne or clover we have done this we have tried it not always very successfully we're still learning how to do it but the guy I saw in France had cut his nitrogen in half just why having lucerne growing with his crop for four years in the bottom and he just cropped normally on top and he also had eliminated need fungicides so once we got this one sorted of knowing how to do it I believe it can really benefit and help us reduce nitrogen monitor plant levels so next slide I'll show you throughout the growing season about every week I'm going through the crop doing things like bricks SAP pH but also checking for nitrogen level I've got no they are I handheld n testers which I find gives me a good guide it highlights interesting things for example the common thought is after spring oats or asked for a second week you need more nitrogen well I found in our system we leaving this n tester there's absolutely no difference whether it's a first week secondly we asked ropes we after beans we after all seed rape the nitrogen was exactly the same so I didn't need that extra thirty kilograms of in that apparently is both in need so that gave me good guidance of this levels in my crops at that time and I do use it to tweak nitrogen levels throughout the growing season but it's also shown me as I've reduced my nitrogen by 10% every year that this year our nitrogen status exactly the same as it were two years ago in our wheat crops but I've used 20% less nitrogen so you know gives me confidence that we're going in the right direction I'm sure we all make mistakes but you know our efficiency is going up I also think I don't know what Joel things but I also think nitrogen bit of a drug for the soil the more you use and more you need you've got acetone we know soil off nitrogen and those things like the micro Z the free lizzing free living bacteria will start to come back and start to fill that gap I'm not saying can go 100 percent off I'm sure that's what's happening because what we're doing is encouraging the healthy soil we also brew up biologicals that go in with a seed so for nitrogen fixers will brew up the day before planting for 24 hours it will be in an IBC with an air pump and that'll costs us about 10 pounder no five pound a hectare and we should get at least 30 kilograms a 10 from that and maybe a hundred bit like all these things there's quite a wide range of what you might get so that's another strategy we use is by mixing up try the derma and things and things like trichoderma also a good fungal diseases in your sword as well so it's a there's a two way thing going on there and it's five-pound a hectare for me is cheap and simple we also especially for our spring crops we place nitrogen in the soil next to the seed things like urea disappear up in the grip up in the air especially in a dry spring so we've managed to cut our nitrogen usage on spring barley for example by 30 percent just by putting it next to the seed quite a simple thing that we have got the correct drill for doing it but it makes you know all happens the dry spring you plant your spring barley then it doesn't rain for two months and he broadcast your nitrogen it just sits there by putting a nested seed it's quite a simple way of improving in nitrogen deficiency and one of the things that Joel came to the farm with was mixing our there's two things they're actually foliar nitrogen so folia nitrogen is much more efficient than broadcast nitrogen but you can't get enough in so you can't replace the whole amount of fell in holy mountain nitrogen through foley is but you can make a certain proportion more efficient is it three to six times more efficient going through the leaf about that about that so we do that at saying wheat will do a little bit at t1 a little bit of t2 and a little bit of t3 all that doing is just keeping those levels up another strategy we use and the last one is the mixing with carbon so when you put nitrogen on it immediately want to associate use carbon from your soil or burn off carbon to your soil and you risk losing the nitrogen so if you mix we mix our nitrogen with boron humates which is hopefully you get less volatilization you get less leaching and the research shows about 30% better efficiency of your broadcast nitrogen and if you're doing liquid nitrogen you can use things like boost to it with George over here again to increase the efficiency of your fertilizer you're actually applying quite simple things to do with nitrogen when you're applying it and we do do a little bit of variable rate I've got a cheap three grand sensor I bought ten years ago I put on the front of the sprayer but it's like the most variable rate I'll spread it goes 24 meters so it's not that precise so it's just really altering across the field not what I wouldn't call it precise and these are the meters I use that's it that's the middle one is for nitrogen I find it useful it is quite expensive but I think they've just bought a new one out what I would wish they do is they do algorithms for spring crops and for other crops it's very limited so winter weekend went to barley but I find it very useful it's patriot cell for many times over and the last one I wanted to talk about was the intercropping so this is a field of peas and all seed rape which I grew two years ago they had no fertilizer and this is a tissue analysis from the Aussie drape and apart from the potash normally lo with anyway it's got plenty of nitrogen because it's associated with the peas but I haven't applied any and again this year we're growing winter bitter spring beans and spring spring oats and there's more nitrogen in our spring oats with a mix with the spring beans than my oats that have had 80 kilograms of nitrogen place to the seed so there's something going on when you must start mixing plants and it means that they can have access nitrogen and all the other things Joel talks about the nickel and everything is some symbiosis going on I don't think we all quite understand it does highlight that you don't need lots of nitrogen to get healthy nitrogen status in your plants I think that's me I could have to noon everybody first slide please I bar manager at buried Park farm we're a 300 hectare farm growing a wide variety of cereals as wide as I can I tried to grow what's best for the soil but also what we can make some money out of hopefully we do a lot of haley's for horses so I like to keep grass in the rotation not to repeat too much what Andy says I to do a lot of bricks readings I use the pH and I use a nitrogen tester