Archive for September 2015

New Holland’s PLM products to be showcased at CropTec 2015 on 24-25 November at the East of England Showground
Demonstrations of a number of PLM products will take place on the company’s stand

New Holland will be bringing its Precision Land Management (PLM) technologies to CropTec 2015 on 24-25 November and visitors will have the chance to view demonstrations of several of its auto guidance products.

John Downes, New Holland’s PLM product specialist, says: “Precision farming technologies are revolutionising agriculture. They are becoming an essential tool for many farmers as they strive to reduce input cost, improve yields, and increase efficiencies. New Holland’s PLM products offer cutting-edge solutions to meet a wide range of crop management needs and budgets. Croptec provides us with the perfect opportunity to showcase our innovative PLM technologies.”

New Holland’s extensive PLM offering includes displays, guidance and telematics systems, mapping software, crop input control systems and data management software.

Demonstrations of New Holland’s EZ-Pilot™assisted steering system; PLM™ Mapping software; a range of displays; and the new PLM™ RTK Connect correction service for accurate navigation will take place on the company’s stand throughout the event.

For more information about New Holland’s PLM technology visit: http://agriculture.newholland.com/us/en/PLM/Pages/PLM_Overview.aspx

New Holland Agriculture’s reputation is built on the success of our customers, cash crop producers, livestock farmers, contractors, vineyards, or groundscare professionals. They can count on the widest offering of innovative products and services: a full line of equipment, from tractors to harvesting, material handling equipment, complemented by tailored financial services from a specialist in agriculture. A highly professional global dealer network and New Holland’s commitment to excellence guarantees the ultimate customer experience for every customer. For more information on New Holland visitwww.newholland.com

New Holland Agriculture is a brand of CNH Industrial N.V. (NYSE: CNHI /MI: CNHI) a global leader in the capital goods sector with established industrial experience, a wide range of products and a worldwide presence. More information about CNH Industrial can be found online at www.cnhindustrial.com

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Press contacts:

Sara Sebastianelli, New Holland Agriculture.
Phone: 01268 295 268
Email: sara.sebastianelli@newholland.com

Rebecca Dawson, Ware Anthony Rust.
Phone: 01223 272800
Email: rebecca.dawson@war.uk.com

CropTec 2015:

New Holland are one of many exhibitors at this year’s event, view our full exhibitor list here.

To encourage knowledge exchange among the British farming community further, this year’s event is FREE for farmers to attend. You MUST pre-register online to ensure you receive your free place.

General pre-registered admission: £12, all visitors will charged £15 on the gate on the day of the event.

Since 2010, James Peck has been researching and developing his CTF strategy. Awarded the Nuffield Farming Scholarship for six-month research project that took him to Australia, Argentina and the USA, James was determined to bring what he learned back to the UK to improve productivity and efficiency.

“During my time in Australia and the US, I saw the benefits that CTF brings to farming. Improvements in machine efficiency, reduced input costs and better soil structure means an 18% to 20% increase in yield for no additional costs. That’s pure profit,” enthuses James.

With 5670 acres of cultivated land under P.X. Farms’ stewardship, James prides himself on running an efficient operation. Wheat, winter and spring barley account for around 60% of the land while mustard, OSR, sugar beet, spring peas and beans make up the rest. All land starts with a digital mapping followed by subsoiling, cleaning up ditches and hedgerows before the CTF wheelings are set in place.

A 12m Horsch Joker cultivator is the final piece in P.X. Farms’ 12m system, which includes a Horsch Sprinter SW and Titan chaser bin. “Although we started in 2010, we have only run 100% CTF across the farm for the past three years, changing each piece of machinery at practical intervals. Over the past three years we’ve seen the farms’ soil structure improve greatly with more worm activity and crops advancing earlier,” he explains.

The full copy of Horsch’s ‘Talking CTF’ can be downloaded from their site at

http://www.horsch2.com/fileadmin/fm-dam/Specials/2015/GB/H035_-_Talking_CTF_web.pdf

CropTec 2015:

If you’re considering adopting more efficient cultivation techniques or looking at ways to improve the health of your soils to reduce your crop establishment costs, attending our new Crop Establishment Seminar, sponsored by Horsch, will pay dividends.

