The latest electronic newsletter from Agricology, a community bringing farmers and researchers together to share knowledge in pursuit of “practical sustainable farming regardless of labels”, includes an interesting feature on UK farmer Martin Lines, chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network.
Through an interview and a selection of videos, Martin explains the changes he has made to his farm of just over 400 acres (161 hectares). In addition to his farm, Martin has contract farming agreements bringing the total area he manages to 1,334 acres (540 hectares). His key farming practices are identified as no-till, soil monitoring, minimum tillage, undersowing, biological control, cover crops, direct drilling, diversified rotation, habitat creation, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and intercropping.
Explaining his move to nature-based IPM, Martin tells Agricology: “About seven years ago I decided to do what I could to control pests without insecticides and monitor the impacts on my yields and profit margins. There is no blueprint to IPM - it has to be a whole farm and landscape approach, it is not as easy as conventional farming with pesticides. Many measures I have adopted in the transition to regenerative agriculture have multiple benefits.”
The changes he has introduced have included broadening the range of crops grown, including the introduction of winter and spring barley, and abandoning fixed rotations in favour of tailoring the cropping in each field to help deal with weed pressure and soil health. For example, if there are problems with black-grass, a major pest in England, a spring or break crop will be grown rather than a second wheat crop.
He uses pest-resistant varieties whenever possible and has reverted to “traditional recommended cropping intervals”, which means oilseed rape is grown only once every five to six years. Cereals are drilled after mid-October if possible to reduce black-grass and autumn aphid pressure and nitrogen fertiliser is used carefully to avoid rapid growth that makes crops vulnerable to pest and disease pressure.
Martin tells Agricology that “creating habitats to enable beneficial insects and spiders to thrive is key”. This has included establishing flower-rich field margins plus flower-rich strips every 120m to improve natural pest control and insect pollination. Yields of both oilseed rape and beans are up to 20% greater next to these strips, which Martin believes is due to a combination of increased insect pollination and greater natural pest control.
He explains that improved soil health, crop health and better rotations have enabled him to reduce herbicide, fungicide and molluscicide use. He monitors slug levels and if beetle numbers in the field are high enough sees if they can deal with the problem before treatments.
Recent trials have seen him sow a mixture of wheat varieties to avoid the pest and disease risks which a single variety monoculture can engender, undersowing beans with clovers and intercropping oilseed rape with phacelia and clovers to see if this can disguise the crop from pests and further boost the number of beneficials.
He tells Agricology: “Overall, crop yields are a little lower, but this is more than made up for by the reduction in costs of production and the net margins are up, despite reducing the areas of wheat, our most profitable crop. There are visibly more beneficial insects and spiders and more wildlife overall, especially birds. The incidence of pest levels exceeding economic thresholds has declined to zero.”
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