always trying to keep that balance and just keep crops as balanced as we can I use liquid fertilizer and I always put a carbon source with it I'm always trying to grow as much nitrogen as I can just basically to keep costs down and cover crops always working well with getting the soil better obviously so this is a cover crop of beans rye and vet I grow the veg purposely if the frost takes the beans out the vets will soak up the nutrients hopefully so the nitrogen isn't getting wasted it's still there waiting for my following crop I tried to farm as biologically as possible always using biology first and then fungicides insecticides afterwards I haven't used any insecticides for the last five years this year I didn't do a T naught fungicide I did a little bit of t one on some of the weight I didn't do a t2 and I did a t3 on some of the wheat so I'm always trying to drive down but I'll always try and use biology first and keep fungicides as a backup that's the one of the root systems of one of the bean plants this time see you can see the aggregates you can see the biology is working in there so for me the old systems working I'm keeping any nitrogen that was left over with the Rye growing and the bean so it's just keeping the whole system functioning it's always what I'm trying to do is just keep everything from kids functioning get a healthy soil healthy plants healthy people that's a dry matter report of the beans of that crop I don't know whether you can see very well but I've got basically two hundred and forty two kilos of nitrogen an awful lot of light region but it was just keeping it there for the next crop I think probably that year I lost an awful lot of lateralization I didn't manage to cycle it that well so the following year I've incorporated sheep to basically make that crop into a fertilizer ready for the next crop to use it worked really well the money I had from the grazing of the Sheep paid for the seat all the while making the old system sustainable and not adding extra costs of the farm I'd never graze down low so I'm always trying to 50% up or 30% left of the crop so I don't get the poaching it carries that the Sheep really well and it works and then hopefully that will just start and grow again and keep those nutrient cycling until I do go in and drill my spring barley that's just just sharing the spring bolli coming up and I just wanted to show I'd still got that understory of cover there and hopefully just had just holding it all together I use a lot of biology so when I'm drilling of our Brewer bacillus nitrogen fixing bacteria and Trichoderma so I'm always trying to sustain fight disease and release all those nutrients because when you've got Percy listen you've got trichoderma if your soil isn't quite there to have the mycorrhizae starting to come back in it's a very very close brother so it's it's doing the same thing for you it's releasing those nutrients as you were getting the plants off to a really good start and as Andy said it's five pound a hectare why would anybody won't want the free nitrogen like you know I can always guarantee I get 40 kilos and I've had a lot more one the first year I tried it I did it as a foliar I reduced my nitrogen on my wheat by 40 kilos to the hectare just to cover the cost of the of the nitrogen fixing bacteria because at that I wasn't brewing I was just using it straight so it costs a lot more and where I where I'd done the trial I've got an extra ton of weight - per hectare compared to my conventionally drilled weight so that was the first year I did it and it was a real success which then got me even more interested into brewing and bringing the whole process down and making the whole thing cheaper this was a barley trial I did last year it doesn't show up very well the side to the left he's done totally with biology so a trillion the biology went down the spout next to the seed I didn't use any fungicides I just brewed up bacillus to fight disease an awful lot of tissue testing to make sure we got the plant balance the right nutrition so the disease shouldn't be coming in I used 40 kilos of nitrogen per hectare on the left-hand side the right-hand side was about 90 and disease wasn't there wasn't you couldn't see any difference between the two it was it was it was fantastic really - for me to see all happening and not to be using the fungicides and not to have spent the money on nitrogen that was one of the tissue tests I had done just for my own fascination really just to see what was really going on in my own head just to see that it was working the left hand side is the applied nitrogen the right hand side is the other biology and as you can see that you know there's no difference between the two except the fact I was saving fifty pound to the hectare with the biology treated and obviously why not using the fungicides I was getting far better healthy soil and it was sitting right with me that I was farming far more environmentally friendly that's the combined yield monitor and the trial is down that sort of blue line there it's a little bit lighter that side of the field which is why it's a little bit bluer on the right-hand side but as you can see where the barley trial was that you know there's no real difference the combine didn't show any real differences going across it the quality of the barley was better I got bolting on that bit so this year I've done a lot more but it was a win-win for me again that's not a very good slide but that is a trial I've got going this year the left-hand side has only had a hundred kilos of nitrogen by using biology as well the right-hand side is my conventional which is 180 kilos of nitrogen that I mean 180s reduced from where I used to be probably only using a carbon source when applying my soil applied and as Andy does I do cleve test a lot just to top what we Foley as if I need to and just monitoring the crop constantly that one will be interesting to see this time just to see what the combine says really with the yield monitor oh my soul starting to cycle a lot better and I don't need to be applying the hundred and eighty or am I just pushing my luck too far I don't know what unless we do these trials and unless we do on ourselves I don't see as anybody's going to do it for us and it's something you know I think every farm should be doing a trial just to see what's happening because every farm is different and none of us know for sure what's going on because it's all new but I can assure you no fertilizer company's going to do this work for let's see