As Phase 1 of the Signpost Programme comes near an end, John Mahon, Signpost Tillage Advisor, reviews what’s been happening on the 10 Signpost tillage demonstration farms and what the key learnings have been.
Over the next two Signpost tillage articles, I will focus on the general observations and the progress made in the adoption of the Signpost Tillage 12 Steps on the demonstration farms.
The key observation is that all 10 Signpost demonstration farmers were open to change and had a willingness to adopt new technologies. Very often they learnt more from the actions that didn’t work on their farm than the actions that did work. Many would point to the importance of surrounding themselves with positive people and from visiting and learning from other farmers. Starting small in terms of actions was key to making progress and build on that.
These farmers were motivated to engage with environmental action for a number of reasons but the most important one being the financial benefits of many of the actions to their bottom line. As one farmer put it: ‘If nutrients are ending up in the river, then that is a cost to me, either I have to replace them, or crop yield suffers’.
These Signpost farmers want to do the right thing and leave their farms in a better place for the next generation. There is also an acute awareness that climate change is real with a more regular occurrence of extreme weather events, and we all have to play out part to mitigate against this and adapt our farming practices to this change. Climate change will also present opportunities in time, whether that be greater use of native grains in Irish concentrate feeds or cashing in on carbon farming.
There was a major focus on getting back to basics i.e. soil fertility and nutrient management planning (NMP). Too often the NMP is completed and then forgotten about. These farmers have focused on soil analysis and used the plan to make informed decisions on how to best to use the nutrients available to them and make adjustments as the season progresses if necessary. As a result, nutrient use efficiency has improved over the course of the programme from around 75% to close to 100%. This has a huge impact on both financial and environmental sustainability.
The focus on soil fertility, opened up a discussion on rotation on many of the Signpost demo farms and the benefits of crop rotation. This included taking advantage of high yielding profitable crops including first winter wheat after break crops, where previously continuous cropping was used. An additional benefit this provided was the opportunity to switch chemistry and prevent the build-up of grass weeds on some of these farms.
The spade has been shown on these farms to be one of the most important tools on a tillage farm. Very often when we talk about soil health, we talk about soil fertility but soil health is much more than that. These farmers are taking out the spade and looking at the structure of the soil, what compaction is present from heavy machinery, checking out the below ground biodiversity, doing earthworm checks and some doing the underpants test.
There has been an awakening to biodiversity on many of these farms and an understanding of the actions they can take to improve biodiversity on their farms. Hedgerow management has improved on many of these farms with hedges being allowed to grow up and out to better provide food and shelter for wildlife. It’s often assumed that tillage farmers have a low biodiversity score because of the large field size but there are opportunities through hedgerow management, riparian margins along rivers / drains, arable grass margins and allowing
unproductive corners of fields to go wild. Some of these are paid for through schemes like ACRES and the Farming for Water EIP, but even if not yielding financial benefits the farmers themselves and their families are enjoying see their farms come alive again with bird song and wild animals.
The above first appeared as a Signpost Programme update in the Farming Independent.