Upper Bentley Farm

Location: Redditch, Worcestershire
Farm manager / Farm owner: Philip and Martin Gibbs
Area: 1300 acre mixed farm; 700 acres of arable
Type of Farm: Mixed Farm

Even when you have a well-designed non-inversion crop establishment system, moving to direct drilling can achieve significant time and cost savings.

Brothers Philip and Martin Gibbs have 700 acres of arable crops on the 1,300 acres they farm at Upper Bentley Farm, Redditch, Worcestershire, the remainder of the farm being grassland that supports 600 beef cattle and 300 sheep.

They were looking to reduce the amount of labour required to run the farm, and have moved from a non-inversion system that uses four passes to direct drilling with a Mzuri Pro-Til4 trailed drill with a grain-only seed tank (a split grain/fertiliser option is available).

Among the key factors in their choice of drill was the quality of service and support they receive from the company and the pedigree of the designer, says Philip: “We know Martin Lole well, and were confident the drill was going to be designed and built correctly because his engineering skills are brilliant”.

It can either work direct or after a single preparatory pass: “We were trying to change the system to make the farm easier to run”, says Martin.

Their arable system was previously based around primary cultivation with a combined disc/tine cultivator, which was used to restructure the soil before a power harrow finished off the seedbed. After that they drilled and rolled: “We have done away with that system now and all we do is consider whether to do any preparatory work, and then drill and roll”.

After combining they remove all straw for the livestock and then decide what else is needed: “We might FlatLift a third of the acreage every year to ensure we keep the structure healthy and then use a straw rake on the other two thirds to ensure we get a good weed and volunteer chit and get them sprayed off ahead of drilling. Raking costs next to nothing”.

He says soil workability is improving, something assisted by the regular spreading of manure, which they work into the ground with a disc/tined cultivator.

“The soil’s workability is getting better and it feels firmer, so we can get on with the sprayer earlier and it doesn’t have any ruts in it. It feels firmer and drains better because the earthworms are there and we are not disrupting their home or the channels they make vertically through the soil”.

P R Farming

Location: Dunstable, Bedfordshire
Farm manager / Farm owner: Philip Woods
Area: 2800 acres
Type of Farm: Arable

Moving to direct drilling is just another logical step in improving arable farming practice for Philip Woods, who runs some 3,000 acres of arable land from his base at Kensworth, Dunstable, Bedfordshire.

His company – P R Farming – runs their home farm of 600 acres and a further 2,200 acres for a range of customers in the region.

He abandoned ploughing for non-inversion tillage and a cultivator drill around the millennium, which reduced the time and cost taken to establish crops in the autumn.

And now he feels he is moving forward again by switching to ‘strip tilling’ crops, having invested in a Mzuri Pro-Till 4, a British-designed drill that places the seed accurately with no prior cultivation.

He has started by using the drill on his family’s farm with the aim of gaining practical experience of the technique before offering it to customers:

“We had direct drilled some crops with the cultivator drill quite successfully in the right conditions and the right season, but we still have some heavier bits of land that need restructuring, so we still did some preparatory work ahead of it.

“Last autumn we strip-tilled our oilseed rape and it looks excellent. One noticeable difference is that we have an even crop right up to the field edge; there is no headland because we are not turning on it with heavy cultivators all the time”.

The Mzuri has also sown both winter and spring beans: “We drilled winter beans on land which we had loosened because we knew it had a plough pan, and then went straight in onto undisturbed land this spring.

“The drill easily penetrated to the depth we needed and the crop germinated within 48 hours. There is now a mass of root structure where the soil has been moved. We have fitted the new design of harrow which seemed to help”.

He has started using later drilling dates to help control Black-grass, and moving to a strip-till system should help that as it eliminates the preceding passes: “With our former drill we started drilling in early September, which seemed to suit the Black-grass.

“Last autumn on our own farm we drilled wheat into rape stubble on September 25th, but establishment was a little slow and the slugs got hold of it. Next season we will go for a stale seedbed and drill slightly earlier – it is a learning curve and we need to be sure we know the system before we roll it out across customers’ land”.

