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At the time of writing this, I’m in Australia, studying for my Nuffield Scholarship entitled "herbicide resistant weeds; investigation a sustainable future for arable farming"; the award was made by the Yorkshire Agricultural Society.

I see herbicide resistance one of the biggest challenges that the arable sector faces, with increasing levels of herbicide resistance and nothing coming forward in the form of new chemical modes of action. This situation is prompting farmers to look towards more integrated methods of weed control.

My research has taken me to the USA for a month this summer; after my month in Australia, I hope to visit Argentina at the start of next year. I’ll then head back to the USA and Canada next year.

My learnings so far have been that herbicide resistance is a global problem, with different attitudes being shown towards it.

Resistance is often seen as a "wicked problem", but in reality it is really not. Understanding how resistance works on your farm is critical to determining a plan of attack on your own farm.

A practice called Harvest Weed Seed Control has changed ryegrass management in Australia and showing great results within a two to three year window. Meanwhile, the USA is very reliant on GMO technology and is now starting to stack multiple herbicide tolerances within Corn and Soybeans.

So how will this change what we do at home? Attention to detail is crucial and you need to farm in a way that will reduce the weed seed bank. You need to devise a weed management plan but have to be adaptable enough to change if the need does. The shift has to be made for reliance on herbicides to maximising the use of cultural controls.

My hope is that my findings will help other farmers with this huge problem. The world is a massive place; and the UK is only a tiny producer of food competing in a global marketplace. I feel that the British producers have a place within that market, as a producer of high quality food with some of the world's best safety records and levels of compliance, that's where we have advantage. But our produce needs to be marketed better to the public for a certain future. At the same time, UK agriculture shouldn't be complacent, because the industry needs to become more efficient to thrive post Brexit.

CropTec 2016

Herbicide resistance will be a big topic at this year's CropTec event, come and talk to our technical experts and listen to our seminars discussing how we can become more efficient.

We also have over 140 exhibitors at the event displaying the latest science and technology across the trade stands, while CropTec’s well established seminars and hubs will feature the latest thinking on a range of key arable topics delivered by leading specialists.

The event is free to attend for those visitors that pre-book their tickets. ALL visitors will be charged £15 on the day.

Biog: Russ farms 995ha, spread over 17 miles and five units, between Cambs and Beds. He grows predominantly first wheats (mostly for seed) with winter barley, oilseed rape, spring beans and spring barley. He describes himself as not form a farming family, but as having loved everything about farming since a very young age, starting with a harvest job on a local farm when he was 13. He graduated from Writtle College with a BSc in Agriculture and then took on a trainee manager’s position with Albanwise Farming in Norfolk. Russ is BASIS and FACTS qualified and is a partner in his wife’s family farming business which he jointly manages along with John Sheard Farms. His recent Nuffield Farming scholarship, sponsored by AHDB, investigated how the best no-till practitioners across the world manage to make the system work in both the wettest and driest of conditions which took him to Australia, New Zealand, the Czech Republic, USA, Brazil and Argentina. He is also an AHDB Monitor Farm.

Title: Harvest 2016 and industry innovation

It’s been an easy harvest, and whilst some performances have been down. We’ve combined 5,000+ tonnes of grain and not had to dry any of it, which means it’s been a welcome, cheap harvest.

Our break-even for wheat is £117/t; at market prices of £120-130/t, there’s a bit of margin; at the current November futures price of £116/t, there is none. Added to this, milling wheat supply is strong, because of the large areas of Skyfall and the spec is good. Millers know this and it has dented premiums.

In the immediate future, prices need to rise and the industry needs to continue to innovate.

Farmers talk to each other and it fuels our hunger to learn and to get more from the equipment we are using. In the UK we are living in an innovative environment and seeing lots of farmers trying new ideas without the help of a guide book. We’re seeing this particularly in direct drilling and the use of cover crops.

The innovation that has most benefited my farming operation is the introduction of variable seed rates. My catalyst was the variation I saw in one field drilled at a uniform seed rate, where the soils were heavier, the plant count was too low resulting in a 1.75t/ha yield penalty.

Since we’ve introduced Soilquest variable rate scanning and adapted seed rates to field zones, our yields are higher and more consistent.

However, success can sometimes be hard won. I get frustrated that different implements cannot talk to one another; it is always the fault of the other manufacturer!

Crop varietal development is another innovation worthy of mention. We’ve seen some remarkable yield jumps and improvements in disease packages, particularly in oilseed rape. Plus, traits like pod shatter resistance have delivered valuable risk mitigation, particularly when bad weather hits nearly ripe crops.

R&D is vital for our future and here, large organisations cannot be as nimble as farmers, nor is it easy for them to take the trial and error approach possible on-farm; by the time their projects are planned and budgets agreed, the findings are two years out of date.

Work conducted by organisations like AHDB as very valuable. However, we could learn a lot from Brazil’s agricultural research body, Embrapa, where there is no disconnect between them and farmers; they are right on the pulse of what research is valuable and how its communicated.

Looking to the future, the primary focus for advancing innovation needs to be in the understanding and management of soil health. A lot of brilliant soil scientists have recently retired and it’s a huge loss because we need to build a deeper understanding about our soils.

CropTec 2016:

Want to find out more about R&D, Innovation and your cropping choices for 2017, make sure to visit CropTec 2016.

In addition to the free advice on offer in CropTec’s topical and technical seminars, there will be numerous exhibitors you can talk to find ideas, inspiration and answers on everything from crop protection and nutrition to plant breeding and soil management in one place, at one time.

CropTec is FREE for those who pre-book tickets. You MUST pre-register here to ensure you receive your free ticket.

All visitors will charged £15 on the gate on the day of the event.

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