OIL FERTILITY SERVICES LIMITED
Specialist Advice in Soil Fertility and Crop Nutrition
NEWSLETTER
Issue no. 45
What the Heck is Going On?
So what is going on in this farming business? A few
years ago, we were predicting food shortages, energy shortages
and ‘peak oil’, ‘peak phosphate’; so what has happened?
Fracking and politics that’s what!
But none of this is permanent and we are already seeing oil
prices going back up. Relations with Putin are mellowing as we
join with them in the fight against ISIS and terrorists. The
Russian economy is in real trouble and they need to trade with
‘The West’. Once some of the embargoes are lifted and the
neighbouring countries – Poland, Latvia, Lithuania can supply
their apples and other produce to their normal established
markets, this will then take the pressure off ‘The West’.
The milk situation is a ridiculous case of over-supply and will
always be subject to major swings unless we can get some sort
of quota re-established. Could milk become more like the pig
industry with its swings and in the hands of fewer bigger
operators, maybe the milk processors owning the cows and the
farmers effectively working for them on a part-time basis?
What we do know is, it will not get better until production is
reduced across the whole of Europe! There are some people
still doing very nicely with low costs and reasonable prices e.g.
27p or more, but these are few and far between. The other way
some are making it pay is by diversification, direct selling, adding
value and using low cost, easy-care cows - and of course using
BetterGrass.
For beef and lambs - they convert forage to meat, with faster
growth and all are healthier with improved conception and
easier clean birthing; after all, all disease can be traced back to
lack of or imbalanced nutrition and that includes you and me. It
also includes the crops you grow. It’s worth thinking about how
nutrition works, for example in ruminants the forage is digested
in the vast vat of the animal’s abomasum in the rumen liquor.
This is a biologically active tank of beneficial microbes not
dissimilar to those inside our own stomach. These microbes will
breakdown the lignin, convert nitrogen into protein, release
minerals into the digestate for absorbance into the blood stream.
A balanced range of minerals is vital especially cobalt, which
allows the production of vitamin B12 which is essential for the
health of your animals and for you and me.
If your forage contains a high level of some minerals – a
common example is potassium, and low magnesium or sodium,
this will result in Staggers. Of course calcium and phosphate are
essential but so are all the other minerals, hence the success of
BetterGrass.
Call Today To Place Your
BetterGrass Order
A few people have not ordered this year blaming lack of money,
but this is NOT a good excuse; BetterGrass is not a cost, it
always pays and pays well – it’s still not too late!
Biological Trial Results 2015
Independent trial results in 2015 showed increases in both yield
and profits It also showed fantastic reductions in disease control.
The trials used Mega-Fos, Foli-N and Vitaplex with
Megabacters.
WINTER WHEAT :Conventional Yield 11.44 t/ha
Biological Yield
12.02 t/ha
Increased Profit of £71 per hectare
OILSEED RAPE :Conventional Yield 4.48 t/ha
Biological Yield
4.88 t/ha
Increased Profit of £84 per hectare
POTATOES :Conventional Yield 43.00 t/ha
Biological Yield
55.00 t/ha
Increased Profit of £1500 per hectare
Just to remind you how the BetterGrass works – simply, it
improves the palatability of the grass, which in turn means stock
will happily eat more of it and because it contains all the
required minerals including cobalt, selenium etc. this improves
the rumen function, which means the forage is better utilised,
resulting in either increased milk yield (on average 2 litres
per cow per day) or increased weight gain.
