Natural capital debates a hit at Newbury Monitor Farm

Newbury Monitor Farm hosts its final meeting on 18 June 2024. AHDB’s David Hunter outlines some of the main topics covered over the farm’s tenure and picks out the ones that resonated most with farmers.

Welford Estate, which covers 1,072 ha, has hosted Newbury Monitor Farm since 2020. Farm manager Rob Waterston looks after almost 900 ha of arable land, including 224 ha under a contract-farming agreement. The rotation includes winter crops (wheat, oilseed rape and beans) and spring barley.

From the outset, Rob wanted to develop a farming system with sustainability at its heart. He constantly strives to get the most out of the farm’s soils (mainly chalk, clay, gravel, Wallop and Winchester series). The farm is developing a no-till approach. The spring barley was introduced to drive down black-grass in the seedbank. Ultimately, Rob wants the farm to be carbon neutral too.

Monitor farmers host four to six meetings on their farms each year. The topics are chosen by the farm, in consultation with a small group that supports the Monitor Farm.

Bearing in mind Rob’s passions and the increasing conversations about natural capital, it is not surprising that topics with an environmental edge featured frequently and often generated the most meaningful debates.

Rob said:

“We had a carbon audit carried out on the farm by Becky Wilson from the Farm Carbon Toolkit, with the findings discussed at one of our Monitor Farm meetings. It kickstarted my carbon journey, with ways to increase carbon sequestration and reduce greenhouse gas emissions identified.”

Attendees at the farm’s meetings were also updated on the rapidly developing natural capital markets, with several presentations delivered to help farmers navigate policy and get to grips with changes to agri-environmental schemes.

AHDB has recently developed a framework to monitor soil health on a rotational basis (ahdb.org.uk/scorecard), which focuses on the components of soil health that can be practically measured on the farm.

One meeting got everyone out on the farm, digging soil pits, assessing soil structure, and counting and identifying earthworms.

Rob felt it was a valuable meeting, with everyone going away with something.

Rob’s approach to cover cropping was also put under the spotlight, which included soil analyses and tissue samples to quantify plant dry matter content.

Monitor Farm strengths include their flexibility and willingness to explore. Not everything goes to plan. The key to success is to learn from everything, from the good to the bad.

One of the biggest curveballs was the Covid-19 pandemic at the start of the Monitor Farm’s three-year tenure. It knocked out some of the wind from the farm’s sails. We adapted by extending its tenure to a fourth year, with good attendance recorded at meetings.

Some meetings were perceived to be ‘heavy going’, especially those that required lots of farm data to be submitted and scrutinised; this included machinery and business review meetings.

There are always fine lines when it comes to getting the balance right to satisfy the majority. However, every experience served to make the next meeting stronger. The best indication of a well-landed topic was how easily conversations flowed.

Rob also would have liked more opportunities to interact with other monitor farmers to share experiences. We’ve recently set up an online Farm Excellence chat so monitor farmers and the AHDB team can instant message to share news across the network. We will also continue to bring the network together for face-to-face discussions, when we can.

Rob said:

“It has been fantastic to network with farmers during this whole process. I’ve personally got a huge amount from it.”

18 June 2024

• Walk the farm’s harvest 2024 crops
• Discuss the season to date
• Find out about Rob’s experiences as a monitor farmer
• Explore UK milling wheat market and its requirements (guest speaker: George Mason of Heygates)

Find out more and book on to this event

❗Berkshire Farmers - Don't miss out❗

Join us for the final farm walk at Newbury Monitor Farm, hosted by @WaterstonRob. We will look at the cropping for harvest '24 and the season so far with Rob’s experiences as a MF manager.

Book now 👉 https://t.co/mi5mBw5YoR@cereals_se pic.twitter.com/FUf16dwIfQ

— AHDB Cereals (@AHDB_Cereals) June 11, 2024