In addition to the free advice on offer at this topical, technical and practical seminar, there will be numerous exhibitors you can talk to regarding your cultivation and soil care strategy. This new and important area of CropTec is designed to help you boost yields further and reduce those all important unit costs of production

To encourage knowledge exchange among the British farming community further, this year’s event is FREE for farmers to attend. You MUST pre-register online to ensure you receive your free place.

General pre-registered admission: £12, all visitors will charged £15 on the gate on the day of the event.

Twitter: @pippartridge

Biog: Philip Partridge farms 330ha of arable and 40ha of permanent pasture in partnership with his mother Sylvia and sister, Joy, near Ipswich, Suffolk. His late father, Mark, moved to the farm in 1953. The current rotation is wheat, barley, beans and oilseed rape. He has a small flock of sheep and 200 head of fattening cattle which are bought in as stores and fed on a mixed ration of home-grown cereals and pulses. The soil types are Hanslope, Beccles, Burlingham, Newport and Melford – Philip is very keen to learn more about his soils and to improve soil fertility. He is married to Anita and has two children, Karl and Fabian.

Title: Crop diversity and no-till cultivations to tackle disease and pest mangement

Changes to my cropping is something that I continually review. I’m currently progressing towards a no-till system which will give me more flexibility to explore a more diverse approach to the crops I grow, including more use of cover and companion crops.

Cultivations this autumn are focused on non-inversion cultivation (Sumo Trio), followed by a cultivator drill (Vaderstad), with some crops (mostly winter beans) established with the Claydon SR strip tillage drill. My policy going forward is to make the progressive move to no-till following the principles of conservation agriculture.

Wheat varieties for this coming season will be Evolution, Reflection, Lili and we’re also trying a blend of varieties, the combination of which we’re still to decide. Evolution and Reflection will give me a chance to review my fungicides spend if the season’s conditions allows. I’m also aiming to try and beat my best yield with these two varieties in the Syngenta #bub challenge! KWS Lili looks like a great option for the future for both yield and the added bonus of Group 2 premium.

The blend of wheat varieties is something we’re exploring with some other farmers. The diversity could help in significantly reducing disease pressure. I’ve been taking the lead from some fascinating work done in this area by the James Hutton Institute.

Winter barley this coming year will be Hyvido Bazooka – we’re trying Hyvido for the first time because I think it will fit well into my cropping cycle as a second cereal. We are also growing KWS Glacier and Cassia – I can’t fault these barleys – they deliver consistent yield for feeing out cattle and the local feed mill.

My winter bean choice will be Wizard – it’s a reliable performer, so why change to something else?

I’ve taken the decision not to drill oilseed rape this autumn for a number of reasons – including cabbage stem flea beetle, current prices and our drive to try and reduce insecticide use. Spring barley will be KWS Irina because of its standing ability and it doesn’t brackle. We are also looking at spring beans and lupins, depending on the land and the conditions.

CropTec 2015:

To encourage knowledge exchange among the British farming community further, this year’s event is FREE for farmers to attend. You MUST pre-register online to ensure you receive your free place.

General pre-registered admission: £12, all visitors will charged £15 on the gate on the day of the event.

Twitter: @Toby_Bruce @Rothamsted

Biog: A senior researcher at Rothamsted Research. Toby joined Rothamsted in 2000 and has a background in Biology and a PhD in Chemical Ecology. He is convenor of the Association of Applied Biologists Biocontrol and IPM group, a Visiting Professor at the University of Greenwich Natural Resources Institute and Visiting Lecturer at Nottingham University. The aim of his research is to improve scientific understanding of how insects interact with plants and to use this knowledge to develop novel approaches to manage pests. He is keen on delivering outcomes from research e.g. management of orange wheat blossom midge has improved as a direct result of earlier collaborative research and development work he was involved with. In collaboration with partners, Rothamsted provided pheromone monitoring traps, resistant varieties and management recommendations.

Research and Rothamsted vital for UK farming

Rothamsted Research is important to the future of UK farming with its roots in delivering innovation to agriculture. It is the birthplace of systematic agricultural research with a proud history of pioneering many innovations. It is where the first synthetic fertilisers and pyrethroid insecticides were invented and where the first systematic field experiments were started (in 1843, see the picture in this blog below).

Innovation is important because it allows more food to be produced using fewer resources – one of the huge pressures facing farming in the 21st century. Sir John Beddington, former Chief Scientific Adviser to UK Government and Chair of Rothamsted Research Board of Trustees has stated, “The challenge for global agriculture is to grow more food on not much more land, using less water, fertiliser and pesticides than we have historically done”.