they it's gotta come from us and that I booked cover crops in 50% cuz I'm fifty percent spring cropping but that was just really just to show out that cover crop that's had no input from me at all that's just growing naturally and just soaking up all that excess nitrogen which will then be cycling into my next crop so where it's just you just put that in really just to show how everything is cycling and working on the farm and that's me and Joe hasn't given me the tea so I know I've done well [Applause] good evening I'm Doug Christie I farm in Fife in Scotland on 300 oh I've got my farm in Scotland over three hundred five hundred hectares in total the 1/3 of the farms livestock based organic production the only things I buy onto that part of the farm import onto the farm are minerals balls and occasionally seeds at a bit of maggoty sulphate it is totally sustainable if you want to use that word in an ideal world I'd like to take that to the all the rest of the farm but just for some for various reasons I can't ramp up and I'm livestock numbers could considerably but that's possibly something to look at at the future the the rest of the farm two thirds of the farmer about just over 300 hectares of stockless arable rotation and over the last since the last 20 years majority of that land hasn't been plowed and over the last six seven years I've been direct really at all the main the main reason for for looking at reducing nitrogen is as Andy said the the I'm finding it's probably a driver for pests and diseases and I've and I've and I've seen that at under organic situation growing crops on an organic situation after five years of grass for example there's virtually no disease in those crops in spring barley or the oats and I can get up to sort of two tons an acre average on those crops and it beats me up why on the conventional side I've got to put all this nitrogen as soon as you put the nitrogen on you've got to spray the fungicides you've got to put the hands and the weeds get the noxious weeds get out of control which is not really a big problem in the organic side you can have the next slide please this is this is a rough idea of the nitrogen use over the last ten years I have not been nearly as successful as reducing nitrogen along conventional part of the farmers as Tim and Andy and I'm probably a good reason why I'm third on the line-up of speakers throughout but over the whole farm and this is including that the organic part of the farm I am slowly beginning to reduce the amount of nitrogen bought in nitrogen on the farm last euro is a slight adornment anomaly the right-hand column here is the kilograms of nitrogen used per tonne of outputs of the cereals now that's not taking account of the livestock exports of the farm but it gives a rough idea it has been going downs and that's this is taken as a whole farm basis the outputs the so that's probably the last most important line to look at at the end there and that's the average kilograms per hectare used of nitrogen over the over the last ten years the farmyard manure created by the cattle have not been included in these calculations on the right column it's impossible to move on to the next slide the ways I've been managing to do this or it's it's becoming higher up on my list of priorities is reducing the nitrogen now this is me 20 years ago I don't really do things by halves I like jumping in and not doing and and I've learnt quite heavily from my mistakes of the past and in trying new things because I've gone head first it's a lot of things but this is me starting off direct drilling or shallow cultivations and drilling to turn for 20 years ago next slide please so direct drilling has been one reason while I've been being able to reduce the nitrogen use one of the other facets is basically the facets covering regenerative agriculture as a whole so having living roots in the soil at all time it's very important this is a crow a companion cropped last year of oats oil seed rape and spring peas it did reasonably well but that crop I put 20 20 kilograms a hectare of nitrogen on in total no fungicide and a very small amount of herbicide and it Jose just shows what you can what you can and no insecticide not used any insecticides on the farm for 20 years it just shows what you can do without meant much in the way of inputs so and the crop the crop all the way through the year looked very healthy there was a slight divergence in the harvesting dates but luckily with a wing and a prayer I managed to get it all harvested without too much dropping on the ground so that's incorporating diversity and living and living roots into the soil and and soil cover as maximizing that on the farm is it possible to ship across also is living roots throughout the year so as Gabe ran says what what did you say in North Dakota is its I empathize what he was what he said carbon drives everything so I pry I'm trying to begin to prioritize getting carbon into the soil as much as possible so this is a multi-species cover crop grown last winter in Scotland this is exceptional in Scotland it's not this is most years the cover crops get to a sort of an inch high and then they then is then it gets quite cold so this produced 16 and a half tonnes a hectare of fresh weight and one point six five tonnes a hectare of dry matter I could have I could have that's a ten hectare field I could have grazed 2530 cares on that field for a for a month and that is it possible to shift to the other for the next slide that's the that's the analysis of that crop so I chopped wood chopped it all up with a pair of scissors and sent it away for analysis analysis and that is just basically I put the sowed the crop with using home safe seed and I wish I could get analysis like this in every crop unfortunately on some of the the cash crops I grow it's not nearly like this but the 70 kilos of that crop is up taken into the into the chutes 70 truffula 70 kilos a hectare of nitrogen 70 kilos a hectare of potash which hopefully which will be available for the next crop at some stage but it's it's it's a dark heart try well it for me it's a dark art trying to see where it's available and it's more often more available roughly at this time of the year rather than earlier on in the spring we had a very cold spring earlier on the species mix in that was mostly home save seed and it was linseed P linseed beans oats some radish or mustard and some vets rotation is also very important the farm I've shortened my being able to reduce nitrogens now has I've used I've