Hugh Bland farms Manor Farm Foxhill and Warren Farm Aldbourne in North Wiltshire, growing over 450ha of a variety of crops, including wheat, spring barley and oats.
Hugh works closely with Agrii agronomist Russell Frost and RHIZA CIS Lily Butters. The farm covers varying soil types including over chalk, with some areas of steep hills, bringing with it some challenges to address.
VR Seed
Hugh has been working with RHIZA for a number of years and wanted to optimise some of the more challenging areas of his farm. The whole farm was zoned and variably sampled, and gets re-tested on a three year cycle. Historically, the areas over chalk have seen crops struggle to establish, and Hugh wanted to use VR Seed to help.
Lily works with Hugh to produce autumn and spring variable rate (VR) seed maps annually by using rulesets based on physical soil properties to address the farm’s varying soil types and topography.
VR N
In addition, satellite imagery was also used to create VR Nitrogen plans in the Contour platform to further even crop growth in the winter wheat and winter barley fields. This year, Hugh used ClearSky imagery and ground-truthed it to ensure that the imagery displayed in the platform matched conditions on the ground – he was satisfied that the imagery was a true representation of the progress in the fields.
VR P&K
A standard VR approach was taken, with the first two nitrogen applications targeting crop levelling by applying increased levels in the poorer areas and the final third application applying more to the higher green chlorophyll vegetation index (GCVI) areas to boost optimum yield.
VR P and K plans were also completed, created from the zonal soil sampling completed earlier in the year.
Results
- The variable rate seed plan was delivered swiftly via Contour and was easily accessible to Hugh.
- Clear establishment improvements with poorer areas visibly levelled.
- Significant reduction of inputs used, mainly P and K and more efficient use of inputs overall.
Overall, Hugh is satisfied by the improvements seen across the farm. He plans to continue using variable-rate applications to improve the efficiency of input use. The data stored in the Contour platform will continue to inform how best to use the land on Hugh’s farm.
Going forward, Hugh intends to create a Nutrient Management Plan in Contour to support his SFI application.
To find out how your farm could benefit from planning tools in Contour, contact RHIZA today:
