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| Case Study 3 - Successful adoption of
reduced cultivation, large scale |
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Location |
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Essex |
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Size, average field size and spread |
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2,000ha; 30 different land owners within 32km |
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Soils and landscape |
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Mainly flat land. Dense, slowly permeable, seasonally
waterlogged clayey soils (Windsor association) developed in London Clay predominate.
Subsidiary areas of permeable well drained clay loams over gravel (Efford
association) occur locally and the gravels are occasionally affected by
groundwater. |
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Cropping |
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The land is primarily down to combinable crops with
50% winter wheat, plus oilseed rape, winter beans and spring peas or beans.
Other crops grown include sugar beet and sweet corn and vining beans grown
for a local marketing group. Pig enterprise. |
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Workforce |
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Run by two brothers with 6 arable staff employed,
partly made up of further family labour plus extra help at harvest. |
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Equipment and cultivation machinery |
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Case Quadtrac (360 hp), JD 8400 (265 hp), Case 7250
(270 hp) plus a further 7 Fastracs from 145 to 170 hp. Tim Howard 9 legged
subsurface cultivator (working about 300mm deep), 12m Horsch FG Stubble
cultivator, 10 furrow plough, 5m Simba 2B Discs, 8m Horsch CO tined cultivator
drill, old Vaderstad 8m drill, 12m rolls, 2 x 24 m sprayers, 2 x 24m pneumatic
fertiliser spreaders 2 x Claas Lexion Combines. |
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Cultivation Policy |
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Over the last 2 to 3 years
the farm has significantly reduced the hectarage ploughed to only about
20%. In 2000, this was mainly for sugar beet, sweetcorn, green beans and
where there was muck to incorporate. The farm has experimented progressively
and widely adopted a cultivation system based around two passes of the 12mm
Horsch cultivator with wide “A” bladed tines followed by the
roll in one pass. These are pulled by the Quadtrac working to a 75mm depth.
In very hard or wet conditions the “A” blades are replaced by
75mm wide points. The aim, as far as possible, is to mix the straw into
the top 75mm layer where the aerobic breakdown is at its greatest and to
drill through and into this mixed surface layer. The 8m tined Horsch drill
is pulled by the Case 7250 (270 hp). Sub-soiling is not routine, averaging
once every 5 years, but is only done when necessary following advice from
an independent soil scientist. |
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Costings and Work rates |
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Operation |
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Output (ha/hr) |
Cost (£/ha) |
Time taken (min/ha) |
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2 x 12m Horsch cultivator + roll |
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10 |
12 |
12 |
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Spray |
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16 |
7.5 |
4 |
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Horsh drill |
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5 |
20 |
12 |
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Roll |
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8 |
10 |
8 |
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Sub-soil lifting |
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2.5 |
20 |
24 |
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Discussion |
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Decision to change |
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To help reduce costs and further significantly increase
output on a rapidly expanding
hectarage. The farm has a proven history of making brave decisions with
its machinery and
successfully adopting new machinery and working it hard and cost effectively.
They fully
appreciate the blackgrass problem but have predominantly first wheats (maximum
5 to 10%
second wheats) and believe that with good spraying timeliness and the correct
rotation they
can keep it under control. The roll producing the correct consolidation
is extremely important in keeping slugs under control. |
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How |
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The farm changed to an 8 m Vaderstad with front tines
and levelling board in 1991. This could no longer cope by itself with the
expanding hectarage. Drilling into disced land with surface straw had at
times been a problem. In 2000 the Horsch drill covered two thirds of the
hectarage and it is likely that the farm will replace both drills with a
12m Horsch drill in the near future. This type of drill has also proved
effective drilling on ploughed and pressed land. |
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Benefits |
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It is too soon to judge the medium to long term effect
on blackgrass but the farm feel they can keep on top of it, especially with
the correct rotation and the low proportion of second wheat’s. The
overall establishment time for the operations described, excluding subsoiling,
is about 36 minutes per hectare. The spray is not always used but it is
generally just prior to drilling after the second pass of the cultivator.
These times compare favourably with the farm’s plough based system,
which averages about 80 minutes per hectare, and a disc system at about
55 minutes per hectare. Compared to the original plough and cultivator drill
system there is a time saving of over 1,000 hours per year. Yields have
been maintained while output and timeliness have been improved. In the future
yields are expected to increase due to better timeliness and soil conditions.
In wet seasons the reduced cultivation land has a greater machinery carrying
capacity than ploughed land. |
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Problems |
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Following the cultivator with a roll in the same
pass helps to minimise the number of heelings
and also retains moisture in dry autumn. In wet conditions and in small
fields it is not always
possible to pull the roll as well. Occasionally laid fields of, for example,
beans need to be
disced to give a greater chopping action. Transport of machinery from farm
to farm is costly
and time consuming. The ease of folding within the legal limit is crucial
to the success of such
an operation. |
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Solutions Found |
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Increased management and attention to detail is necessary,
especially a greater use of the
spade to decide on the need for lifting. The rewards for paying attention
to the latter are
enormous - 2 hours investigating work may save 2 weeks of autumn work. Each
field needs to be treated on its own merits. The even straw spread behind
the Lexion combines has been an important factor in enabling the system
to be adopted. |
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SMI COMMENT |
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Well thought out and progressively
adopted; the large tractor allows wide cultivation which pulls a roll at
the same time.At 28min/ha very good, but could be improved further with
a 12m drill. If all land is ploughed, 400 man days would be required,
whereas 69 man days are required using this reduced cultivation system. |
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Soil Group |
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Type of Year |
M.W.D.s' |
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M.W.D.s' |
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Windsor |
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Normal
Wet |
81
60 |
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26
5 |
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Efford |
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Normal
Wet |
121
100 |
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46
15 |
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Cultivator x 2 