shortened the rotation to be able to reduce the nitrogen so I have a break crop every three years now rather than every four or five years which I used to have originally so the rotation is basically wheat barley and then a break crop and I'm including legumes a lot more in the break crops today you sty used to grow a lot of winter oil seed rape that rape and that's I'm doing less so now I'm not doing any winter oil seed rape now but I'm every every break crop includes a legume of some sort whether it be beans or peas or vet or vetches and also at every opportunity I'm hoping to get up a cover crop over the winter prior to spring cropping and that those cover crops also included legumes next slide please and I spoke briefly about the organic side of the KU farm but I'm just beginning to trial try mob grazing at a very primitive scale that's a very big paddock for those seventy cows in calf sand two bulls but um it's a very steep learning curve and certainly a no-brainer if you're moving straight from set stocking and I think that's it thank you [Applause] thank you very much okay yep so and we're gonna rapid-fire through these so a mindful of time so as I mentioned I just want to share a few just other ideas from a few other farmers that and if any of you are in here the audience today feel free to chime in and add more details some of these I don't have a final result on outcome I just again sharing some I so I might have some results some I just have the ideas or the strategy of what their what the farmer is trying so I'm mindful that we had a very dominant of arable crop is here but it's glad to hear that we had some livestock integration coming in but I did try and have a livestock farmer up here but the two that I asked couldn't quite make it so again it's a couple of other examples perhaps on the livestock half right this is Rob Drysdale from Horsham purchased end being reduced by two-thirds over the past two years also output quality of grass is is up it's still early days but silage is already 2 to 3 percent up in protein and about 10% up in yield on a second cut despite dry conditions key strategies used was lots of composting lots of strategic compost spreading tine harrowing over seeding with clover for in capture and targeted use of sulfur ok so again I don't have all of the details of specifics I'm just throwing all sorts of various ideas out that I've had here ok thomas Stobart from Cambria again this was many grazing infrastructure was his strategy here techno grazing has been the main tool that we've used to reduce our in better budgeting of Grass higher farm cover and therefore grazing further and longer into the season nitrogen as a feed supplement also has consequently been reduced okay Sam Vincent another farmer that partly went organic as well as one strategy to reduce nitrogen main change however was from adopting also mob grazing so there's another theme here picked up from reading Joel Salatin of course as well as fertilizer we've cut many inputs Sarah mentioned particularly P and K has come down including concentrates for the animals now early feeding dairy cows some basic concentrate and the young stock also on all pastures this is Michael Leyland use of cover crops and Syria ahead of cereals so intentional use of covers there prior to those cereals in the rotation also a shift in the crop choice Simon Cowell replied to this but I haven't included him here because we'll chat with him tomorrow but he's his his thoughts was also cropped choice is also a key strategy here to also be lowering that nitrogen and I heard this theme of cutting out oil seed rape from a couple of you I know and he's done a bit the same but so shift from winter to spring barley going from 200 down 250 kgs of nitrogen now looking towards spring oats and a further reduction down to 110 kgs more grass in the arable rotation so again fertility lays and herbal layers etc but in bringing the the grasses into the era balls integrating livestock and then the following cash crops of course receiving less nitrogen and composting this was been a big big one for Michael he spoke wrote to me in detail about various things he's using and really getting quite into the composting of his manure side of things so in a much more intentional active management of that manure resource turning and producing a better quality compost as one key tool so he was spoke at length about composting as as a key tool now this one I'm going to share this was Jamie from Shetland sent me some very extensive information on folio trials that he's doing so I'm just going to show a little bit of his he gave me quite a lot of information I'm just gonna try and summarize as quickly as I can but his key strategy that he was playing around with it was folio urea and also he's done following a k trial and then also the integration of carbon and again a theme that we've heard a little bit already today bringing carbon base into the mix of the fertilisers so I'm just going to share some of his results from three tram lines that he did so one was a potassium foliar tram line one and treble and two was the control no foliar and tram line three was potassium as well as a urea base so potassium and nitrogen and carbon so next slide I've got to some of his kind of results quickly here so these are some plate readings and so if you just remember here trem 1-1 was potassium to was control three was potassium and urea so you can see could just on a couple of different dates here looking at his plate readings you can see that you know that extra component there is the third treatment here he's got higher there also higher here four hundred eight hundred versus forty one hundred and down here a bit later on in the season six to three hundred versus fifty five hundred these kinds of figures he's also got some kind of cuts weights here on his swath so you can see here the control two hundred he bumped up to two to five when he had the falling okay and then went up to 265 with K and the nitrogen I should say he's got very low K soils that's kind of why he was playing around with the potassium very live sandy soils that he struggles to kind of hold on to that potassium okay and then just some other figures on here if maybe I'll just cut to the summary I'm mindful of time so yield differences the control in the middle here we can kind of see where he is integrated the K in terms of dry matter yield and proteins and sugars here so you can see a couple of them jumping up here and where he's had the K and the nitrogen perhaps some