CARROTS :Conventional Yield 106.6 t/ha
Biological Yield
116.0 t/ha
Increased Profit of £2800 per hectare
CARROT TRIALS ALSO SHOWED
73.9% REDUCTION OF CAVITY SPOT
PHONE 01366 384899 FOR MORE DETAILS
The future lies in
Bio-LOGICAL FARMING Solutions
Mega-Fos
Cereal prices have been and still are on the floor and after a
fairly good start have finally succumbed to the later wet and cold
spell in early March to now look pretty sick. The rooting depth
is not great and I don’t think they will stand up to any sort of
drought. An application of the root stimulant Mega-fos will
help not only the root development but reducing disease
pressure as well. At £3.20 per acre, it has got to be a sound
investment and with the inclusion of the megabacters, it will
increase total rooting area so that your crops explore more soil,
gain more nutrients – including making better use of your other
inputs and adding a level of biological protection.
Nitrogen prices are probably now about as low as they are likely
to go, as the oil price starts to come back up and the £:$ ratio
weakens making imports more expensive. However, nitrogen on
its own is not enough, in fact high nitrate nitrogen increases
disease pressure and you will be fighting a losing battle. Nitrogen
plus sulphur plus magnesium keeping the cat-ion: anion ratio in
balance is the key to healthy growth and high proteins.
Plant sap pH is a good indicator of the health of your crops; if
you could maintain it at 6.4 then you would see NO disease.
When it becomes acid is when you get fungal disease pressure.
Acid pH sap indicates a deficiency or an excess, often both i.e.
an excess of nitrate nitrogen and a deficiency or imbalance of
potassium or magnesium – the excess could even be sulphate,
the problem is it changes depending on soil and weather
conditions. Foliar feeding with products like Vitaplex can
improve this balance and if combined with the beneficial
megatorium can stop fungal disease from happening.
I mentioned the way the beneficial micro-organisms work in the
cow’s rumen to digest food, but really there is little difference
between other animal’s and our own gut, except that because we
do not eat grass we do not need to ruminate. Inside our own
stomach is a very long intestine some 6 metres (20 feet or so);
inside this tunnel is lined with tiny ‘villi’ which have millions of
beneficial bacteria which help them to breakdown food as it
travels along on its massive journey to the outside world.
In the soil a plant root has the equivalent of the same villi – tiny
hair roots protruding from the surface of the root hair. The plant
produces sugars from its leaves – photosynthesis, which it
pumps down to the roots to feed and encourage proliferation of
bacteria that should be in your soil. Hopefully beneficial
microbes there will create weak acids in the rhizosphere and it is
these that will dissolve the minerals held in the soil’s organic
matter and clay particles, making them ‘available’ to your crops.
Magnified
plant root
showing hairs
on outside
The problem is many soils are sick and do not have the range of
beneficial microbes in the rhizosphere for your plants to feed. If
your soil has become anaerobic or has had herbicides applied
then the chances are there is a disproportion of pathogenic
organisms that will cause root problems for example Take All,
Fusarium, Rhizoctonia etc.
This is no different to you and I having an upset stomach and we
need to restore our beneficial microbes, which is why we now
recommend using Mega-Fos which has a full range of microbes
included in it. So basically we are feeding the soil so that the soil
can feed the crops (where have you heard this before) and that is
what biological farming is all about!
Vegetable Trials
We recently had results from a carrot trial using Mega-Fos; the
results were stunning with yield increases and disease levels
reduced to near zero, which meant the saleable yield was
increased also. Bear in mind carrots and parsnips are grown in
light soils that have been abused with fertiliser and chemical
applications and because of this they suffer from a wide range of
soil-borne diseases, often from a range of pythium based
organisms.
Cavity Spot was reduced by over 70%, yield was increased by
over 8% and marketable yield was up over 17%.
By using Mega-Fos, the soil was able to prevent this disease
from reaching one carrot crop and at the same time make
‘available’ more nutrients, especially phosphate from the soil.
Good Riddance To A Bad Lot
Pip Partridge from Suffolk, recently shared the following article on ‘LinkedIn’ taken from www.wired.com:
“Good riddance chemicals - Microbes are farming’s hot NEW pesticides! Biologicals are in, chemicals are out”
It’s what we have been working towards for the past 20 years and now most of the BIG companies are wanting to get in on the
movement. It’s GREAT NEWS - except I don’t trust them! What they are doing is trying to isolate the beneficial microbes so they
patent them, then they can either take them out or use them as their very own high price alternatives.
