Monday, July 7, 2014

Touring through the Dakotas



The first day was mostly driving as we headed to Bismarck in North Dakota with farmers, researchers and advisers from South Africa, Brazil, France, Nepal and Australia.

However, on the way we did make a couple of stops. The first was at the Irvin Goodon International Wildlife Museum in Boissevain, a little town in Manitoba just north of the US border. It has a fantastic display of taxidermy with many of the animals propped up in real life situations. Tracey's father and 2 uncles run New Zealand's largest taxidermy business, so here a few photos for you Nevin (and Lance and Kerry).




   Not sure what the significance of the ninja turtle was! 


       Self propelled sprayer - North Dakota style! 

The second was at the Peace Gardens on the US/Canadian border for lunch - great fried chicken! I think the Peace Garden was purposefully place on the north side of the border because if you haven't spent time there chilling out, you could get very frustrated when your bus takes over 2 hours to clear immigration when all the passport details had been forwarded the day before to fast track our crossing! We had to feel sorry though for the person who was held up because they had "misplaced" his passport! I think the Canadians are a bit easier to deal with when heading north. 

Our only agricultural stop for the day was at the USDA ARS (Agriculture Reserach Service) Northern Great Plains research farm at Mandan (just north of Bismarck).  One research project has looked at soil organic carbon levels across different rotations and the results have shown that the dynamic rotation has responded best and especially under the worst conditions. The higher soil C levels are driven by the corn biomass, a common theme we were to here for the next few days. 



Corn seeded into alfalfa (lucerne) at USDA ARS Mandan 

The question is can I put a short season corn into our rotation somehow/somewhere? Hearing how wet and backwards the crops are going at home while I am away with the rain and waterlogging, I'm thinking this might be the year to put some strips in to see what happens. Sorghum, millet, safflower and sunflower are other options to grow and I have grown all except sorghum in a summer crop trial in 2009/10. Sorghum will probably be a better option than corn as less costly and more likely to get to yield in a Mediterranean environment.

They have a paddock with 31 continuous years of wheat. That's it, I didn't take any notes on it and there was nothing in the handout - I will follow up to see what the results have been.

The USDA team cooked up a great BBQ for dinner - certainly wasn't the chopper beef that Australia sends to the US. 


    Think this is the continuous wheat paddock. My note taking did get better.

Spent the night at the Seven Seas Inn in Mandan, appropriately named as that's about how many attempts it took to find Annieka Paridaen from Southern Farming Systems a room that wasn't occupied by others! Really, how hard can it be to look at your bookings list and find a room without a name against it. One room had a guy half dressed, another a carton of beer and bourbon cans on the bench - so what was the problem Annieka, too many choices? 

So while Tracey and I were getting to meet the local North Dakotans who joined the tour at Bismarck, Annieka was back and forward for a couple of hours. To top it off, just as she had got into bed, the front desk called asking her to come down and pay the tables bill for the drinks, which they found we had left on the table - but did Annieka get an apology??

Brown Ranch, Bismarck, North Dakota

The second day started at Gabe, Shelly and Paul Brown's property at Bismarck where we were joined by Jay Fuhrer, District Conservationist with NRCS (Natural Resource and Conservation Service) and long time advocate of no till and cover crops. 

Gabe is widely known for pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved with no till, cover crops and the integration of livestock of livestock (cattle, sheep, pigs and chickens) into a system he described as "beyond organic" (he still uses the odd herbicide but not any synthetic fertiliser). His approach over the past 21 years of no till has been to try and mimic nature as closely as possible, and with 140 species in his native pastures (of which approximately 90% are native), it as good an example of a revived native pasture I have seen. 


    Paul and Gabe Brown with Jah Fuhrer in the background

The Brown's don't use glyphosate, GMO's, fungicides or pesticides and uses high stocking rates with cell grazing, where most pastures are rested for 360 days after grazing. The use of cover and companion crops has allowed the livestock to be integrated into their holistic system, something which they see as mimicking the bison that used to roam the prairies each year, grazing each area once before returning the following season.


    Strip grazed triticale crop - cover crops to be seeded in the next couple of days.


    Soil good enough to eat!

The Browns sell beef and eggs at local farmers markets in Bismarck at a significant premium. 


Menoken Farm, Bismarck, North Dakota

The next visit was to Menoken Farm, a 150acre (60ha) educational site owned and operated by the Burleigh County Soil Conservation district and which Jay Fuhrer is involved in it's operation. It was established in 2009 and the condition of the soil highlighted a number of areas of concern common to most soils in the district after decades of continual cultivation - lack of soil cover, minimal biological diversity, poor nutrient cycling, infiltration and soil structure, low soil organic matter levels and little beneficial insect habitiat. 

The farm has 10 large demonstration plots looking at a range of cropping systems targeted at soil health and aiming to eliminate the use of fungicides, insecticides, GMO's, and commercial fertiliser while minimising the use of herbicides, soil disturbance and fossil fuel use. 

