Top 10 ways we can help you improve your farming business

Author: Sajjad Awan

30th January 2024

NRM

Agriculture

Growers and advisors in the UK are facing greater challenges than ever before. Ensuring their business is successful whilst fielding ambitious sustainability initiatives and unpredictable or extreme weather conditions is a top priority for many farmers.

That’s where insightful, regular analysis comes in. Here are our top 10 ways to improve your farming business now and into the future.

#10: Take advantage of carbon sequestration

Do you keep an eye on carbon markets? If not, bear in mind that you could carve out a lucrative new income stream.

The idea of carbon markets is to help farmers (and the UK as a whole) lower our carbon footprints. A “carbon credit” represents either the removal of a tonne of CO₂ from the atmosphere or the avoidance of one being created and emitted in the first place. This is achieved through making changes in land use or energy generation. Businesses who wish to offset their emissions will pay a set unit price for each tonne of carbon sequestered from a farmer’s land. Check out the latest prices for carbon online here.

To take advantage of this, you need to make management decisions that lower your carbon footprint. This could include changing your soil and nutrient management plans, utilising cover crops to improve nutrient use efficiency, or planting trees. Our CarbonCheck service measures the carbon levels in your soil, providing you with a full suite of soil tests as well as soil organic matter analysis, helping you make these decisions through increased carbon sequestration.

By benchmarking soil carbon, you can increase levels year-on-year to help make yourself some money to reinvest back into your business.

#9: Take steps to safeguard the environment through incentive schemes

Adopting sustainable farming practices isn’t just a great way to help safeguard the environment and food security. It’s also an entry into the new environmental schemes which are replacing BPS.

The UK government launched its Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) scheme in 2022 to help farmers in England produce food more sustainably and help the agricultural industry as a whole reach net zero and deliver on animal health and welfare ambitions. Wales has also introduced a Sustainable Farming Scheme (SFS) and Scotland has launched its own Preparing for Sustainable Farming (PSF) scheme. These schemes are designed to reward farmers for producing public goods, such as improved water quality, increased biodiversity, and climate change mitigation. These payments can help to support farming businesses until the true financial benefit of sustainable land management are realised.

For more information on the SFI and what you need to do, read my colleague Alli Grundy’s expert blog here.

Providing evidence of recent soil analysis (completed in the last 5 years), as well as soil organic matter (SOM) analysis, will help you be eligible for the SFI. Our CarbonCheck service provides everything you need.

However, it’s not all about financial rewards. SOM analysis is also the best way to…

#8: …improve soil health and the resilience of your business

Taking care of SOM is critical as it plays a vital role in the overall quality and function of the soil. By ensuring SOM levels are sufficient, you are improving your soil’s capacity to support plant growth, store water and supply nutrients.  All of this helps optimise crop yields and increase the resilience of your farming business.

Understanding SOM levels also informs nutrient management planning. Generally, the larger the SOM content, the more fertile a soil is. For example, whilst a 3% OM content soil generally mineralises around 25kg N/ha, an 8% OM content soil may mineralise around 65kg N/ha.

CarbonCheck includes SOM analysis as part of our basic package. If you want to go a step further in improving soil health, CarbonCheck Plus includes an active carbon measurement on top of the full list of CarbonCheck tests.

#7: Reflect on the season with grain analysis

Harvest marks the end of the season. It’s a time to reflect on what went well and what can be done better in the future.

Grain testing at harvest will not only confirm the quality of the grain you have produced through determination of grain N concentration, but it will also tell you whether your crop nutrition strategy was successful or not. Our innovative GrainCheck package, suitable for cereals, gives you value-added insight into your data. This means you can learn from the past and review how well your crops coped with the challengeable weather patterns that crops these days have to deal with. The question is: could you have done something differently?

You can also convert your GrainCheck results into nutrient offtake in kg per hectare by inputting your figures into our handy online calculator.

Essentially, by assessing your overall seasonal performance, you can learn from experience and improve your business every year.