Having a clean stubble from the previous crop, and not bringing up buried weed seeds, should help, he feels. “We did 110 acres of wheat direct into oilseed rape stubble and it is a handsome looking crop”.

One important benefit of using a one-pass system is that it eliminates the danger of being disrupted if the weather turns wet mid-season: “The crop is either drilled or it is not and if it isn’t then we can look at spring drilling. We cannot get caught out half way through the system”.

They do cultivate where needed: “We drilled 50 acres of second wheat into ground where we had used a sub-soiler to cure a compaction problem. The Mzuri worked straight into the stale seedbed. It actually looks better than some of the first wheats grown after oilseeds. It is clean as a whistle with not a bit of Black-grass to be seen.

“With the Mzuri it is one man, one tractor and one pass; you are not reliant on somebody else doing their job first”.

The Mzuri faced its hardest test on a new block of ground: “We only took control of it on April 1st and it is difficult land, but we direct drilled spring barley into it and it is up and away, so that is another option when we’re considering how to counteract Black-grass.

He says the drill does require significant power for a 4m model – but if you are only doing a single pass you are saving all the power from other operations.

Church Farm

Location: Shipton-by-Beningborough
Farm manager / Farm owner: David Blacker
Area: 500 acres
Type of Farm: HGCA monitor farm

The difficulty of creating quality seedbeds from the heavy Vale of York clay soils persuaded David Blacker that a move to strip tillage and different rotations might help performance and make the contracting side of the business easier to run.

Church Farm, Shipton-by-Beningborough, near York, is an HGCA monitor farm, and David works with a group of like-minded professional farmers to set performance benchmarks and discuss important issues like soil structure, machinery requirements and the like.

At the moment ways of meeting the new ‘three-crop rule’ is a hot topic, with David’s answer being to add spring beans to the wheat and oilseeds already in his rotation.

He farms 500 acres at Church Farm and does another 1,000 acres of contracting, with crop establishment being split evenly between conventional plough-based cultivations and non-inversion techniques.

But neither system was totally reliable, and working clay-based soils was causing soil compaction that was combining with inherent poor drainage to reduce yields:

Our system simply didn’t work properly anymore, especially in wet conditions, when getting crops drilled became a nightmare. Working clay soils when they’re wet is never good and we were suffering from gradually falling yields and income.

“We can normally expect to get four tonnes/acres yields, but in wet seasons we were struggling to maintain three tonnes/acre. I felt I needed to do something different and decided that avoiding working the soil repeatedly was the right idea.

He chose his 4m Mzuri Pro Til drill because he felt it was the best machine for the job:

It probably goes against many people’s thinking on direct drilling, because it moves quite a bit of soil. But the front leg does an excellent restructuring operation which benefits the crop.

It also enables us to place fertiliser below the seedbed – we have been using DAP (di-ammonium phosphate) to provide some early nutrition for the growing crop and to replenish the soil’s reserves for the future.

We used it for the first time in autumn 2013 and we went straight from plough-based cultivations to direct drilling with no cut in yield, but with a huge savings in the time, complication and cost of crop establishment.

Removing the number of passes in the system is already having benefits to the soil:

Where we ploughed we might do as many as four operations ahead of the cultivator drill; where we were using non-inversion tillage we might still do three preparatory passes

Paddock Farm

Location: Buckden, Cambridgeshire
Farm manager / Farm owner: Cade Contracting
Area: 400 acres

Farming land that is mainly heavy clay-based soils but includes patches of other types running right through to sand, Cade Contracting needs to use a flexible drill if it is only going to run one.

The company – based at Paddock Farm, Buckden, Cambridgeshire – works 400 acres near Huntingdon, and completes a variety of contracting work across the region, including a 250 acre block at Worthing, Norfolk.