These include seeding companion cover crops with cash crops (sunflowers or corn) either in alternate rows or as a mixture in each row. Cattle and sheep have been introduced recent years to cycle nutrients and control weeds while chickens and pigs are being considered. Perennial grasses, legumes and forbs have been introduced this year to increase the plant diversity and to provide a continuous living root. 


    Sunflowers interseeded with companion crop

A no till demonstration garden was set up in 2011 growing corn, beans and squash as companion plants, known as the 3 sisters by the native Indians, such as the Mandan Indians whose reconstructed village we visited later in the day. The Mandans weren't nomadic like most Indian tribes who followed the Bison herds across the prairies for food, shelter and clothing. The Mandans lived in villages along the Missouri River in North and South Dakota from the early 1500s until the 1880s, when they were virtually wiped out by small pox. They cultivated the three sisters garden (using over 14 different types of corn) as well as caught fish, hunted Bison and collected native plants and fruits. They stored produce in cache pits, a ancient form of refrigeration where a bell shaped pit was dug in the ground and produce buried. 


    The three sisters garden at Menoken Farm 




    The infiltration and run off demo comparing different soil covers after 1" (25mm) of 
    simulated rain (high intensity). Interesting the amount of percolation of water (rear jar) 
    through the soil between cover crop and various pasture treatments. 




   Cross section of a cache pit for storing produce - the original esky/chilly bin/cooler!


    Mandan earth lodge - above and below



Miller's Ranch, Mandan, South Dakota

Our final visit for the day was to Ken Miller. Ken works at Mennoken Farm and farms on the weekend raising beef cattle, corn, alfalfa (lucerne), cereals (wheat and triticale) on both irrigated (pivot) and dryland - not a bad effort for a weekend farmer! 

Ken uses cover crops, high intensity grazing and bale grazing as strategies in his operation to achieve maximum profits, not necessarily maximum yield. Bale grazing is where round hay bales are placed in paddocks over winter and the cattle are strip grazed on a number of bales at a time, instead of being placed in sheds over the winter. 


   Ken in an lucerne (alfalfa) paddock. What are you doing hiding behind Chandra Gerard?


   Bale grazing - an alternative to over wintering cattle in sheds all winter

His winter cover crops mixes are based on forage barley, field peas and vetch with turnip, daikon radish, ryegrass, sunflower and sweet clover, while his spring cover crop mixes are a mixture of cowpeas, soybean, millet, Sudan grass, corn, sunflower, pasja turnip, radish and sweet clover. 

Ken has set up grazing cells on his pivot for rotational grazing, a sight common in dairy, but not so in beef herds. If the numbers hadn't stacked up, I guarantee Ken wouldn't be doing it!

We spent the night at the Prairie Knights Casino on the local Indian reservation, just out of Fort Yates. It  wasn't anything exciting as they only had poker machines, no tables or high roller rooms, not even a tribute show to the band that once did covers on Roy Orbison - must have been booked in the next night! 

Don't ever think there is a correlation between a meals price and the amount of food served in the US - I had that many ribs I couldn't finish even after sharing with the rest of the table. With not much to keep us entertained, we had an early night and listened to the storm roll in over the prairies during the night - disappointing really after the anticipation in the the bus that afternoon for everyone to get together for a night out on the town to really get to know our touring buddies - next time maybe. 

Bieber Farm, Trail City, South Dakota

The next day we headed to Rick Beibers farm about 30 minutes west of Mobridge and Lake Oahe. Rick first started in no till in 1987 and by 1991 the whole farm was no till, a legacy of his family's heritage of soil conservation. His grandfather visited the Senate in Washington and lobbied for all counties to have conservation offices, which they still have today. Soil salinity has become a major problem in the county, with most farmers just giving up acres to the problem as it takes hold, whereas Rick has the approach that farming caused the problem, so farming can fix the problem. 

Rick farms with his son and a number of South African workers who come out for 7-8 months each year. They farm in a 16"/400mm rainfall and use a combination of cash crops (corn, wheat, sunflowers, radish seed, millet, cover crops seeds), cover crops (4000ha/10 000acres in 2013) and a cow/calf operation where soil health has become the driver of profitability on the farm. The industry rule of thumb is around a pound of nitrogen fetiliser is required to produce a bushel of corn, but Rick is getting close to only using half a pound of commercial nitrogen to produce 150bu corn crops, while his water use efficiency has been improved by around 50%. Such is the success of the system, he still harvested successfull corn crops in the devastating drought of 2012 whilst neighbours crops on conventional cultivation were decimated.


    Rick in his corn - he is one passionate advocate of soil health! He was going to drive the
    tour bus across this paddock after 3" (75mm) of rain the previous night except it was only 
    a single drive - that's how confident he is of his soil health and structure.

