Monitor Farm meeting: Taunton

About the meeting

Reducing Actives by legislation, weed, disease and pest resistance, environmental concerns, pressure on profitable UK crop farming – the list is long and daunting.

Is there a solution?

Through a different approach, some growers have reduced input costs by 50%, which will be explored in this meeting.

Mike Harrington is a lead Agronomist adopting a new line of thinking which he will be discussing at this meeting. He bases his advice on the core principles of soil and plant health garnered before the nitrogen boom of the 1920s, which allows him to take a whole systems approach where chemistry is the last resort, not the first.

About the farm

Richard Payne farms 280 ha at Manor Farm, Heathfield, near Taunton. The mostly arable farm has been in min-till for more than 15 years. Farming on silty clay loam, his rotation includes winter wheat, oilseed rape and beans. He grows primarily for the animal feed market, selling forward and into pools to spread risk. Richard’s main challenges are consistent profitability, succession and knowing which investments to make for the future. By the end of the Monitor Farm programme Richard wants to have a better understanding of all his costs of production, particularly on the fixed cost side, and to benchmark himself against others.