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Our farm has often felt like a research station without the scientists. However we are working on that. We are constantly experimenting to broaden our knowledge of what is possible in the agroecological context.

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The main areas of challenge are, weed suppression and combinable crop yield, which in my experience of wheat has the often rather strange linear relationship of higher yielding crops having high levels of weeds. This I attribute to the fact that modern varieties of wheat are uncompetitive to weeds, any weed suppression trait existing in older, taller varieties of wheat have been unwittingly bred out of modern varieties. Weed suppression is not a trait of interest to current plant breeders as it is assumed pesticides are available to tackle this problem. However with increasing interest in cover crops even chemical farmers are looking to taller wheat varieties for no till systems.

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We are looking for varieties which have high disease resistance, high root mass, excellent weed competitiveness and high yield. This is a photo of one of the on farm experimental plots which has been monitoring the benefits of returning crop residues to the soil. Results coming soon.