Rick is a great believer in the 25 second fallow - that's how long it takes for the crop to go in the front of the combine and the straw come out the back end - after that time the seeder is ready to follow behind and start seeding a covercrop. 

One thing Rick isn't a believer in is controlled traffic farming - they have tried it in the past but the nature of his soils combined with high intensity rainfall events has resulted in severe washouts and gully erosion, as often happens on the cultivated farms in the county. Something the guys on the Darling Downs in Queensland might want to arm wrestle him over! 'Horses for courses' is what I'd say. 

One thing I picked up on is Rick using a blend of urea:sulfate of ammonia, the SOA giving the crop a growth boost which increases the chlorophyll concentration of the plant and increases the uptake of the urea nitrates. POST SCRIPT Have just put out this mix in trials across the farm to compare with urea.


    Example of gully erosion on cultivated land. Rick has spent $250 000 in the past year 
    repairing washouts on his farms alone, so imagine the soil loss that has occurred on 
    cultivated paddocks. Some gullies have been 6'/1.8m deep. 

The county has experienced it's fair share of population decline as farms have consolidated and many farms are owned by remote owners who farm from a base 100 miles or further away. Rick has undertaken a project to reverse this and to give young farmers-to-be a hand to get onto their own farm.  In conjunction with a business partner, land is purchased and the young farmer is financed into taking over the farm while still working for Rick. He considers the success he has had with his system can be shared to teach others a better way to farm and as a result get them into a farm whereas in other circumstances it would be virtually impossible. 

Holzwarth Farm, Gettysburg, South Dakota

Our next visit was to the family of Ralph, Jenny and Teddy Holzwarth. We were welcomed with a fantastic home cooked meal, thanks to the generosity of Northern Plains, their local grain and input supply co op. 

In similar fashion to Rick, they started no till in 1989 and were completely no till in 1992, farming in a 18-19"/450-475mm environment. 

They don't have a set rotation but use a combination of both spring and winter wheat, corn, sunflowers, soybeans and use cover crops after winter wheat and corn crops, consisting of peas, radish, barley and oats. They have gone to a base rotation where they are using stacked rotation (2 successive crops) of wheat-wheat-corn-corn-soybean.  




    Dwayne Beck with Teddy and Ralph in Teddy's shed. Note the bar in the background 
    - also had 3 flat screen TVs and a pretty handy ski boat. A man cave to die for! 


    Corn in spring wheat stubble - missed getting in winter wheat the year before so only
    has low residue levels. 


    Sunflowers in corn stubble


Cronin Farms, Agar, South Dakota

Our next visit to Cronin farm, owned by Mike and Tye Cronin, was hosted by Dan Forgey, who has worked for the family for 45 years. I found an article on alternative fertiliser equipment before we left for the trip that Dan had written 12 years ago. I was going to try to track him down but thought what was the chance he was still working on the same farm - pretty good as it turned out. 

That's a credit to both parties the relationship has endured that long! I think it might have something to do with Dan's enthusiasm, he just doesn't stop! First met Dan in Winnipeg and I could tell from the 2 presentations he gave that he was not just an employee, but a key part of the farms progress and success over the years. 

I know this is starting to sound a bit repetitive, but Cronin Farms are long time no tillers and have been using CC for 12 years, including cover crop seed crops, as well as running a 800 head cow & calf operation. If it has been tried as a cover crop, chances Dan has tried it. Given it had rained the morning we visited and it was too wet to get out into the paddock, Dan had spent the morning driving around and digging up a few plants of all the crops growing on the farm. 


    Dan and his paddock tour in the workshop. 

Cover crops represent about 10% of the farms rotation and are usually grown after winter wheat or cut silage. Dan likes to diversity in his cover crop mixes and includes oats, flax, lentils and sunflowers. He has tried the approach of Mennoken Farms and has seeded forage soybeans in alternate rows to corn. Now I know there will be plenty of you going 'yeah, that's all great, but who wants to grow less corn?' Fair point, you might think, but the 'proof is in the pudding' moment came in the 2012 drought when much of the corn crop was decimated but look at the 2 photos below. The corn had hung on better where the forage soybean was grown as a companion crop. Why that is, no one can exactly say but it appears it has to do with that hazy area of symbiotic relationship between plant roots. But really, if it works, who cares how - leave that to the researchers and scientists to work out.


   Corn in the 2012 drought - things aren't always what they seem.

The farm doesn't use any insecticide seed treatments on wheat but does use seed fungicide treatments as Dan avoids using foliar fungicides, as they affect aphid and grasshopper control - stay with me here! According to both Dwayne and Dan, fungi infect and kill aphids, but not where fungicides are used obviously. Grasshoppers need bare ground to warm their bodies, so no till helps reduce this whereas fungi infect grasshoppers as they do aphids. As often is the case, controlling one problem has effects in other areas. 