slightly larger increases further so you know mixed bag of results there but okay he's seeing that the effectiveness of the foliar spray as a strategy to get the nutrition in and to help drive overall plant and plant health and production okay so follow your ear was another topic that came up this was one from Ireland here Leslie Dwyer who was in silage saying that he's seeing equivalent response from 25 kgs of foliar versus 125 being applied down onto the soil heals also play around some slurry treatments and biological and fixes I don't have any details on that but they were part of again an integrated strategy fertilizer coatings was another one this is phillip breck also from ireland trying with seaweed and humates so a carbon source coating the fertilizer granules okay I don't have any follow up Phillip Aden Phillips here today that I'm having this is honor he's trying this kind of this year so again I'm just throwing different ideas out at you carbon based to that nitrogen fertilizer George hozier from down in wheelchair so cereals he's seen a 10 to 20 percent reduction in nitrogen via combining with carbon so using molasses carbon base with his nitrogen inputs and then dialing down those nitrogen's on his or see drape he's achieved a 30% reduction same deal combining with carbon but also adding an additional companion and legume companion veg or beans so again you know we're seeing these recurring themes trickling here of these 10 and 20 these kind of schedules step down reductions I think this is very good strategies that we should all be thinking about okay and then Fred price did sent me quite a lot of he really took this approach of fine-tuning his soil and tissue analysis doing a lot of really real time kind of micromanaging again if Fred's here he can chime in as when we have a discussion but again carbon molasses-based to his nitrogen inputs also following a substitutions again more recurring themes here he's also integrated cover crops mixed lays perennial forages and pigs bringing pigs and using them of course as part of the arable rotation he was stepping down in 20 percent increments and he's basically gone from 220 to 250 kgs of nitrogen per hectare down to 80 for wheat and 40 for oil seed rape and I think Fred's got the right idea again I don't want to I don't want to delay us to further but I can see some beer and soil to to very important and interesting themes that we also need to go and explore later on at the at the earthworm arms okay I think that was my last one okay it was so if we can grab everybody up for a quick discussion all I just want to do is ask a few questions for everybody and if you can each give me your answers and open it up to the floor I really would like to hear from the audience to ask these guys draw on their experiences what they've done etc and to kind of carry on the discussion here okay so we heard a lot of different things there's been a few recurring themes that I jotted down oh yes sorry thank you yes we can grab both of those so got that here I am with my microphone but and I have to steal one of those back off you before we ask questions okay so I think let's ask maybe start with just a very quick general question you know this whole topic of soil health it's very much on the agenda and the radar these days thank you to events like this and we can see how many attendees this event keeps growing from strength to strength and there's such engagement in the topic of soil in recent years and we're all very well aware of this to the point sometimes where some of us maybe even get a bit sick of hearing about soil health I dare say it but just curious to know perhaps from our panelists here what was there a particular lime bulb moment or particular something that happened to you a talk that you went to a book that you read something you saw in the field that kind of really sparked your interest in soils and in soil health was it was there a particular something that kind of kicked this off for you in any order for me reading your old boss's book on Grahams site it just completely over my eyes I always thought if you got disease you need fungicide and having someone read it series of interviews is about 15 20 years old this book is called nutrition rules and he studied can flip switch on my mind and thinking well actually no a lot of things we're doing on the farm are our own fault so that that book from Graham sake was probably the one that was the biggest switch for me for me I've always been interested in soil and I started just to notice our soil was degrading and how I was putting more and more inputs on and I just thought there's got to be a better way soil is such a finite resource it's you know it's so valuable without soil we're all dead just and I just wanted to look after it more and because I got really nerdy about it the more I looked into it the more I got into it and the more I wanted and they just stems from there really I just once I got on the subject I couldn't leave it alone so that's just me I think well I started maybe 20 years ago of direct drilling it was more out of laziness laziness and getting incredibly bored going up and down a field plowing that prompted it but it morphed into something else and and I started then I started with cover cropping and trying around a bit of cover cover cropping and so on and mixing and mucking around with the rotations but the real lightbulb moment was going and seeing some of these very far sort of outward thinking out of the box thinking farmers in the in North Dakota in the States and that really made me realize what I was aiming for now I know my my end game now I've got a very good clear understanding of what my end game is now I've got a long way to go and I make lots of mistakes still but I'm confident and where I'm going is is it's the right way and hopefully will improve the good margins on the farming future as well as soil health Thanks what are the I mean just on that point there Doug one of the criticisms perhaps is when we draw information or you know experiences from abroad you know different countries different contexts this is often as we're all the way often picked up as a negative but for some people I mean for you they're you you saw something that clearly very captured your imagination you were able to translate that back obviously not directly but you're able to translate that back to it it's the same same principles apply there it's as here okay you've got a tinker with it a bit if you're bringing in principles across from there but