FARM NAME: Lockerley Estate (twinned with Preston farms), Hampshire
FARM SIZE: 2,000 ha
DESCRIPTION: Lockerley Farm and Estate has a mission to be a regenerative and successful farming business, championing a style of agriculture where biodiversity, the soil, and community wellbeing are at the heart of all they do.
They are an integrated farm with English longhorn cattle, 235 ha of woodland, farm gate produce, and 1,350 ha of arable land.
With 11 types of soil ranging from Givendale clay to Andover chalk, they match their soils to the crops they grow and rotate a diverse array of winter and spring planted wheat, barley, oats, peas, beans, 2-year legume fallows, legume grass leys and rotation grass alongside cover and catch crops.
In spring 2016, they began their shift to regenerative farming and to date they have achieved a 46% reduction in pesticide spend since 2015, a reduction of 53% in tonnes of nitrogen fertiliser in the same period, and 1.1% increase in soil organic matter.
Craig forecasts for the 25’ season, they’ll earn about £75,000 just on regenerative harvest premiums.
THEIR APPROACH TO FEEDING THE SOIL:
Lockerley is guided by 6 main principles to support their regenerative approach to crop production:
1) Minimise soil disturbance physically and chemically
2) Keep soil covered and armoured
3) Living roots in the soil all year round
4) Diversity in crop rotation and plant species
5) Integration of livestock
6) Context of land, bed, rock, soil type, topography and climate capability
As a few examples of this approach, their winter oil seed rape is grown with a three species companion crop, namely, fenugreek, clover and buckwheat, and just under 40% of the total wheat planted across the business is a three-way blend of group 2 wheat.
In addition, Lockerley have over 1,000 sheep grazing on 30% crop residues and super 10 cover crops, while in the last couple of years, all drilling has been done on with a compost extract liquid on the drill. They get roughly 20 hectares per drill fill and are currently working with an outsourced individual with knowledge of the food web methodology to focus on making biologically complete compost they can then extract from.
To compliment this, their farm yard manure (FYM) is a mix, including sheep and chicken manure and combined with wood chip, over the period of a year before being combined well. They spread this muck at 10-12 tonne a hectare, and straw rake to stimulate and spread it so they can direct drill their super ten cover crop mixture.
All this helps to manage their carbon-nitrogen ratio and they keep an eye on their seed health by sending samples off to a lab but healthy results have meant they haven't needed to use fungicide seed treatments in 5-6 years.
Across the estate Craig also has whole field margins, AB1, AB8 pollinator strips, AB9 winter bird food and dead standing wood. The AB8 in-field pollinator strips are every 120m and include tusky grasses to help get predators into the field and onto pests.
CHALLENGES:
At Lockerley, the soil pH is broadly 8.2 but it is deficient in calcium. To tackle this, they trialled liquid potash but after seeing antagonisms in the SAP test they’re now looking at folia phosphate or calcium.
They’ve also found that drilling with a compost extract liquid adds about 40 minutes per drill fill so had to factor in the time and practical element of getting the process ready.
Craig and his team had also previously been practicing the Johnson Su composting method but have been having consistency issues. In the first year it was really dark, clay like and humified but the next year didn’t have the density. They’ve also had it when it went too hot and everything was too dry – so this is an area they’re still working on and would appreciate guidance!
TOP TIPS:
Don’t over do it – At Lockerley they occasionally put a low disturbance subsoil through fields but don’t smear anything that could reduce air in the soil.
While Craig and his team don’t use fungicide seed treatments they do adjust their seed rates up due to direct drilling.
Craig’s advice for those starting out with farm-scale composting would be to begin on a concrete surface and then, once it’s established, move to soil at a point where there shouldn’t be as many nutrients leaching out.
He also advises using top covers to the rows to stop losing moisture and materials to the elements.