One new cover crop that Dan is trying is Teff grass, which is not a great competitor but once established has a great fibrous root and cut be cut for hay like lucerne (alfalfa). 

Kent and Brain Tinkler, Pierre, South Dakota

The final visit of the day was to Kent and Brian Hinkler's farm. The farm used a traditional summer fallow - small grains rotation until the drought in the 1980s which saw the introduction of no till and by 1994 the whole farm was in no till. The area farmed has remained constant around 4000 acres (1600 ha), but the harvested area has increased by around 30% as the introduction of cover crops and new cash crops has allowed for more crops to be sown and harvested. This has also enabled the workload to be spread out and labour to be utilised more efficiently. 

Kent wanted to buy a new planter a few years ago and when he started looking at what was available, he couldn't find one he was completely happy with, but liked components of various planters. So in the name of farmers ingenuity, Kent bought al, the components and built his own 60' (18m) planter on 20" (50cm) rows. 


    "Just happened Max, you know, a p-p-piece from here, a p-p-piece from there", the mechanic in Mad Max (classic Australian movie from the 1979) on describing to Max how he out together the V8 Interceptor.


   It's an all liquid affair - except for seed, still working on that one! Front tanks are phosphorus, rear quad tanks and front toolbar tanks are nitrogen and rear toolbar tank is seed. 

Third time lucky with the last days notes! Thats been my excuse why its taken so long to get the next chapter of my blog out. The first time I lost them the iPad went flat before I hit the save button and then last time I logged on I had been told someone had accessed by blog 9 days prior (sure it wasn't me), so had to reset the password, but then discovered it had lost the last blog addition I had done. A hard lesson learnt - twice!

So here we go.

Our last night was spent in Pierre, the capital of South Dakota with only about 14000 people. It's a historical thing, the towns declared each states capital haven't always progressed to be the biggest city in the state, and and no one wants to give it the title to their big brother, do they? 

It was a touch of déjà vu arriving in Pierre, having stayed there almost 10 years ago on a bus trip through the US and Canada with Bill Crabtree, a no till consultant from Western Australia.  And guess who was on bus trip with us, No Till Bill himself! Although Bill must have been a bit excited about being back in Pierre visiting Dwayne Beck as after a couple of pre dinner wines he started doing impersonations of his alter ego, Sméagal (aka Gollum) from Lord Of The Rings over dinner. I would show a photo but thought I don't want to scare any young children (or old ones for that matter). Great to see you still in fine form Bill.  

After dinner we enjoyed a few drinks at the Legions club overlooking the Missouri River, knowing from my last visit that if we saw out the closing hours there, we could go across the river for another hour of drinks overlooking the river. The Missouri is the border for Central and Western time zones. Luckily we decided to go bed instead (unlike the last visit, but that's another whole story that involves local farmer Ed, his pick up, stock whip, lasso and the beer in his cooler parked on the front lawn of the motel with the sun coming up!



   Bill was put on rations! 




This sign was at the motel Bill and I stayed at 10 years ago. Perhaps this could be the new Nuffield logo??

Our final day of the tour was on the Sunday morning with Dwayne Beck, manager at the Dakota Lakes Research Farm.  It was my visit here 10 years ago that was one of the major influences in changing my thinking and approach to looking at our rotation and farming system and where opportunistic summer cropping and/or cover cropping could fit.

The aim of the farm is to "identify, research and demonstrate methods if strengthening  and stabilising the agricultural economy". The farm, originally owned by South Dakota State University, is owned by a not for profit group comprising local farmers (including all of those we visited) which owns the land and plant and equipment. 

The South Dakota State University conducts and manages the research on the farm and the production side of the farm provides roughly 80% of these funds, therefore the farm needs to be profitable to fund research. This model of production funded research, set up in 1983, was established to minimise the effect of external influences, including commercial and political groups.

The farm was originally a conventional tillage research farm and when the current model was established in 1983, a substantial investment in land, labour and machinery would have been required for production to be able generate sufficient income to support research. The plan to overcome this limitation was to use diverse crop rotations combined with no till, which would enable high water crops (eg. corn), normally considered marginal under tillage, to be grown. 

I guess this is one train of thought I have had for a number of years since I established a full stubble retention no till system. Can the no till system be leveraged by adding a wider range of crops at different times of the year when moisture allows, but realising this will mean changing our seeding management from a static (only thinking we can seed in April - May) to a dynamic system (being ready to seed at anytime of the year).

Dwayne's philosophy is that research is all about systems, it goes beyond the agronomy. This holistic approach was adopted from the start as there was little research into the the farming practices the farm was intending to embark on, so research needed to fill the gaps as they went along.

The main change in thinking that has taken place at the farm and for surrounding farmers has been the realisation that long term farm profitability and sustainability is based on natural cycles and principles, which are an ally not an enemy.  