Regardless of how good these micro-organisms are, they will not work unless they are used correctly e.g. we can ‘fix’ 100kg or more
nitrogen from the atmosphere for your crops to use, but only if your soil is well-structured in the first place. It’s the same for
leaf protection, the megabacters will do a very good job at protecting your crops from disease but are less efficient
when high levels of nitrate nitrogen are used or where a mineral deficiency occurs. The plant is no different to you or me,
if it is not fed a good balance of all nutrients, it will be weak and subject to disease.
We must learn to look after the livestock in our soils, they need air, water and food - in that order. The answer is to use good
chemistry with good biology to achieve high quality mineral-rich food. Bio-LOGICAL FARMING is here NOW!
You can save on your fertiliser spend - in fact the figures are:
You Never Need To Lime Again!
This is really necessary in the high rainfall areas - that is areas of
40 inches or more rainfall in a year. Just think about it - 40 inches
of rain will solubilise and wash out any water soluble minerals in
the top soil.
It must be so or it won’t be water soluble. Phosphate for example
is not water soluble, likewise potassium, but calcium is unless it is
very hard limestone; (in which case it is not available anyway)
which means that when your soils are acid (pH below 6.0), in
order to grow high yielding grass, you need to use lime to bring
this level up.
In order to grow high yields of grass, you need to use a fast
acting, high quality lime - and this will work, BUT what happens
to that over the winter with this high dose of rain? It will not
stay around in the top 2 inches or so of your soil, which is the
critical area for grass rooting. Then next spring this same top soil
will once again be acid.
To stop this you need to switch to BetterGrass Xtra which
will correct the pH in this critical top soil as well as sweeten the
grass and supply ALL of the essential trace minerals required
including zinc, selenium, cobalt , copper, iodine and can even put
in nitrogen if required. See table below:
Soil pH
4.5 – 5.0
5.0 – 5.5
5.5 – 6.0
Loss of yield
12%
9%
4%
Average loss DM t/ha
1.2
0.9
0.4
Value £/ha
£300
£229
£100
Let’s look at the economics concerned: The reason you need to
lime is to increase DM yield; research shows that lifting pH from
5.5 to 6.0 will increase yield by 4%. That is around 400 kg/ha and
is worth over £100
SOIL pH AFFECTS GRASS DM,
YIELD AND THE £’s IN YOUR POCKET
7.0
6.5
pH level
6.0
5.5
5.0
4.5
4.0
pH before
applications
Spring 1
Autumn 1
Spring 2
Autumn 2
Season
Spring 3
Lime
BG
pH comparisons between lime and BetterGrass
The above graph shows that both Lime and BetterGrass lifted
the pH in the first year, the pH then dropped to pH 5.7 but
because BetterGrass is applied annually, here the pH went up
to 6.4 (ideal). In the 2nd and 3rd years the lime continues to drop
(as you would expect) and was back to where it started at 5.4,
while the BetterGrass once again put the pH back up to 6.4.
What this means is that, in year 1 grass dry matter yield was
increased by 400 kg/ha (worth £100) in both plots; lime costs
£27/tonne at 4 t/ha (a very low rate) and cost £108/ha - which
means you lost money. In subsequent years yields decreased so
you never got your money back. This is not so in the
BetterGrass area where not only do you get the increase yield
worth £100 but you also get all the benefits of BetterGrass
year on year, in fact the worse case scenario over the 3 years
BetterGrass produced £300 worth more dry matter and £300
in stock yield improvement.
Liming: cost £108 - DM yield benefit £150/ha
BetterGrass: £250 - DM yield benefit £300/ha
+ animal health yield benefit worth £300 = total £600
So, not only do you never need to lime again, but you make
money - in fact £350/ha (£140/acre or £47/acre per year).