It switched to direct drilling and strip-tillage for establishing crops some years ago, but felt that its initial choice of drill was not performing as well as required. It now runs a 3m Mzuri Pro-Til which is owned by one of their clients. This drill has solved the problems, says Paul Cade:

Our first ‘direct drill’ struggled on the heavier soils in Cambridgeshire. We have some really heavy clays and when conditions turned damp it would open up a nice seed slot, place the seed, but struggle to close it properly

We were particularly disappointed in one crop of wheat sown after we had burned out a grass ley. There were as many misses as hits. We looked at several leading competitors; one of them – advertised as a direct drill – produced a bow wave of soil which it carried up the field.

One of our clients isn’t afraid to try new ideas and suggested we had a look at the Mzuri. We agreed with him because it is simple and effective. The legs till a nursery bed for the seed, but cause very little soil disturbance. The areas between the seed rows is completely undisturbed, which is important on our heavy soils.

We now use a 3m Pro-Til and it has covered a couple of thousand acres in the two seasons we have had it and has performed well with all crops

They generally leave drilling winter crops until October to enable them to get a good weed and volunteer chit as possible, and then drill as quickly as possible:

With the Mzuri we are confident we can work in any conditions. This spring we were able to drill some beans in conditions when we could barely walk on the field.

The crops we drilled last autumn all look very well – that’s the customer’s opinion, not just ours! We drilled some winter beans for one client in November. The drill came home absolutely smothered in mud but the beans came through beautifully and he is very happy with his crop.

The drill can tend to leave the seed-bed slightly ridged after it has drilled, and we occasionally run a Carrier over it to level off the surface if we feel that will help pre-em treatments be totally effective

Andrew Pope

Andrew Pope farms in the North West near Preston and was already in the market for a more sustainable establishment method when he came across the Mzuri system. Andrew chose the Mzuri Pro-Til to reduce his costs and improve the drainage of his soils in wet weather and hasn’t looked back since.

“After seeing Martin’s article in the Farmers Weekly in 2012, the single pass concept appealed to me as we had already started to move away from the plough and combination drill and were trying a minimum cultivation approach. At the time I was using a ridged tine drill however, we were sometimes still having to plough and Martin’s design for the Pro-Til shouted out to me as a cheaper alternative to crop establishment for cereals.

Since then, the Mzuri system has improved our soil structure and has given us the confidence to spring crop if wet weather persists in the autumn to still allow us to produce strong, healthy crops. Despite struggling in the North West with wet weather, our fields are now better able to absorb rainfall due to the natural drainage caused by worms, and as a result of the more friable soil created by the strip tillage system. The benefit of not cultivating our soil and our fields staying firm, has been the ability to travel with harvest equipment and sprayers without rutting the fields, something which was a common sight of our previous plough-based system.

Whilst the Mzuri system may seem unusual for those used to intensive systems, my advice is to stick with it. From day one the Mzuri team have been fantastic, from the first Pro-Til we purchased in 2012 to our updated version in 2019. We have received unlimited support any time of the day and Mzuri listen and act on ideas and improvements as they have done over the last decade.”

S H Smith & Sons

S H Smiths & Sons farm in the heart of Worcestershire and have an additional contracting business catering for over 1000 acres in the surrounding area. First making the switch to Mzuri strip tillage in 2012, Roger Smith explains how the system has improved their business and their soils.

“We made the decision to switch to Mzuri Strip Tillage to save time and costs with reduced cultivations and improve the health of our soil. As an established contractor it is also important that we remain at the forefront of agricultural methods. Mzuri helped us achieve this goal.

Over the years the Mzuri system has improved our soil structure which has resulted in better yields whilst supporting time management. The most surprising benefit has been the number of worms seen looking after the soil which has been amazing since we first started with the Mzuri drill in 2012.

We have also found that by being able to place fertiliser beneath the seed and retain moisture with direct establishment, seed is supported to germinate quicker.

If I were to give one golden tip for someone thinking about converting to Mzuri Strip Tillage it would be to make your own decision about the drill. On ‘nice’ soils, you will see advantages straight away, but in more challenging soils it may take a year or two to see the benefits of the soil structure and to allow the worms to start to work their magic, but you will see benefits.

As for Mzuri themselves, and they are a good company to deal with. The team have been helpful from sales to service and have never let us down.”