Local farmers join 50-strong national farm trial network

The farmers, all based close to the east of Bury St Edmunds, will join 46 others from Scotland, England and Wales to undertake wheat agronomy trials as part of the 50-strong ‘Real Results Circle’ which will culminate with the gathering of wheat yield data at harvest time.

The draw of the initiative has been that the trials will be conducted on growers’ own farms, under local conditions using their own machinery with the assessments being carried out by independent partners ADAS and precision mapping expert, AgSpace.

The Shropshire farmers - both well-regarded for their progressive approach to growing arable crops - are Rob Timmis, who farms 1,600ha of combinable crops at Home Farm, Lilleshall, near Newport and Andrew Williamson, farming at Upper Overton near Bridgnorth.

Chosen from Herefordshire are Steve Klenk, Garnstone, Weobley and Russell Price, Town Farm, Castle Frome, Ledbury.

Robin Rose, BASF’s Agronomy Manager for the Midlands said: “The BASF Real Results Circle will allow growers to learn about their own farm’s capabilities and to be part of a multi-location, national trial.”

Andrew Williamson comes from a long line of farmers; he hopes that the Real Rsults Circle will allow him to explore the agronomic benefits coming from the use of satellite imagery.

The Williamsons have farmed in Shropshire since the early 1900’s. He gained a BSc Hons in Chemistry from Bristol University before deciding his career was after all to be in farming.

Andrew has been on the family farm since 1999 and has developed an interest in precision farming which he regards as “highly beneficial to the farm.” He undertook a Nuffield Scholarship in 2013/14 looking at the development of precision agriculture around the globe. His studies took him to the US, Mexico, Germany, New Zealand, Australia and Brazil.

He concluded that UK agriculture was perfectly suited to take full advantage of precision agriculture. In his report he says; “Data is king – how it is collected, how it is utilised it and who owns it.”

Andrew has been chairman of his local NFU branch and is currently vice chairman of the union’s West Midlands Crop Group.

He sums up his farming philosophy as aiming for as much productivity as he can possibly achieve from his cropped land. He does however temper that with by insisting that production has to be balanced with sustainability. “Profit , not turnover, is what counts at the end of the day,” he said. “There also has to be room for a bit of lifestyle,” he added.

ADAS and AgSpace, we will assess each farm, monitor crops, determine disease pressure and assess fungicide performance throughout the season, while ADAS will produce an end-of-season report on the crop, outlining the results and lessons learned.

Susie Roques, ADAS Crop Physiologist, said that the crop assessments will be made using the Agronōmics system - a new digital technique for farm-based research developed by ADAS and AgSpace with the support of the British Geological Survey. “On-farm tramline trials and split field trials, like those in the BASF Real Results Circle, are being increasingly used by individuals and companies.

“The Agronōmics approach brings a new and unique scientific credibility to the design, management and statistical analysis of tramline trials which will ensure that the 50 participating growers can have more confidence in the results than they would ever have had before.”

In addition, to really understand how their farms can perform, the participants will also be running trials that compare BASF’s SDHI fungicides – Adexar at T1 and Librax at T2 against the farmer’s own choice of fungicide programme. All 50 will also be invited to an end-of-year conference to share their trials results.

The progress - and details of all 50 farmers - can be followed at www.basfrealresults.co.uk. Open days will be held at a number of farms over the summer details which can also be found there.