it was more the mindset and thinking behind what they were doing it was some of these farmers backs were against the wall for a few years and they had to radically change there was no out of the bottle out of the out of a box solution to it they had to think of the way to get out of the fix there are in themselves and and it opened up a whole new vision of how sort of to go about farming in the future okay and Tim and Andy both of you one of the commonalities that popped up in your discussions here was the role of plant monitoring SAP monitoring in various kind of plant more trees this was a key kind of theme that they both discussed I think and you kind of raised a very good point there it's it's giving you that assurance there you know as you're beginning this process of dialing down those reductions of that inputs we can still be using monitoring the plant asking the plant directly and you know checking our progress through through that so good to see you both they're kind of using those tools it is there anything particular that you have found or that you could elaborate on in in kind of what your experiences of using that directly managing the plant itself or I think the thing for me the one real astounding thing is the lesson I put on the higher the Brix reading or every time and just the plants just healthy the disease isn't there when I put the nitrogen on it but it's just getting that balance and I'm not saying I've involved with no nitrogen it's just finding the balance the sweet point of where we where we want to be and we'll get there I mean my philosophy is we can solve every problem we just haven't thought of it yet and you just got to keep driving and as I can take trials trials trials we've all got to do trials but yes it's the more we keep more we can learn and if we can share what we learn in it's even better because it saves us all having to go through the same vein because you know we've I've had loads of balls ups but you can't give up this is our future and we've just got to keep pushing at it because we will get there in terms of the sampling I'd say they're all very useful but by themselves you can't hang your hat on one thing I mean bricks is great but just because you've got bricks over 12 doesn't necessarily mean you can will go on holiday for three weeks you're taking context of the weather the temperature the cropping the date so that's why I used three or four and I do the tissue testing that Tim does as well a nice thing you have to look at it as a trend over the years not necessarily something you can't take one year and think wow or this is going wrong you've got to start looking at trends from year to year and hope you see it gradually improvement and that's what I take from the tissue testing and I think with the tissue testing you can test one day on whether you found this and DB you can test two days later in the biology is actually working and it'll be a different result the biology has such an influence on the plant but the temperature has of such an influence on the biology and that's as andy says it's all pieces to the jigsaw that we're both using to get to the full puzzle and it's just never stopped really and it's experience every year I don't know whether you find it and leave you just keep learning little bits to the puzzle every year with the other commonality that came out of both of yours was the foliar and this carbon edition and that came through in some of our other case studies how important do you see that addition of carbon as a base to to your fertilizer inputs being particularly nitrogen but I wouldn't I wouldn't apply nitrogen without adding a carbon source it's I've done trials in my garden where I'd use a good not carbon source I mean I use nurture but those anything but it's their only feed I mean when I've used nurture which has got the full week and the humic acid in it just feeds the biology the biology just comes alive and I've done the trial this year on my law and it still we've only three or four times and it still is Green is green and it's just pretty for the wild because it's all different so it just proves it in my head but I wouldn't apply nitrogen without a carbon source because I'm keeping my nitrogen why do I want to let that just run and pollute everywhere and I'm spending good money on it I want to keep it as long as I can and utilize as much as I can and reduce what I'm putting on because the more I'm putting on the more damage it's doing and if I can keep everything down that aisle picture he's just getting healthier so I wouldn't do not chitin without carbon source yes for me it's the efficiency it's also when you understand that when you apply a notch and it's going to be used carbon from your soil and as we've said carbon drive everything if you're using lots of nitrogen with no cup and you're losing your soil carbon so you're trying to get soil organic matches up it's very difficult unless you're losing lots of compost if you're gonna put 300 kilograms of nitrogen on you'll be losing stuff up and you know it'll be going with you losing nitrogen I did hear it someone told me that for every every kilogram of excess nitrogen you use you lose 100 kilograms of carbon from your soil that seems quite excessive but even if it's 10 you know for every excess kilogram of nitrogen use you lose 100 kilograms of carbon sink and mount up so for me but adding the carbon is essential okay all right and we've heard a little bit of what you're all doing so perhaps a quick comment and we'll open it up to the floor but before we do perhaps a quick comment from each of you our on where to next you know warrior warrior is there any new strategies in the pipeline or what is the next tweak or refinement that you're looking at integrating for all of you you can start Doug if you like give these guys a break for a second not necessarily I think I'm on the right but as long as I'm good the main thing I've got to remind myself I'm following default sort of precepts of regenerative agriculture or whoever however much you want to call it is just keep keep the soil covered keep living roots of the soil at all times and a diversity getting as many plant species into your rotation as possible and hopefully carbon the basalt carbon rose reserves will will will increase over time but I do want to go I do want to take the compost thing further and I want to dig a lot more add a lot more compost with the farmyard manure that I make and maybe adding wood chips into that and experimenting with with that I haven't I've