Warm season grass, warm season broadleaf and cool season broadleaf crops have been introduced to the traditional cool season grasses (winter cereals) that have been grown. Stacked rotations (where a crop is grown 2 years in succession and has a long break until grown again) have been developed based on a corn-corn-soybean-soybean-wheat-wheat rotation with cover crops grown in between. The aim of this rotation is to keep the crop sequence and interval diverse, compared to the rotation many of us use (wheat-canola, cereal-canola-legume in various combinations), where weeds and insects adopt life cycles on this regularity, which is the basis for any resistance in a population.

One of the trials that has been conducted on the farm for a number of years is drought resistant corn. The yield difference between dryland and irrigated plots  across other sites has been 40-50%, but on the research farm, it has only been 10%.  The company suspected Dwayne was running the irrigator over the dryland plots! So what does that say about the soil health that has built up over the years for this systems approach. 

Another interesting aspect of the farm is that all soil P levels are <5ppm (Olsen). Starter fertiliser is used in all crops but the soil mycorrhizae network developed with the rotation is a major source of P to the plants, accessing the P normally considered unavailable to plants.

The organic C levels have been raised in the soil surface but not at depth (>25cm) so lucerne (alfalfa) has been introduced to look at building C levels deeper in the profile. 

Not all the research on the farm is directly related to agriculture. The farm has set a target to be fossil fuel neutral by 2026, so are looking at technologies to reduce their fossil fuel use. Various building insulation materials are being assessed in situ in the workshop wall as well as adopting low energy heating systems for the workshop. 

Dakota Lakes Research Farm under Dwayne's guidance has made a significant contribution to the understanding of how agricultural systems can learn from the local natural systems and adopt practices and systems to suit. Dwayne always said the buffalo is the worlds best seeding system! 

So our tour of the Dakotas came to an end and we parted ways, although one of our South African friends Peter was left in Pierre hospital as he had been unwell for a couple of days. Hope you got better Peter and made it home safely.


    Agricultural enthusiasts from around the world.

Tracey and I together with Annieka headed back to Fargo with Abbey, the soil doctor (as we called her) from NDSU (North Dakota State University) for the next part of the trip. 

More to come soon!!







Thursday, July 3, 2014

Canada and the World Congress of Conservation Agriculture

My first stop on this last Nuffield trip was to the World Congress of Conservation Agriculture in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Tracey and I flew out on Thursday 19th to Winnipeg via Sydney, Tokyo and Vancouver - a marathon 41 hour trip from the time we drove out the gate from home. It was a good weekend to land in Winnipeg with the jazz festival and the aboriginal day celebrations and concert with Billy Ray Cyrus as the headline act. So I am proud to say I have still not seen Billy in concert. 

The congress was attended by nearly 400 people (including 7 other Nuffield Scholars) from 40 countries. I guess I should start by defining what conservation agriculture(CA) is in case some of you are scratching your head and wondering what it is, even though you know what it means. The 3 principles of conservation agriculture are, as defined by the FAO, are : 

1. Seeding with a no till system
2. Permanent ground cover, either as living crop or crop stubble/mulch
3. Minimum 3 crops in rotation. 

It is estimated their is 155 million ha of CA in the world, approximately 11% of arable land with 51% in the developed world and 49% in the developing world. On top of this, there is an extra 20 million ha of no till in the world that isn't true CA (eg. rice in India). 

The opening  address was by David Montgomery, the author of 'Dirt - The Erosion of Civilisations', which looks at the extinction of civilisations due to the degradation of the soils that supported their existence. Most  civilisations have lasted 800-2000 years and the development of the plough changed the balance between soils formation and soil erosion. 

Soil loss is a problem not because we farm, but because of how we farm. 

Areas of the Palouse region in Washington state which have loess soils on steep slopes lost 5' (1.5m) of soil from 1911-1961. World soil erosion losses was estimated in 1992 to be 23 billion ton/year, equivalent to 0.7% of total world soil. For the last 500 million years, soil loss has been estimated at 1" (25mm) every 1400 years, while it is presently estimated at 1" (25mm) every 500 years. 

So the question is can we build soils quicker than nature? It has been done with the Plaggen soils in Europe, where soils have even established on reclaimed sea beds (saw that in the Netherlands last year) and the Terra Presta soils in the Amazon. This is the ultimate aim of any farming system one would hope and I believe that incorporating a production system that utilises no till, diverse rotations and cover crops will reach this goal over time, not just maintain the status quo. 

The conference was a mix of panel and concurrent discussions and some of the key points I took from it were as follows. 

Kristine Nichols, USDA soil microbiologist, presented on water use efficiency (WUE) in no till wheat in North Dakota. The WUE for a dynamic rotation was 16-17% better than 3 and 5 year set rotations, 19% better than continuous wheat and 62% better than the fallow-wheat rotation. Our natural inclination is that water or fertility is the limiting factor whereas really carbon is the limiting input, it is the driver of soil biology and health, which supplies nutrients on demand as opposed to artificial fertilisation which is trying to mimic this process. 