#6: Work with your soils’ texture

Advice is often given based on general values and data. Whilst this is useful overall as this means you can benchmark against other farms and make decisions based on proven results, it’s always best to tailor your management plans to your own situation to help finetune operations.

Understanding the texture of your soils helps with cultivation planning, how well soils store water and hold onto nutrients both of which determines the yield potential of the site. For example, if you farm shallower soils or soil types which easily drought out, then the yield potential of the site will be lower compared to deeper more nutrient and moisture retentive soils.

Soil texture mapping can provide a base for variable rate inputs, such as lime N, P, K and seed rate. NRM offers laser analysis to determine soil texture. This process assesses the proportion of sand, silt, and clay content to work out which textural class the sample falls into. Soil is our most valuable asset, so understanding what we have is the basis of sustainable management.

#5: Keep an eye on crops as they grow

Why should you undertake plant tissue testing?

Some deficiencies aren’t apparent in the crop until it’s too late to take effective action, and analysis checks that sufficient nutrients are making it into the plant.

Our innovative CropCheck service takes this a step further, as it assesses nutrient content in tissue samples at key growth stages. This means you can see whether your crop is performing as it should before deficiencies make themselves known, allowing insightful adjustment of crop nutrition plans during the spring for optimal yield and profit.

CropCheck is available for a broad range of cereal crops at key growth stages 30-37.

#4: Make use of organic matter inputs

This one is especially useful for farmers who produce this wonderful resource or those who import it! If you have a readily available organic matter source like solid manure or slurry to hand, then it’s important to understand how much of your nutrient requirement will be satisfied by any organic applications you’re planning to make.

Did you know that the nutrient content of livestock organic materials can vary significantly to standard RB209 values? Knowing the nutrient levels of your livestock manures and organic materials can help you reduce the cost of production (as it will reduce the amount of expensive inorganic fertiliser you need to buy) and potentially lower the overall carbon footprint of growing the crop. It’s a win-win!

#3: Take soil mineral nitrogen into account

Speaking of expensive inorganic fertiliser: if you analyse soil mineral nitrogen levels after winter and before you apply any fertiliser or manures, you can be confident about how much is already soil available for your crops to access in spring. Tailoring your nitrogen applications so you only apply what you need potentially saves you money and reduces excess in the environment, both of which help you optimise crop production.

For example, nitrogen fertiliser (34.5N%) currently costs around £1/kg (£350/t). So, reducing nitrogen rates by 25kg N/ha will save around £25 per hectare.

Now’s the perfect time of year to book our soil mineral nitrogen package, N-Check.

#2: Optimise your soil pH

pH is often called the “master soil variable”. Why is this and how can managing soil pH carefully help your farm?

Soil pH influences many critical soil functions, including microbial activity and nutrient availability and particularly trace minerals. These all affect plant growth and crop yield.

By analysing soils and managing soil pH carefully, you can not only maintain and improve soil health, crop yield, and quality, but you can save money on expensive inputs. This is because a soil pH that strays too far from the optimal adversely impacts nutrient recovery and use efficiency. For example, at pH 5.5, nitrogen and potassium availability drop to 77% and phosphorus to 48%.

An extra bonus is that a neutral soil pH protects soil structure, reducing the risk of erosion and nutrient loss through leaching and surface run off.

#1: Commit to regular soil testing

That’s right—our top way to improve your farming business is to commit to regular soil testing.

By testing all your soils every 4 years, or testing a quarter of your soils annually on a rotation, you can be sure that you are taking steps towards improving every year. This investment in insightful results will give you the groundwork needed to make the very best decisions for your business.

We have plenty of soil packages available, so talk to your advisor to discuss which of our expert services are right for your requirements.

Contact NRM to help today

With difficult to predict input costs and less predictable weather conditions, it’s really worth knowing what’s going on in your soils and how your crops are doing as the season progresses.

NRM offers the full range of agricultural testing services to give you the data you need to make informed decisions and increase yield and profitability. To get started, speak to your advisor or contact us directly.