Gobal CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

for sustainable production intensification and land management


Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow a message from Prof. John Baker from New Zealand in response to the article 'Farmers are abandoning traditional ploughing in the UK' distributed to CA-CoP on 16 October.

Thank you John for sharing your insights and some historical perspectives about no-till in the UK with CA-CoP.

Amir Kassam

Moderator

e-mail: [log in to unmask]      
URL:
www.fao.org/ag/ca


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: John Baker <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sun, Oct 15, 2017 at 9:33 PM
Subject: RE: Farmers are abandoning traditional ploughing - BBC News
To: Amir Kassam <[log in to unmask]>


Dear Amir

 

Congratulations on the perceptive observations in your latest Global Community of Practice on Conservation Agriculture posting.

 

Please feel free to also post my supporting piece below.

 

In soil health regeneration, the UK is following a similar trend to New Zealand. By 1998, the proportion of NZ’s 1 million seeded hectares (that are not confined to arable alone, but also include forage and pasture crops) undertaken by no-tillage had declined to about 40,000 hectares/year or 4% of all annual seeding in that country. This was due mainly to the high failure rates of the then no-tillage machines and techniques in use, compared with more predictable conventional tillage. But following the introduction of special low-disturbance no-tillage seed drills in 1998, which proved to be even more fail-safe and cheaper than conventional tillage, there was a marked improvement in the areas seeded by no-tillage in that country. Many of the new machines had their origins in NZ. Seventeen years later (by 2015) according to NZ Government statistics, the total area that was no-tilled in NZ had increased to 370,000 hectares or 37% of all seeding. This amounted to an increase of some 825% compared with 1998 or an average increase of almost 50% per year for 17 years..

 

It is not difficult to see the same thing happening in the UK because many of these same NZ-designed machines and techniques are now being used in the UK and there is much greater emphasis in the UK on arable cropping than in NZ. NZ’s emphasis on animal agriculture had masked much of the soil degradation that had been taking place in that country. By contrast, the UK’s greater emphasis on arable agriculture and it’s longer history of cropping, makes it’s soils even more responsive to improved soil management and environmentally friendly machines and seeding techniques than in NZ.

 

The keys in the UK will be: (1) using low-disturbance no-tillage exclusively (minimum tillage and high-disturbance no-tillage just do not do it), (b) retaining and drilling through all of the residues of previous crops (to maximise the sequestration into the soil of new organic carbon and nitrogen), (c) maintaining living crops growing in the soil for as much of the time as possible (by maximising the use of cover crops), and varying crop rotations (to maximise biodiversity and minimise disease and pest carry-over).

 

Leading UK farmers already know these things and I therefore predict an increase in the rate of uptake of low-disturbance no-tillage in the UK that will eventually exceed the NZ experience and approach that which has already happened in Latin America.

 

It is clear that UK farmers are realising that minimum tillage and even high-disturbance no-tillage are just not enough to regenerate soil health adequately.

 

The irony is that the UK invented no-tillage in the 1960s but was never able to perfect it. So the UK and the rest of Europe resorted to minimum tillage instead. Meantime, NZ refined no-tillage into low-disturbance no-tillage and the UK is now seeing its benefits and adopting it. It has been joint effort for which both countries should be congratulated.

 

 

 

Kind regards

 

 

John Baker

 

 

Dr C John Baker, ONZM

Chief Executive Officer & Chairman

Baker No-Tillage Limited

P.O. Box 181

Feilding 4740

New Zealand

Ph. +64 6 323 1119 (d.d. extn. 801)

Cell. +64 21 715 205

 

 

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From: Global Community of Practice on Conservation Agriculture [mailto:[log in to unmask]ORG] On Behalf Of Amir Kassam
Sent: Monday, 16 October 2017 6:34 a.m.
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fwd: Farmers are abandoning traditional ploughing - BBC News

 

Gobal CA-CoP CONSERVATION AGRICULTURE COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE

for sustainable production intensification and land management

 

Dear Subscribers,

Please see herebelow the link to an article in the BBC News entitled Farmers are abandoning traditional ploughing by


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38332276

The article was published on 16 December 2016.

 

The CA area in the UK in 2016 is estimated to be about 400,000 hectares of arable cropland, equivalent to some 10% of total arable land in the UK. In 2011, the CA area in the UK was estimated to be about 150,000 hectares. Thus, there has been an increase in the CA area by some 167% since 2011.

 

One major reason for this substantial increase has been the availability of good quality no-till drills and an increase in awareness by farmers of the real opportunity and  possibility of sustainable production intensification with the CA approach.

 

The increase in awareness is being brought about through organizations such as Groundswell (www.groundswellag.com) and Conservation Agriculture Association for the UK (CA-UK) (www.conservation-agriculture.co.uk), as well as through more and more CA farmers themselves championing the need to move away from the intensive tillage-based production systems which have become sub-optimal in their performance in terms of productivity, economics and environmental sustainability and services.

 

The CA area across Europe has also been increasing in recent years mainly due to the advocacy and field work of the European CA Federation (ECAF) and their National level farmer associations in 15 countries across Europe (www.ecaf.org). 

 

Amir Kassam

Moderator

e-mail: [log in to unmask]      
URL:
www.fao.org/ag/ca

 

 


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