A Temperate Grassland Farm Platform – North Wyke
1
Michael Lee1, Phil Murray2 and Mark Eisler1
School of Veterinary Science, University of Bristol, UK
2
North Wyke, Rothamsted Research, UK
Introduction
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation forecasts that global food
production will need to increase by over 40% by 2030, and 70% by 2050. Yet water
is expected to become scarcer, and there is increasing competition for land, putting
added pressure on production. In addition, climate change will reduce the reliability
of food supply through altered weather patterns and increased pressure from pests
and diseases. To ensure our food security and meet Millennium Development Goals
on world hunger, agriculture will therefore need to produce more food from the same
or less land, using less water, energy and other inputs, and reducing waste and
adverse environmental impacts including greenhouse gas emissions: 'More from
Less' (Foresight, 2011).
The 'North Wyke Farm Platform' has been designed to address this challenge in a
grassland context. The overall premise is that grassland systems can be designed
and managed to optimise production, whilst minimising negative impacts on other
ecosystem services. The Farm Platform provides centralised scientific facilities
including core data (field and water chemistry, water flow rates, greenhouse gas
emissions from soils, livestock and agronomic data, and farm management records).
Access to the Farm Platform for experimental work or to data will be available to
research users and collaborators. The Farm Platform forms part of the Rothamsted
Research Science Strategy as one of the four National Resources to support the
science, as well as a key component of delivering the strategic research
programmes on 'Delivering Sustainable Systems' and 'Cropping Carbon'.
The vision is to make the Farm Platform a globally recognised model for systems
research in sustainable food and farming. The Farm Platform has a particular focus
on collaborative research with our partners in the Food Security and Land Research
Alliance (FSLRA: the Universities of, Bath, Bristol, Exeter and Cardiff) and linked to
the Worldwide Universities Network through the University of Bristol led project
“Global farm platforms – Optimisation of grazing livestock production systems”1.
Facilities
The Farm Platform provides three hydrologically-isolated farming systems consisting
of five component fields comprising just over 20 ha in total per Farmlet (Figure 1). All
the water leaving individual fields is channelled through a flume (15 in total) via
perforated plastic pipe drains which are back-filled to the surface with stones. Each
of the 15 flumes is fully instrumented to enable flow rates to be measured and water
samples to be automatically collected and analysed.
1
http://www.wun.ac.uk/research/global-farm-platforms-optimisation-grazing-livestockproduction-systems
Figure 1. The North Wyke Farm Platform's isolated Farmlets
Each Farmlet carries its own herd of yearling cattle and flock of ewes and lambs. All
animals are weighed on and off the grazing to determine live-weight gain over the
grazing period. During winter housing the animals are fed silage from the Farmlet
they were grazing. Each of the 15 fields has a meteorological station that monitors
rainfall and soil water content and there is one Meteorological Office standard
weather station situated at the centre of the platform providing a full suite of
measurements.
There are three sets each of 12 LiCor automated chambers, one set for each
Farmlet. These are operated at regular intervals to determine greenhouse gas
fluxes. Remote sensing is applied using proxies to the spatial variability of vegetation
health, moisture and soil nutrient content over the farm platform, extracted from high
resolution (5m pixel) satellite imagery. The installed instrumentation at the Farm
Platform enables a core set of data to be captured. Core data sets of water
chemistry are recorded at high resolution (15min intervals). We also capture data
relating to the farm management and there are regular measurements of soil and
atmosphere parameters (Table 1).
