George Hosford looks at how his experiments in bi-cropping and mob grazing have been working, and sees the impact of ‘making room’ for nature
Some weeks ago our experimental area of bi-cropped wheat with crimson clover looked like the image below. The clover, sown at the same time as the wheat last autumn, had become rather dominant. A week later it rained heavily, and pretty much the whole lot laid over. Once the clover finished flowering and started to die back, some of the wheat managed to stand up again. However, the early clover dominance will have depressed the potential yield of the wheat – which is the part we get paid for – and it is far too late now for the wheat to throw up more tillers to fill in the gaps. The difficulty with minority interest cropping like this is that there is not much guidance available for seed rates etc, so there is quite a lot of guesswork. The wheat/clover bi-crop last year went the other way: we used a less vigorous white clover which ended up so lacking in vigour that there was barely any there at all by spring.
The reason for bi-cropping is to see if we can move away from traditional mono-cropping, which can have poor outcomes for soil and environmental health. We are growing the wheat for Wildfarmed, a new company dedicated to growing and baking healthy food which does not degrade the environment, and making it widely available on the high street – their bread is available in Waitrose and M&S. The wheat has no chemicals and limited nitrogen, plus it always has a crop partner.
Diverse families of roots in the soil foster a broader range of mycorrhizal and other organic activity. One way of doing this is to keep an under-storey going through several seasons – it keeps the soil shielded from hot sun and heavy rain, the clover fixes its own nitrogen, some of which can become available to the following crop as the clover dies and regrows. A good under-storey can also shade out weeds.
Diversity is one of the five guiding principles of soil-focussed regenerative farming, which, thanks to the great god Gabe Brown from North Dakota, can be summarised as follows:
- Minimise soil disturbance. Minimising physical and chemical disturbance to the soil prevents damage to the micro-flora and fauna that form the soil ecosystem
- Keep the soil covered
- Maintain living roots in the soil
- Maximise plant diversity
- Reintroduce livestock
Gabe has recently added a sixth important element, that of context – by which he means that when you apply these principles to your land, you should also consider the context: your soil type, location, altitude, aspect etc. Gabe’s book ‘Dirt to Soil’ is considered by many to be the regenerative bible – it’s a great story, and full of useful guidance.
Theo living his best life
Out here in the herbal ley fields, the cows are happily munching away in their mobs – mob grazing is short duration, high density grazing with a long grass recovery period. You move the cattle every day, and then leave the grass to recover for up to 100 days, depending on the time of year. The cows have got very used to being moved on to fresh grazing every day, and don’t hesitate to let the world know if we are late!
This year’s rainy spring has led to vigorous grass growth everywhere – a very early hay cut was taken in places, and even parts of the river meadows have been mob grazed this year to force the animals to graze it properly. The system is working well, with the lightweight Kiwi-designed electric fence easy to move, and a network of water pipes across the fields with quick release push-fit fittings so that it is straightforward to empty and move the troughs daily.
There are a number of advantages from mob grazing. We see fewer flies bothering the animals, as fresh grazing every day moves the cattle off yesterday’s dung pats, where the flies congregate. Fresh grazing also reduces the pressure from intestinal worms, as a 50-day cycle between the grazing of any single part of the field helps to break the worm life cycle. This means less wormer is needed, the chemicals in which, when present in the dung pats, can kill the flies and beetles on which many species like the rare greater horseshoe bat thrive. Also, some of the herbs which the animals are grazing have a natural anthelmintic effect (discouraging or killing intestinal worms).
Mob grazing, which leaves around a third of the pasture behind, allows the plants to regrow far more quickly than traditional grazing which takes nearly all the herbage, because enough leaf remains to enable plenty of photosynthesis. As plants are grazed down, their roots also die back, and therefore they take even longer to recover and regrow, both under and above the soil.
As you can see from the picture below, Theo the bull enjoyed his favourite six weeks of the year with a mob of cows and their calves. The pretty one in the foreground is one of his daughters from last year, out of cows with a certain amount of Belgian Blue in their genes. The pairings gave us two calves this year with freckles and a white line along the spine, a little reminiscent of the rare breed Gloucester cattle.
We need to be smarter
A fascinating seminar with local grain merchant Bartholomews, held at the Hall and Woodhouse brewery, not only fed a group of farmers with a very fine cooked breakfast, but also provided vital intelligence on the current grain markets. An essential event in the farming year, this meeting, presented by grain trader Edd Britton, gave us much useful information which will help us to navigate the minefield that is the world wheat market for the next few months.
The weather in the US and Russia (both major world wheat producers) has been a very influential factor recently, with quite violent up and down swings in grain price over a short period of time, making rational sales decisions very tricky. His graph (below) shows how the balance between import and export of wheat in and out of the UK has altered over the last ten years. Since 2012 we have overwhelmingly been a net importer, for several reasons. Firstly the good old (un)reliable British weather, followed closely by the bioethanol and starch plants up north which take a great deal of grain, sucking it in from a wide area and helping keep the market buoyant. However, if prices rise too far, these plants will close for a while until things calm down.
Then there are the generally lower levels of production as farmers commit more land to environmental schemes: taking (usually poorer) land out of production in exchange for payments of public money for public goods like wild flower headlands and wild bird food.
Housebuilding also has some effect, taking land out of food production for ever, and then there is the contentious issue of organisations like the Dorset Wildlife Trust, in conjunction with Natural England, purchasing land with Nutrient Neutrality money, paid by housing developers in exchange for planning permission.
Please see my blog here for a full account of my day out with the DWT as they celebrated the revolutionary purchase of Lyscombe Farm, which, by reverting it to 100 per cent nature with no food production, will somehow unlock the building of 3,700 new homes in the Poole Harbour catchment, in which the farm sits. As you will see, I am not convinced: either by the wisdom of this in terms of value for money, or whether any actual improvement will occur in Poole Harbour as a result of this purchase.
Is this where I should be banging on about the importance of looking after our home-grown food supply? There has to be room for food production to thrive, we have a growing population and some of the best soils and weather climates for food production anywhere in the world. But without care for soils and nature, healthy food production will become increasingly difficult. Weeds and insects become resistant to chemicals, which all too often wreak collateral and unintended damage elsewhere … so we must learn to be cleverer.
Life finds a way
On the left is a common spotted orchid found in a brand new site – on a wildflower margin miles from any other orchids.
It is approximately 14 years since Traveller’s Rest was intensively farmed, and we are seeing some interesting plants showing up on our oldest margins. I am reliably informed that the tiny orchid seeds, almost dust-like, will have sat in the soil for decades, waiting for the right conditions to return to enable germination. They then need the right mycorrhizal conditions to develop, to connect the seeds with the right nutrients in the soil.
They have endured so many years asleep, through generations of evolving human activity, only to return to life when government schemes pay farmers to rein back a bit on the intensive farming. We have to make room for nature in and around our main food production, and this little flower shows it can work.
