James Baird farms a 500-hectare arable farm in the coastal town of Littlehampton, West Sussex, growing all milling wheat, oats, seed peas for birdseye and OSR. He is also a co-founder of the Weald to Waves initiative, an ambition to create 50 miles of nature corridors connecting our restored kelp forests to the Ashdown Forest. Mr Baird says is goal is to farm efficiently within a nature vibrant landscape.
He would like SSFF funding to further his trial work to eliminate insecticides. It is proving challenging especially in peas due to aphid pressures.
It has taken 15 years to build soil organic matter and following a trial last year we are now confident to move to direct drilling within the next three years. I want to reduce my artificial Nitrogen use whilst continuing to grow higher protein milling wheats. I also want to massively improve soil biology through the use of cover and companion crops and compost teas. I think these objectives are all achievable and scale-able.
If successful in the competition, he says he will undertake more trial work including harvest and post-harvest evaluation, evaluation of the ability to achieve marketable protein and retention of N in the soil.
Working with the AICC I want to expand my trials including multi-year clover companion cropping, Im particularly interested in knowing the long term effect this will have on our ability to continue to grow peas within our rotation, as there is a perceived incompatibility which requires a six-year break in pulse cropping.
I would like to trial various compost teas to help identify beneficial bacteria and fungi which could reduce the break crop time for legumes from six to five to four. This would make a massive difference to soil nutrition and farm sustainability.
