Groundswell's tenth year last week heralded an increasingly large show which has moved on from its core farming roots to cover topics and opinions from across the whole food supply chain. Yes, it can be intellectually exclusive, and some of the speakers' outlooks might ruffle some agricultural feathers, but I feel the event still offers something to every farming business that is willing to listen, challenge themselves on how they operate and look for alternative viewpoints and outlooks, even if they don't completely agree with them.
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From the machinery perspective, the outlook a decade ago was one of 'only direct drill, and ideally move zero soil'.
To achieve this, multiple manufacturers designed and introduced direct drills with a repetitive focus on selling everything else at the next farm sale and becoming a single-establishment-system farm. When this approach works, it is financially sensible. Less capital is tied up in multiple machines, less depreciation or financial repayments, and only one machine needs to be maintained. The costs of that machine can also be spread over the largest area and across different crops.
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The issue is that we are an island in the North Atlantic, and we have a marine climate. We're not farming in Nebraska, and it's not -15°C in the winter. One system does not always work, and farms need to have some different options to move soil or establish crops in less-than-ideal conditions and potentially at less-than-ideal times. One size does not fit all, and there is a lot of risk carried by this approach.
A decade on, the mood has shifted somewhat. The range of manufacturers present at the event has fallen sharply, but listening to a session with NIAB and Philip Wright, the feedback was: "Less is more with cultivations, but none is worse."
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Some of the data they presented gave a compelling argument for strategic cultivation to identify which soil types and conditions would benefit from movement at specific times and depths.
I don't think that this is an opposing reaction to direct drilling, nor do I think it says the plough and power harrow are back in fashion, but rather a maturity of the outlook that one system, one process or even one opinion may not be correct. Without grants, subsidies or additional funding, we need to farm to produce yield and sustain the soil, and that – for now – might occasionally need us to burn some diesel to do it.
