Using a biostimulant seed treatment has proven to be an essential part of the strategy for a farmer in Fife, who has transitioned to a regenerative system in a bid to build soil biology and battle increased autumn risk.

With fluctuating, extreme weather patterns now the norm, crop establishment is becoming increasingly stressful – for both farmers and their crops. But applying a proven biostimulant seed treatment during the drilling phase is one of the best ways to protect genetic yield potential and make sure farmers get results.

This has been the case for Matt Waldie, farm manager at 4Front Farming Co in Fife. Mr Waldie is on the front line of climate change and utilising the benefits of Newton seed treatment as part of a regenerative farming approach to help secure winter wheat, winter oat and spring barley establishment under increasingly challenging growing conditions.

“4 Front Farming Co is a collaborative between four farmers set up to use economies of scale to farm more efficiently, in a quest to farm more profitably and sustainably,” he explains. “We are all LEAF members and became LEAF marqued this year.”

Mr Waldie has made a number of changes to the farm over the years in a bid to increase soil organic matter, after noticing a significant drop in levels between 1993 and 2016 – falling from 7.84% to 6.1%.

“Together with the increasing loss of actives and volatility on world markets, we knew we had to make changes to the way we were farming. So in 2017 we adopted a regenerative farming approach to restore our soil carbon. Our goal is to maintain and enhance the land that we farm and to increase our soils’ organic matter.”

Mr Waldie has achieved this by adopting three main approaches: cover cropping, direct drilling, and bringing livestock back into the system.

Cover crops

An eight-way cover crop mix was introduced, which includes phacelia, vetch, sunflower, oil radish and quinoa.

“The multi-cover crop not only creates a huge green biomass above ground, but also it puts down a huge root system that brings massive benefits to soil organic matter and increases the water holding capacity of our soils.”

Mr Waldie adds that the benefits go beyond just soil health and that the cover crops have helped to create biodiversity habitats for pollinators and insects.

Direct drilling

Another benefit of cover cropping is the financial savings, largely by means of reduced fertiliser usage. But Mr Waldie is also improving the bottom line via direct drilling his crops – and there are carbon benefits too.

“We’re using six litres per hectare of fuel to establish our crops, as opposed to 50-80 litres with a conventional plough-based system, and so this reduced fuel use brings diesel and carbon savings.

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“The use of direct drilling also means we’re not moving any soil, so we’re drilling straight into a green biomass and allowing that biomass to create a cover for the emerging crop. The blanket effect it produces also enables us to reduce our herbicide usage.”

While brome can be a problem, he manages this with glyphosate. “We don’t use any residuals as the cover crop means we don’t get good soil contact for residuals to work. So, we just use an SU to take out the radish and phacelia in the spring.”

Livestock

With a system shift to focus on building organic matter, bringing livestock back onto farm has also been a key part of the strategy.

There are 300 cattle on farm, brought in via a collaboration with one of his fellow 4Front directors, Edward Baxter, to utilise his mob-grazed cattle system to graze cover crops across the farm, explained Mr Waldie.

“Grazing the cover crop and grass with cattle helps encourage top re-growth and a bulk of roots that all adds to soil organic matter as it breaks down in the soil. It effectively creates a green manure. Our focus in not just on sustainability, but on profitability too. You can’t farm green if you’re in the red.”

Weather challenges

Despite all his efforts, weather remains the biggest agronomic challenge with the farm often falling victim to both extreme drought and rain which threaten yields. As such, getting crops in and away early in the winter is vital.

“In the spring, we need to get the barley deep rooting as fast as possible,” said Mr Waldie. “Where we’ve adopted the direct drilling system, we’re able to drill our winter crops earlier and into better conditions, and with that, comes an earlier harvest the following year. That’s where Newton biostimulant seed treatment has come into our system really well.

“We use Newton biostimulant seed treatment on all our crops except the beans – on the oats, the wheat and the spring barley. Especially in the winter, we’ve seen big improvements in emergence with a good two to three days earlier emergence from using Newton over undressed seed.

“They develop more tillers which gives us higher yield potential and provides better frost heave resistance through the unbelievable rooting it provides. We have to focus on a way to make our business more resilient and sustainable. With more roots, our crops are more efficient and can scavenge for nutrients. It costs so much to establish a crop, the more you can do early the better. We’ve achieved higher yields with Newton and now use it across the farm.”

Newton – how does it work?

Newton is a natural 100% organic plant-sourced biostimulant seed treatment which not only ensures vigorous crop establishment, it also helps to build stronger, healthier, more resilient plants that will thrive under stress, delivering higher yield and margin gains, explains Stuart Sutherland, technical manager at Interagro.

“Trials have shown that Newton can speed up crop emergence by several days, can build stress tolerance in plants and can even reduce the reliance on synthetic fertilisers through exceptional increases in rooting.

“With average yield increases of 5% in winter cereals and 10% spring cereals when compared to those left untreated, all-organic Newton is the natural choice to help secure yield and margins for harvest season 2023.”

Trials work

Newton contains crucial signalling peptides that play a fundamental role in the regulation of growth and development and crucially, lead to faster seed germination and emergence. In addition to the faster emergence seen on farm, research conducted at The University of Nottingham on winter wheat cv Siskin, showed that Newton germination was:

• 2 days faster than naked seed at 7oC

• 1.5 days faster than naked seed at 10oC

• 1.5 days faster than Vibrance Duo (fludioxinil + sedaxane) at 7oC

Further work carried out by the university has also shown that Newton increases rooting by a mean 43% and shoot growth by 22%.

“Producing stronger, more resourceful plants, Newton puts your crop in the best possible position to access available nutrition and moisture from the soil throughout its life, so it is less dependent on high fertiliser inputs,” added Mr Sutherland.

To learn more about the benefits of both Newton visit: https://www.interagro.co.uk/biostimulant-seed-treatment-promises-vigorous-crop-establishment-minus-the-stress/