An Update From: Stern Farm

“The next time a farmer moans about the weather, put your arm around him and buy him a pint because he’s not moaning about it ‘cause it’s a bit miserable working in the rain. He’s moaning about it because it’s crucifying him.” Jeremy Clarkson

The harvest in 2020 was described by some as the worst in living memory. The harvest in 2021 wasn’t any better, all because of the weather. So rather than continue with my usual theme of complaining about it being too dry, too hot, too wet or too cold I’d look at how farming has changed towards more sustainable methods.

Since 2000 the Stern Farms have participated in environmental stewardship schemes to provide wildlife habitat and food sources. The current scheme has taken more land out of crop production than any of the others, but financially it is worth over three times that of our first agreement which ended in 2005. Originally stewardship was confined to the awkward corners of fields or parts of fields that were unproductive. Now we have whole fields in stewardship options such as legume fallow which is a two year “fallow” crop consisting of clover, vetches, birds foot trefoil, black medic and lucerne. The species will build fertility in the soil (legumes fix nitrogen from the atmosphere), provide a source of nectar for insects and help smother out difficult to control grass weeds. After two years the legume fallow will be replanted in a different field and the old one will be direct drilled with winter wheat and brought back into the farms crop rotation. Nectar and pollen strips have also been sown across some of our larger fields. The idea behind this is to encourage beneficial insects, (ladybirds, hoverflies, lace wings, spiders, carabid beetles, to name but a few), further out into the field to reduce and hopefully eliminate any future use of insecticides, although we only ever use insecticides when there is no other choice as very few are selective and therefore any applications will always kill the beneficial insects as well as the ones that are damaging the crops.

No land is left bare over the winter as cover crops are planted to stop nutrients leaching out of the soil and prevent soil erosion. Cover crops also out compete weeds, again helping to reduce herbicide use. Spring crops are then drilled directly into these cover crops. The seed drill required to do this is quite specialised as it needs to be able to cope with the large amounts of residue produced by the cover crop without the machine blocking and pulling the residue into big heaps. As the cost of such machines can easily exceed £100,000, we decided to modify our existing seed drill by designing and fitting discs to the front of it to slice through the vegetation and leave a slot for the seed to be placed into by the coulters. This was partly funded by a Soil Innovation Grant from Affinity water and LWC’s DT department helped produced the drawings for the parts that were laser cut from sheet steel.

Stubble turnips are planted immediately after harvest as a temporary crop which we then sell to a neighbouring farmer as sheep grazing over the winter. This is how we have reintroduced livestock into our farming system. The sheep graze the turnips, excrete their waste onto the fields, tread it into the soil. This increases the soils organic matter content which is key to improving the soil structure and natural fertility, again helping to reduce our reliance on manufactured fertilisers.

So, we think that we are heading in the right direction when it comes to addressing climate change, improving our soil, reducing our reliance on manufactured fertilisers and generally improving the environment around us.

PAUL SIGLEY Farm Manager