The question is how much water does a plant need when comparing a monoculture versus a cover crop system. 

Jill Clapperton spoke on the need to think of soil productivity as more than just yield, it includes the  provision of nutrients for plant uptake which in turn are required for human nutrition (see Evan Ryan's Nuffield Scholarship report on fertilising with trace elements for human nutrition for more information). Soil C from roots retains and forms more stable aggregates than plant carbon. 

Frederic Thomas, a farmer and no till/cover crop consultant from France, had two great quotes :

"Don't find excuses, find solutions", in respect to critics of cover crops, and 

"Replace steel by roots, fuel by photosynthesis, and urea by nodules".

There has been a push in France and Switerland, in particular, to develop a system where cover crops are used to virtually eliminate the use of glyphosate. Easier said than done, but they are pursuing it. 

Blake Vince, a fellow Nuffield Scholar studying cover crops, made the point that as farmers, we are after financial yield, not just production yield. Higher yield doesn't always mean higher profitability (I'll talk more about his later when I get to the farm tour).

Emit Roy, President and CEO of the International Fertilizer Development Centre, outlined the development of deep placement of urea in rice paddies in Bangladesh. A pressing machine is used to produce urea briquettes which were pushed in deep between 4 plants and resulted in less weed growth and better nitrogen uptake and reduced losses. The placement is hard physical work so an applicator was developed, which while not increasing the speed of application, makes it easier for whoever is doing it. 

                                                          
A Bangladeshi farmer using a self loading deep placement applicator               Photo IFDC



Manual seed and seed/fertiliser applicators developed in China - USD$17 and $20 each! 


Nick Betts from Grain Farmers Ontario, which represents 28 000 farmers with $9 billion of sales from corn, soybeans and wheat, spoke of the different meanings of sustainability between farmers and consumers.

 Lee Moats, a farmer and former chair of Pulse Canada, questioned what is sustainable sourcing, a term starting to be used by companies in their marketing programs. In terms of response to consumer demand, his mantra was "don't tell me what to do, tell me what you want".

Stephen Loss, an Australian working with the International Centre for Agricultural Research in Dry Areas (ICARDA) in Northern Iraq around Mosul is working with local farmers to adopt no till systems which has led to small scale manufacturing of a locally designed drill. Such is the state of unrest and violence around Mosul that the three farmers that were going to attend the conference couldn't leave their families. Martin also works in Syria where the use of no till continues for as much as anything that it is safer then ploughing - less time spent in the paddock reduces the chance of being shot. It really is a different world that we live in!

The only speaker that was able to fill every seat of the congress was Howard Buffet, farmer, philanthropist and son of Warren Buffet. Howard farms with his son on 1500 acres in Illinois, along with a number of research farms around the world. They have used no till for 20 years and cover crops for 6 years and Howard believes US farmers are being back by attitudes to CA and they have been given a free ride for a long time. This is in reference to the continuing problem over 20 years of nutrient runoff from farms that drain into the Mississippi River and end up in the Gulf of Mexico. Unless the problem is addressed by farmers, will the government regulate for control? 

The political landscape in the US is changing with the numbers moving away from farmers, as it is in most countries, so a collision course on water issues needs to be averted by farmers or they will be defeated and regulated. In this respect, government needs to be an agent for change (the carrot rather than the stick).

In response to a question on whether subsidies to US farmers are preventing the adoption of CA, his response was that the majority of US farmers are "lazy" as a result of the subsidy programs. Generally, those countries with the poorest and/or least subsidised farmers are the most innovative and efficient, they can't afford to be anything but. I don't think Australian farmers would disagree! 

I got a chance to ask him a question regarding how to address the growing divide between farmers and consumers. his first response was that is it's very hard to rebut correct information on social media and as farmers, we are often portrayed in a light that is far from what we do by all sorts of self interest groups. The problem with any accused is that even if you are innocent, the tarnish often never goes away, and the more you protest, the more people think you are guilty. We here it all the time, but agriculture does need its own spin doctors, and that includes each of us speaking up whenever we get a chance. 




Not every day you get a photo with Warren Buffet and get to ask him a question! 
With Amir Kassam, FAO, UK, Karen Scanlon, CTIC, Canada, Howard Buffet and Bill Crabtree, Australia.

We visited Kelburn Farm, a showcase farm and crop development centre established by the Richardson family after the Second World War when it was initially used to research cattle breeds. Caught up with Kay Meyer, whose farm I visited in 2010 on the Cross Slot tour of Washington state as her husband Tye was our guide for the tour - small world. 