Research work is fundamental to supporting farm businesses by developing smart ways of producing and protecting high value and high yield produce. Crop protection in particular is becoming more difficult, because pests are evolving resistance to pesticides and fewer new pesticides are coming onto the market, so new methods of pest management must be developed.

As an institute we have the opportunity to do research beyond the scope of the private sector which is primarily concerned with short term return on investment. We also research beyond the scope of the university sector which is more academic. The Mission Statement of Rothamsted is, “To perform world-class research to deliver knowledge, innovation and new practices to increase crop `productivity and quality and to develop environmentally sustainable solutions for food and energy production.”

Picture: the broadbalk experiment at Rothamsted: running since 1843 when synthetic fertilisers were invented

Rothamsted Research has a scientific strategy, currently based on four themes that are integral to meeting 21st century agricultural challenges. These are:

20:20 Wheat : increasing wheat productivity to yield 20 tonnes per hectare in 20 years.
Cropping Carbon : Optimising carbon capture by grasslands and perennial energy crops, such as willow, to help underpin the UK’s transition to a low carbon economy.
Designing seeds : Harnessing our expertise in seed biology and biochemistry to deliver improved health and nutrition through seeds.
Delivering Sustainable Systems : Designing, modelling and assessing sustainable agricultural systems that increase productivity while minimising environmental impact.

CropTec 2015:

Want to find out more about the latest technology & innovation, precision farming and research and development in the arable sector? make sure you visit CropTec on Tuesday 24th & Wednesday 25th November, East of England Showground, Peterborough.

To encourage knowledge exchange among the British farming community further, this year’s event is FREE for farmers to attend. You MUST pre-register online to ensure you receive your free place.

General pre-registered admission: £12, all visitors will charged £15 on the gate on the day of the event.

Rothamsted events:

Rothamsted holds a number of events throughout the year. For example on 27 October 2015, Rothamsted celebrates the International Year of Light with a, free-to-attend, public meeting entitled ‘Illuminating Life’. Dr Smita Kurup, Head of Bioimaging, will discuss how advances in microscopy have allowed us to capture, and better understand, biological life. Dr Malcolm Hawkesford, Head of the Plant Biology and Crop Science Department, will discuss the use of images to evaluate crop performance. To see what’s going on, go to:http://www.rothamsted.ac.uk/events

Biog: Andrew Ward farms 730ha of arable land near Leadenham, Lincs. He grows wheat, spring barley, sugar beet and oilseed rape. He was awarded his MBE for Forage Aid in 2014 which he launched in April 2013 to gather up donated forage and straw to help farmers in the north and west during times of snow and flood. He is Chairman of the AHDB RL oilseeds committee, is an Agrii i-Farm trials site and a graduate of the IAgrM Leadership Development Programme. Andrew believes in strong partnerships with suppliers to farming, which include Agrii, AHDB, BASF, Bayer, Clydesdale Bank, GrowHow, Househam Sprayers, Monsanto, NIAB-TAG, Simba Great Plains and Syngenta. He is a McDonald’s Flagship Farm, has hosted two Cereal Events, won Farmers Weekly Arable Farmer of the Year, NFU/Farmers Weekly’s Farming Champion for helping snow-struck farmers and Farmers Guardian Farming Hero award for his part in the Somerset floods response team.

Three things: Cracking crops, blackgrass banished, tough market

Four years ago I made the tough decision to do everything I could to get on top of blackgrass. It was so bad that it had made my wheat totally unviable – wheat yields were halved, or worse, where blackgrass was really bad; plus herbicide costs were huge and their effectiveness was poor because of resistance. So I’ve evolved from all winter-cropping to 40% spring barley, 25% wheat, 30% oilseed rape and the rest sugar beet.

Any patch of blackgrass was sprayed out with RoundUp – with the growing crop, to stop it from shedding its seed. In year one we sprayed out 170acres, year two it was around 150 acres, year three it was down to 65 acres, year four 23acres and this year there were only three patches the size of two tennis courts each. Last season the only blackgrass herbicides I used were RoundUp and Crystal or Liberator pre-em.