way behind a lot of other farmers on this front but that's the next step for me I guess the next step is to increase the intercropping because i've just seen as you just said diversity the diversity of the rotation but diversity within the field it's amazing when you start mixing things together it doesn't always work brilliantly but the disease disappears the need for fertilizer disappears for me it's the one thing that we can get the technological technological things correct and learn how to do it it's gonna be a game-changer but it's not necessarily simple so for me it's increasing the amount of intercropping and well for me but I'm increasing my cover crop mixes I'm up to 11 species this year I'd like to get up to 20 and then the big one for me is just to get an understory a clover growing all the while so I've got that constant feed interaction with the biology and the form go to keep it going but also that hopefully that nitrogen coming back to feed the crop so that's my big one it's just to get clover growing the constant can I just also add the importance of livestock enormous scopes there on arable farmers to integrate a lot more livestock into the farm because they're that they're the driver of my sustainable sort of organic part of the farm I don't buy anything and I don't buy any nitrogen in but I think there's a huge part for them to play in conventional farms mopping up cover crops and even using summer cover cover crops as break crops and reducing weed burdens over the years because we've got ourselves into this scenario we've got a lot of weeds out there which are very difficult to and livestock have got to have an integral part to be able to to address that problem okay thank you very much oh that's excellent well okay can you do the honors of any questions from the floor there is one just straight up the back there any others while I'm gazing any other hands just for next okay okay oh yeah I've gentlemen fascinating just one question your honor about adding carbon sources to fertilizer how do you add carbon to a granulated fertilizer and what do you do and how do you do it this is a question I had a long time with brinjal came five years ago and it's taking me to this year to work it out we did try a Spanish company were doing a carbon coated a humate coated fertilizer but a problem is you wouldn't come out the spreader because it was all steady sticky so that finished but what I do is on our self variable sprayer I put a slug pellet on the front and good smoke pellet er and I buy boron humates and that's getting spread out the front when I'm going with the fertilizer and the fertilizers coming on the back so they're getting spread together and the boron humates I use them because they don't disintegrate and they will throw 24 meters so that's that's how we've managed to do it it's a lot easier you're literally because you just add in 5 litres of molasses or nurture but um you have a granular it has taken a bit longer to work out there was the case study that quickly showed so also using liquids to coat the granule so phillip breck there we've had that example of the seaweed and humic coated so there's a few people in north america who are playing around with the liquid carbon sources and like you would add you know your notification inhibitors egg retain or whatever that they will also add liquid carbon component to that granule and mix it all around now obviously you can being a bit careful the carbon component if it is too sticky and whatnot but I know there are people over in North America are also using liquids okay there was a question here any other Nick's on while I'm gazing okay it was a question to all three really broadly based around the carbon source as well that we've one of your case studies Joe that you put on from Twitter was using molasses and Andy and Tim are using sort of other products or humates we've had we've tinkered with booth at home literally just tinkered not sure of it yet I've heard that molasses is more of a bacterial type food and if we are trying to encourage more fungi in our soil which will be heavily bacterial a minute is there any advice you know which which is better or from a nitrogen point of view does it not actually matter what carbon we put in with with the nitrogen I can tackle that to some extent that yeah if you're trying to encourage most arable soils will be short and funghi so you will want to have the Humason humic sander phobics in the carbon you're using they're also longer chained so they're probably more likely to hold on to the nitrogen I presume they've got a bigger CEC the other worry of molasses is yes it's a bacterial food and if you're doing that four or five times in the season when you're applying much and that could be too much of a good thing and so you don't necessarily to be doing molasses don't as he did too often but there's good products out there that are molasses-based they might be slightly dearer but he might get better result from my point of view it it's something that concerned me was putting all this sugar on anyway so it's why I use fermented molasses more now because it's already been broken fermented so the biologist done the job but it's because he's got the humic and fulvic but the even the fermented molasses he's such a good biological food he'd not proved in my own garden as I said by just doing trials he just feed to the biology far better I haven't got all the scientific data behind it but I was never keen on putting all the sugar out there but the fermented molasses for me he's just a far healthier way of doing it because he's food rather than just sugar because sugar doesn't do any of us any good in my opinion so it for me my own ed the fermented molasses just just works do you have anything to add sorry I haven't I haven't had it any carbon sources about things I can't qualify to happen I would chime in that I think the word diversity has cropped up a lot already I think a diversity of carbon sources is also a good strategy you want to encourage different groups of microbes at different times so I think a bit of them all is is a very good strategy to to be considering and I'd say that fungi can still feed on molasses and it can it's just the bacteria they go there quite fast at it so they do kind of out compete it but it's not to say that fungi can't necessarily feed on it either but my opinion I would say a bit of diversity is good in terms of carbon sources as well ok any any other body questions ok the one here any others ok we might make this the