Dinner at Kelburn Farm with Seth Watkins, USA, Richard Heath, Australia, Kay Meyer, USA, Annieka Paridaen, Australia and Tracey



Four wheel drive track articulated tractor - North American Style (note the drive cog in the track)

The diversity of attendees that attended the conference was it's strength and I made contact with many people that I had little time to speak to but will be able to follow up when I get home - perhaps not straight away, I might have some work to do and a house to finish renovating. 

Following the conference, we joined a 4 day tour of farms and research stations in North and South Dakota. More on that to come. 


Sunday, March 30, 2014

The UK squeeze

Having left France without a visit to Paris on our honeymoon (oops!!), we flew to Edinburgh on Friday (the 21st -  3 long weeks ago) for a weekend of sightseeing. For those who haven't been before, Edinburgh is a beautiful city full of history and fantastic old buildings. It is split into the old town and the new town, built in the 1700's, with torture and hangings the most popular form of family entertainment in years of old. 


This is the view of George Heriots school (one of Scotland's most prestigious schools - and Zom is the IT director!!) from Greyfriars cemetery next door - both venues inspiration for JK Rowling and a series of books she wrote! 



View Of Edinburgh Castle

While we we there, we also caught up with two friends from uni days (University of New England), Zom (Adrian Semmler) with his wife Gillian and daughter Georgian, and Nudge (Grant Jones) and daughter Olivia for lunch at their local pub, reported to have had a licensed premises operating on the site since 900. Yes, that's 900, not 1900, making it the oldest pub in Scotland if not the UK. And to boot it has its own skittles (bowling) alley.


Zom, Tracey, Gillian, Olivia and Georgina (sorry Nudge, you didn't fit in) in Scotland's oldest pub.

Made our way on Sunday afternoon to stay at with Ross and Caroline Millar and there kids Finlay and Sophie on their farm just out of Dundee. Caroline is a 2013 Nuffield scholar too and runs The Hideaway Experience, three 5 star self catering apartments on the farm that are superb with a great view of the valley below. We were lucky enough to get a night in The Honeymooners, a treat that was thoroughly enjoyed, especially the hot tub and a starlight sky on Sunday night, only after I had helped Ross check the ewes that had just started lambing. Monday we had a look around the farm and did a drive down the coast road to St. Andrews (just another golf club, right?), before dinner at the local pub next to Glamis Castle. 


The Honeymooners cabin and The Hideaway Experience - we could have hidden there all week! 


Helping Ross check the ewes!


The future Mayoress of Dundee - although she might not have time to fit it in. 

The problem with the UK is that there are two many scholars for the size of the country, you literally can't drive more than a hour and not have passed someone, and that's just from my year of 2013. Unfortunately, we had to put our blinkers on and head south on Tuesday and got to visit Jake Freestone, near Tewkesbury, Hampshire, another 2013 scholar, as are the two other farmers we visited the next day - get to them soon. It rained most of the way to give us the sort of weather we expected to get but haven't had so far.

Jake is the farm manager for Overbury Estate, privately owned by the same family since the early 1700's. The farm consists of 2000ha (5000acres) of land, but did I mention the Estate also owns the village of Overbury and about 60% of the neighbouring village - now that's diversification. The Estate has a historic site on the top of the hill of the estate (946'/300m high) dating back over 2000 years where huge banks have been dug creating moats in front of them to protect the stone buildings and their inhabitants from invading neighbours. The sheer cliffs on the other two sides were the natural barriers to invasion. 


 Bank and moat fortifications built 2000 years ago

Jake is Mr Organised, managing the 6 staff with 1200 ewes and the cropping program in between his social media commitments of blogging, tweeting and facebooking. I don't know how he keeps up. Jake has taken a liking to no till (currently using a contractor with a Cross Slot) and cover cropping, where the cover crop is grazed and then sprayed out before a spring seeding. Cover crop mixtures used in the last couple of years, based mainly on forage turnips, fodder rape, forage rye, oats and phacelia. One of the problems he has in getting enough growth out of the turnips when seeded after harvest in August, so has used forage rye this year with more feed available. The cost advantage of the no till is about a third the cost of establishment of conventional seeding, so Jake is expecting to increase the area to no till. 


One of Jake's cover crops - wheat seeded into right half.


Jake in OSR/canola with unexpected cover crop - a result of Jake's absence last spring 
at the Nuffield conference in Canada.

We finally had a decent meal in Europe (only joking to everyone who has fed us) - roast lamb and vegetables with mint sauce - with a potato bake delivered by Michelle, the Estate Manager, on her horse - now that's service!! I got to do another night check on lambing ewes - lucky all was good. Once they get into the peak of lambing, a uni student will do the night shift to keep an eye on everything, a bit more attention than those who run paddock based systems would give. 

Our final day of visiting farms saw us visit the Andrew and Jenni Janaway, just out of Winchester, Hampshire (1 hour south west of London) and Tom and Sarah Sewell, just out Maidstone, Kent (1 hour south east of London).