Table 1. Farm platform
measurements
regular soil, water and
Water
Soil
Atmosphere
Nitrate
Ammonium
Dissolved Organic
Carbon
Turbidity
Water Flow
Temperature
Conductivity
pH
Dissolved Oxygen
Chloride
Phosphates
Moisture
Temperature
pH
Rainfall
Temperature
Carbon Dioxide
Bulk Density
Nitrogen
Phosphorus
Carbon
Soil Biology
Decomposition
Plant Diversity
Nitrous Oxide
atmosphere
parameters
Farm
Management
Live weight Gain
Field Inputs
Field Outputs
Farm Activities
Labour Hours
Machine Hours
Economics
The core data collected from across the Platform (Table 1) is available to all
research users and collaborators across the UK and beyond, in accordance with
Rothamsted's and BBSRC's commitment to ensuring that the Farm Platform is a
truly National Capability. Baseline data, which reflects the way in which the North
Wyke farm was being managed (Beef and Sheep), was gathered between April 2011
and March 2013 before the treatments were imposed. One of the treatments will be
an extension of the baseline management system, therefore continuing as a control.
The underlying principle is to manage each of these Farmlets differently and record
the impact on animal production, water, air and soil.
Temperate Grassland Systems
The concept of the Farm Platform is to compare different ways of managing
sustainable agricultural production and a wide range of agro-ecosystem properties at
appropriate farm scales, i.e. at the scales of land management and farmer decisionmaking. The management scenarios being researched are:
1. Sustainable intensification of permanent grassland (Sward improvement
through increased fertilisation). In this system we will increase the use of
industrially produced fertilisers which will increase the carrying capacity of animals.
Since increasing the N usage in the 'establishment year' most of the animals on the
Farm Platform have reached their target finishing weight early and there has been
little use of conserved herbage. Continuation with this could lead to scenarios in
which we could increase the number of grazing animals and finish more but later,
necessitating housing more at the end of the year and feeding silage, or maintain the
current number of animals, finish them early and then 'purchase' a second cohort
that would finish over winter on silage.
2. Increased use of legumes (Sward improvement through introduction of
legumes). Clover based systems can replace up to 150kgN/ha of industrially
produced nitrogen, contribute to high protein and high digestibility forage, have high
animal intake and performance and are suitable for both grazing and conservation.
With current international costs of oil and gas rising, the cost of fertilisers is also
increasing and potentially farmers might have to become more reliant on nitrogen
biologically fixed by clovers. In this system we will enhance the current [low] levels of
clover in the existing permanent pastures. We will not rely on clover alone to supply
the nitrogen, but we will supplement with manures and low levels of inorganic
fertiliser. Here we would anticipate that animals would finish faster and there would
be a lower carrying capacity, but there may be both a quality and economic
advantage.
3. Planned reseeding (Sward improvement through reseeding). There are 1.2
million ha of temporary grassland, i.e. pasture that is <5 years old. Approximately 1/3
is reseeded each year in the UK, so reseeding is therefore an important
management system. Reseeding pastures with newer varieties should increase
animal production in the early years. With a planned reseeding it is possible to
include new pasture varieties and traits into the farm. New varieties (high sugar
grasses, deep rooting grasses) can be easily incorporated as can other species such
as chicory. The major weed, pest and disease problems in grassland occur at the
establishment phase (e.g. fruit fly, damping off, root knot nematode). This system
allows potential collaboration with industry partners and could include cereal crops.
Collaboration
We will work with stakeholders to develop relationships to establish a network of
users of the Farm Platform and to provide leadership in the development of
sustainable grassland farming. This will enhance the impact of the research done by
the individual organisations using the Farm Platform and ensure the widest
audience.
The tools currently available for use on the Farm Platform, i.e. farm scale research
are being transformed, with new sensing and analytical measuring devices systems
under rapid development, alongside a revolution in telemetry and high capacity data
management and analysis systems software and their application to the study of
biological systems. The Farm Platform will use these advances in technology to
capture the data necessary to develop a better understanding of the dynamic
processes and underlying mechanisms. This can then be used to model how the
processes that underlie agricultural systems will respond to changes in the
environment and management. Data, mathematical modelling and experiments will
be brought together to help create a new large scale agricultural systems science,
capable of guiding more sustainable forms of farming practices.
References
Foresight. The future of food and farming: Final Project Report. Government Office
for Science, 2011.