last one and thank you thank you sort of nitrogen related traditionally we're talking a lot about nitrogen sulphur balance for crops and we haven't whilst we've mentioned trace elements we haven't mentioned the sulfur element so if you're reducing nitrogen how are you dealing with that or do you perhaps not think it's important I person they've kept my soul for up so I haven't I suppose I always put a bit more sulfur on them what are Vito and I would say anyway because I just think it's needed and then I'm monitoring the tissue test to see what I'm getting so I have introduced myself or I've increased it probably well I have I have increased my sulphur so the same we use 38 not not 19 urea made himself a blend for the first two times through the wheat so yeah I think itself was important for say the beginning just for a nitrogen synthesis and getting efficiency so yeah I might reduce my end but I have introduced myself than I used I got very light light sandy loamy soils so potash and sulfur is very important for me and I put copious amounts of sulfur on both earlier and granular but I used to use soft weight of ammonia a lot but now I was switched this year to using a potash sulfur blend which is which is one of the cheapest forms of potash and sulphur I found it's it's I've got to try that for a few years to see how that does but also I use a lot of sulfur of failure sulfur throughout the year on the crop okay a quick closing comment from each of you if you were to offer some advice or from your experience any advice to anybody particularly new here at groundswell or new to starting this process of darling down nitrogen inputs just a closing comment from each of you of what you would recommend to anyone new to them to this process it's tricky reducing nitrogen and but I think it's well worth trying even as a tram line or two every year reducing your Nigel last year I reduced my nitrogen on one tram line for us to cup a couple of I think it was as well as three hectares in total and by 100 kilograms a hectare of urea which is 46 kilograms of nudged along that wheat crop and yield dropped correspondingly quite significantly so I lost out about 40 pounds a hexer on on my sales of that crop because of that and that's a net 44 40 pounds actors so while I said I like jumping in headfirst I think I'd be cautious about because I was thinking my biology or my after doing it for 20 years might be my biology might be strong enough to to counteract the reduction in nitrogen but that wasn't the case but certainly try try again and test yourself the whole time to see what you're doing to make sure that you're doing it right don't rely on others to tell you you can do you can reduce your much to by 50% in five years of doing cover cropping for example just take a small example but just see what you're like on your own farm because every farm is different I think I would agree with all that but that's back to trials you know don't jump in don't go mad but just keep reducing you just have it in you add that you want to get it down and just as many trials as you can do I do probably do too many but I just get very enthusiastic but it just didn't die verybody's farms different so it's no good listening to us and going back and thinking you can just do exactly the same but just do your own trials it's everybody's interest to lower these inputs so slowly slowly don't go mad but trials and trials for me and share what we get you know let's let's all learn from each other exactly the same do a little bit reduce my ten percent on one field and see what happens but the other thing I will add in literally hasn't been removed is regulation I'm pretty sure that if we don't as an industry start to reduce our nitrogen we're going to get told to because the water companies are going to turn around one day and say here's the bill for cleaning the water I've speaking to a water company guy other day and they reckon it's 200 pound a hectare the cost of cleaning water from agriculture you start getting a 200 pound a hectare bill coming back yes so even focus our mind okay well thank you very much to our three panelists here I've scribbled down some notes I think we've had a lot of kind of suggestions have come up here and I came through the Twitter I mean cover crops definitely emergent intercropping some very interesting examples there from Andy of zero fertilizer versus with his companion to crops versus where he had that treatment no difference I mean that was some really interesting example there inter crops definitely this theme of diversity came through across you all this foliar nitrogen foliar is more efficient avoiding those soil issues that definitely was a common theme that we saw and the carbon base the molasses the humates putting these carbon-based to to our fertilizers and we touched a little on nitrogen fixing microbes we had a little bit of brewing and microbial content so there's a more and more growing biological products coming on the market of course we as we transition our again it's important to take a systems approach are transitioning the whole system and integrating some of those biological zin you know be careful of those direct substitutions you know you've got to make the environment the system favorable for their use so we heard a couple of nice examples here where there are multiple strategies emerging and and the biologicals fitting in just as one piece of that see treatments we touched on livestock integration was a career caring theme there and grazing management's and mob grazing copped up cropped up a couple of times and more grazing infrastructure of fencing of course ik stretcher which helps some of that stripping and mob Condor grazing slurry management of course manure management composting of course by composting our manures we're stabilizing that nitrogen with the carbon so that was the one we had a few examples from that and keeping the soil covered and maximizing that diversity where perhaps some of the things here that I have scribbled down as strategies that we've heard from from our panel today so with that we will close the session I've got a gift here from groundswell a nice little hand trowel for our three speakers here and thank you all for your contributions and my Twitter friends and please join me thank

Channel: Groundswell Agriculture

Views: 2,344

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Reducing Nitrogen, Groundswell 2019

Id: CpkewWJl7gQ

Length: 72min 20sec (4340 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 06 2019