Andrew, with his 2 brothers and parents, run what can only be described as a truly diversified farm, but its not all about farming. Their main enterprise is potatoes, all 800ha of them, spread across 2 properties with seed potatoes grown on a property in Scotland not farm from Ross and Caroline, where they also run beef cattle. Winter and spring crops are grown in rotation with the potatoes on a minimum tillage system. 


Andrew and his new venture - just something to keep the grey matter ticking.

As it seems to be common on some UK farms, if you have a spare shed and can't fully utilise it, it gets rented to some one who can and will pay rent. So Andrew has business' including an engineering works, fertiliser spreader contractor, skip hire company, joinery, chemical supplier renting sheds on the farm. The pick of the tenants is Riverford Organics who grow, pack and deliver fruit and vegetables (and some meat) to local consumers as part of a national ordering and distribution system. The arrangement has led to Andrew renting a 250 acre farm for organic potato production to supply Riverford, while establishing a 10 000 hen free range organic operation, with Riverford taking all egg sizes - a suppliers dream. 


Andrew's organic chicken sheds that towed between paddocks every 12 months - built on skids.

Tom and Sarah with Toms parents run a cropping and contracting business based on winter and spring seeded crops on land they own, rent and sharefarm. With land pushing £10 000/acre (urban demand and intensive agricultural production in tunnels (berries)) and land able to be rented for £125/acre, renting is a good option. Tom has been no till seeding for a couple of years with a tined drill, having being doing min till since 1991 and is just abut to take delivery of a Cross Slot seeder on 9"/22.5cm spacing, which is going against the norm for the majority European farmers on 6"/150mm spacing. 


Tracey, Sarah and Tom

Tom's rotation based on wheat, OSR/canola and faba beans is the same as mine, while he has just started using cover crops (oats, phacelia, fodder radish and mustard) between his winter canola and winter wheat and the winter wheat and spring beans. For the past 17 years all the straw has been chopped and spread at harvest, with no bagged P or K fertiliser haven't been applied in that time, but he uses liquid phosphite with lots of trace elements. The system is working because fertility levels are either holding or going up and the worm count is around 1200/sq. m.  Tom is dedicated to no till seeding, a rarity in that part of the world, so it will be interesting to see what the neighbours think looking over the fence. 



Tom's no till canola on a wet English day! 

Tom has built two grain sheds with in floor aeration (3500T capacity) while being a member
of a local grain marketing co op that allows direct delivery of grain or it is picked up ex farm, 
sometimes only hours after it has been harvested and loaded into the shed. 


Perhaps I need to get a bit more professional. 

We finished off the trip with two nights at the Farmers Club in London, just around the corner from Scotland Yard and a stones throw from the Thames. The club was formed in 1842 as a place for farmers to visit to share their experiences in new technologies and management practices of the day - farmers have always been prepared to help each other out, something that is quite unique to agriculture even though we are competitors in the market to each other. 

Arriving after dark on the first night, we had been well advised by Andrew Janaway to visit one of his many haunts, Gordon's wine bar, the oldest wine bar in London, with not a beer or cocktail in sight. 

We spent our last day wandering the streets of London, had lunch at great little deli, Ottolenghi (some of the tastiest salads we've ever had) but the last thing we got to do on our trip was to head to a meeting on regenerative agriculture (http://www.breakthroughcapitalism.com/regenerative-agriculture.html) It had a world class line up of speakers including Dwayne Beck (US), Ademir Calegari (Argentina), Frederic Thomas (France), Daniella Ibarra-Howell (US), Odette Menard (Canada) and our own No Till Bill, Bill Crabtree from Western Australia. I was on Bill's no till tour to the US and Canada in 2004 (where I met Dwayne Beck and got a taste for covers crops) and I think I was the last person Bill expected to see at the meeting- great to see him after all these years. 


I'm not big on taking photos of what I eat, but if you ever get to London, you've got to try Ottolenghi.


What an impressive line up!

Had dinner before the meeting with Tom Sewell and a couple of his mates involved with cover crops and no till, Guy Eckley and Andy Howard, and an Aussie working in soils and crop nutrition in Norfolk, Danny Sherlock (thanks for dinner Danny!)

One of the quotes I took away was from Daniella, "management of complexity yields results". This to me is what what going through a Nuffield Scholarship is all about - looking beyond the status quo and realising that the variables encountered every day in agriculture can be harnessed in ways not previously considered, but it takes planning and effort to see it through to the final result.

We flew home the next day via Abu Dhabi and as much its great to be travelling, its also good to get home. It was a whirlwind three weeks, given we drove nearly 4000km through 6 countries. A huge thanks to all those that had us visit and/or hosted us for a night or two - it was great that we only spent a week in hotels. We look forward to repaying the hospitality some time in the future. 

The next (and final) leg of my travels is to South America, Canada and the US in June and July. All that has to be done between now and them is get the crop In the ground and the house renovation kick started again. 

Until then, that's all for now!