Organic Approval
After jumping through a series of hoops, we now
have a range of Organic Farmers & Growers
approved products. These products are Bio-N.
BetterGrass and Mega-Fos. These products
have their status approved as restricted, meaning
George Hepburn
that you will still have to justify a need, but it
should make the whole process smoother and quicker.
We have been developing these products
over a number of years as a lot of our
biological principles do crossover into the
organic world. They are tried, tested and
have been used all over the country on
various soil types, so we are confident
that they will make a big difference to the
organic farmer and give him a few more
tools to use.
Bio-N for me is the really exciting one, it really could
revolutionise organic farming. Getting nitrogen into the organic
systems is a challenge with it generally having to come from FYM
or legumes. Bio-N gives them a viable alternative that is easy to
use, low cost, and environmentally friendly.
The ideal soil structure is: 45% mineral, 5% OM, 25% water, 25%
air. Air in your soil (well air anywhere) comprises 78% Nitrogen.
So 75% of 25% is over 18%; all this Nitrogen in your soil, just
not in the right format for your plant to take up!
This is where the Bio-N does its work, a consortium of beneficial
nitrogen fixing bacteria, especially selected for their nitrogen
fixing but also come with additional benefits including phosphate
fixing, producing antibiotics and plant growth stimulants. These
are applied alongside an activator which includes a food source
(sugars), essential trace elements for nitrogen fixation, Humic and
Fulvic acids.
They need to be applied to the soil when conditions are right. It is
not the same as putting nitrogen on out of the bag, Bio-N needs
to be applied to well-structured soil, when the soil temperatures
are consistently over 6°C, using a dribble bar or as big droplet
size as possible. It can be used on any crops - we have had
great success with wheat, OSR, barley, grass, leeks, potatoes,
carrots and maize, but it can work anywhere.
On grassland I think you get excellent value for money as the
growing season is longer and we were getting reports of flushes
of growth into October and even into November!
To supply
70 - 100 kg/ha of
nitrogen to 20ha
equates to 100 litres
of Bio-N
and costs just
£30 per hectare
(£12 per acre)
O
I
B
N
-
Spring has finally sprung (I think). Everyone is
getting that little bit busier and everything seems
just that little bit more productive. Drills are out,
fertiliser is being applied, lambing is under way,
some livestock are out in the fields and crops are
starting to liven up.
Joe Barfoot
Things are no different at Soil Fertility Services! I am happy to say
that some farms have received their BetterGrass products and in
some cases have already spread it.
By applying a few highly available plant ‘nutrients’ and a range of
chemistry to our crops we are accelerating plant growth beyond
what can be naturally sustained. As a result soil biology suffers as it
physically can’t cycle nutrients to the plant fast enough to meet
demand, that is where the biological farmer steps in.
I honestly can’t believe how many new and existing customers are
looking to use our nitrogen fixing Bio-N this year! I’m not talking
about a few acres here or there, I mean big acreages! It makes sense,
we already have farmers fixing 70kg/ha of N for about 43p per kg of
N (that’s still cheaper than AN or Urea) with independent trials to
back their findings up.
Help the natural element of your soil, keep up with the artificial
system modern agriculture is using by feeding your crop and soil with
the minerals and beneficial biology that are now your yield limiting
factor, or go one step further and become the next farm using the next
generation nitrogen fertiliser that is Bio-N.
You can be pro-active and apply these important trace elements,
along with carbon based bio-stimulants and beneficial soil bacteria,
by utilising the SFS Biological Nutrition Program.
Call the office on: 01366 384899 or myself on 07775 440322 to see
how you could benefit from feeding your crop.
Joe Barfoot
Soil Fertility Advisor and Eternal Optimist!