I’ve also spent £36/acre on hand rogueing the blackgrass – 21 Easter Europeans in three teams. They’ve walked 1100 acres. It’s been very labour intensive and it’s taken a lot of supervision by me, but it’s meant that we’ve got down to almost nil blackgrass on the farm after four years.

What I’ve come to see is that it’s a fallacy to say that a) you can’t grow spring barley on heavy land; and b) that you have to have wheat in the rotation to be profitable. If you’ve got blackgrass, the returns from spring barley are much, much better.

But I know that I need to keep on top of the blackgrass it’s a viscious triffid of a plant, and I’m very expectant that it will evolve and start to become an issue in other ways, for example germinating later, or even in the spring.

So I’ve started working with Agrii on cover crops in earnest to improve the soil structure. We are trialling five different crop mixtures this year. We’ll spray RoundUp before we drill, then we will compare killing off half pre-Christmas and half pre spring barley drilling and see what works best from the combination of approaches and mixes.

Minimal disturbance is the name of the game for establishment – we’ve adapted and developed our own direct sowing kit and cultivate everything after the combine – including the spring barley ground.

Yields have been cracking this year, the spring barley has averaged 10.2t/ha compared with 9.2t/ha last year.

Variety-wise, I’ll be drilling Skyfall, Reflection, Revelation and Evolution this coming season, and I’ll be drilling Skyfall onto the poorer heath ground – where it’s yielded 4.2t/acre this year. The variety seems to do really well on poorer ground. I always delay drilling to allow for as many stale seedbeds as I can. Oilseed rape varieties for next season will be V316OL and V324OL.

Looking ahead with prices where they are and ongoing market volatility, I’m going to be looking very seriously at machinery costs. I’m not sure how farmers can justify kit like the Cross Slot drill at £220k unless they get rid of every other piece of equipment apart from a spray and a set of Cambridge Rolls. I’m going to be looking into a second-hand John Deere drill next year as a way of keeping costs low.

Good GPS kit is – and will remain – invaluable. And it needs to be the good kit that’s down to a couple of centimetre accuracy. I use RTK GPS and I’ve worked out that using it has saved me 26ha in spraying overlaps every time we spray. From a cost and an environmental point of view – this is hugely valuable.

If I was to ask R&D manufacturers what us farmers need next, I’d say more work on direct drilling and minimal soil disturbance – particularly on heavy land; and a way of applying slug pellets at the same time. We also need more collaborative work on cultural control options – not just of weeds.

CropTec 2015

Want to find out more about how to tackle blackgrass, the latest technology & innovation, precision farming and research and development in the arable sector? make sure you visitCropTec on Tuesday 24th & Wednesday 25th November, East of England Showground, Peterborough.

To encourage knowledge exchange among the British farming community further, this year’s event is FREE for farmers to attend. You MUST pre-register online to ensure you receive your free place.

Shamal Mohammed, Research and Knowledge Transfer Manager at the HGCA discusses Making the Most of Your Field Data, the topic he’ll be speaking on at CropTec’s Managing with Precision Seminar.

“At CropTec I’ll be exploring how we can use the wealth data to improve performance on the farm by perhaps improving yields, reducing inputs or making more informed cropping and crop protection decisions. Over the last 15 years the amount of global information has increased by more than fivefold as new technology has made it easier and cheaper to capture and store data. GPS, Global Information Systems and advances in remote and in situ technology has allowed us to build up many layers of information about a farm or a field on an hourly, daily weekly or even seasonal basis. The challenge is to transform this digital farm information into intelligent farm information that can anticipate growing conditions and instigate action.

The Government has recognised the importance of so-called Big Data with £10 million in funding to establish the Agri Infomatics Centre as part of its AgriTech strategy. Another £10 million is due to come from industry sources and famers will be able to use that data alongside the data they generate on their own farms.

Data management is one of the biggest challenges in precision farming. Adopting the advancement in data science will help the industry to increase efficiency, productivity and profitability.

Events such as CropTec are important to expose farmers and growers to the latest technology, knowledge, research and development and products to increase productivity, profitability and business resilience.

I’ll be at CropTec with my regional colleague Harry Henderson. My background is in research and his in farm machinery, so on the HGCA stand you’ll be able to get both practical and technical background to the data revolution.

Shamal Mohammed received a PhD from Cranfield University in 2010 for his work in the application of remote sensing and geographic information systems. He is still a visiting fellow at Cranfield.

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