Above:- BetterGrass delivery at Crouch End Farm - East Sussex
Without trying to sound too cheesy, this year’s BetterGrass product
looks to be some of the best made yet. Just what you want, an easy
to spread multi-trace-element grass fertiliser that WILL boost the
mineral quality of your feed. Even though prices are low across the
board, the one thing that it seems our livestock farmers cannot do
without is BetterGrass and why would you? You are going to the
effort and expense of growing this grass, why not make it the best
you possibly can?
A certain feedback trend is occurring from the BetterGrass Program
at the moment, the general consensus being: “I saw your advert in the
paper last year and it basically insinuated that I grow crap grass - not
something I necessarily agreed with, however, I still decided to have
you analyse my grass and surprisingly it turns out I was growing
crap grass! Trace element levels were all over the place, several
imbalances and antagonisms were present and more importantly
(or should I say depressingly), everything I was bollusing for was
lacking in my grass sample. The obvious solution was to use your
BetterGrass and I’m glad I did.”
It’s the bio-LOGICAL thing to do! At the very least, send in a sample
of your silage for an analysis. What’s the worst that can happen? You
receive some valuable information about your forage, or it could just
be the best thing you will ever do. Open your eyes to the future of
farming the biological way and improve the quality of the produce
you provide.
Now we know everything above ground is motoring on, I wish the
same could be said for below ground. Most soils are at saturation
point and this is keeping them cold. This is most obvious when
driving past purple fields. The plants are saying: “Hey - lets get
going”, but the invisible microbial workforce below ground just
aren’t ready yet, its too damn cold.
This will soon change over the next few weeks; as things warm up
your soil fungi and bacteria will spring into life and start doing their
jobs. Mainly, cycling nutrients to the plant, fixing nitrogen and
competing with pathogenic organisms. In a natural ecosystem this
would be fine as everything moves along at a steadier natural
pace, our artificial farmed soil ecosystems don’t have that luxury.
BGetterrass
News From The Man Shed
Every grumpy old man should have their very own
man shed - but you do need some company so sharing
one is okay, you also need your own broken comfy
armchair, a kettle for a brew and preferably a fridge
(for the beer)! You might also like a few luxuries like
a radio or possibly a jukebox or two? Some old books
Robert Plumb
– poetry is ok and some form of heating maybe a
wood burner although maybe that’s a bit posh, an old pot-belly coke
burner would be ideal. Television is banned, as are lap tops and
tablets, a phone is okay but without the sound turned on. Beer - no
wine, as I said, we’re not that posh!
Opinionated visitors are welcome but they must have a thick skin as
no holds are barred in criticisms and discussions. Leading topics
include wind turbines, speed limits, the NHS, of course immigration,
the EU and Government; taxes and hand-outs, education idiots are
always good as is any attack on Health & Safety, then of course
there’s the question of IN or OUT!
Like many of us I am still undecided, although I have a strong
preference towards out! The problem is lack of good information on
the ‘out’ consequences and the mega hype from the ‘in’ camp. I do
think the consequences of leaving would be major, indeed for the
‘Euroland’ with other Countries waiting to follow our lead. That
could have major benefits for our economy in terms of re-negotiating
trade deals. In regards to farming issues, I simply do not trust this or
any other government to support UK agriculture, but then maybe they
shouldn’t.
Most of the people I know would love to kick out the so-called
inspectors and spies, reducing your paperwork and giving you more
independence to run your own farm as you think is best for you.
Would we be able to reduce imports? If the £ lost value, that would
help and it sure would be more difficult for the Kiwi’s to send over
their cheap lamb, or the Irish their cheap milk. I think there will be
some interesting developments before June and at the moment I’ll
wait to see - hah - Cop out or what!
Soil Fertility Services Limited, Harvest House, New Road, Crimplesham, Norfolk PE33 9FH
Tel: (01366) 384899 Fax: (01366) 380205 E mail: [email protected] www.independentsoils.co.uk
UK CENTRE FOR BIOLOGICAL AGRICULTURE