After six years, Brian and Patrick Barker’s Lodge Farm, near Stowmarket in Suffolk, will be finishing its run as the AHDB’s first Strategic Cereal Farm.

It was also an AHDB Monitor Farm for the three years before that.

The Strategic Cereal Farms programme aims to put cutting-edge research and innovation into practice by hosting and openly sharing the results from short- and long-term field and farm-scale work.

The programme aims to share messages to benefit other levy payers’ farms as well as the host farm.

See also: AHDB ‘will be new sheriff’ says cereals sector’s chairman

So what are some of the key findings and messages from a nine-year run as an AHDB Monitor and Strategic farm?

1. Attention to detail

If there’s one overarching message from the Barkers’ experience, it’s how much attention to detail matters. The philosophy is to farm regeneratively using low-intensity tillage and reducing inputs.

“Going down the direct drilling, strip-till route was a massive learning curve,” says Brian. “We pulled the safety blanket off and had a very public forum to make mistakes. And I did make mistakes, and that’s where risk comes into it.”

His system, using either a Sumo DTS strip drill or a Horsch Avatar direct drill, is still evolving, but wherever possible direct drilling is chosen because of increased returns and improved soils.

“There are times we need to cultivate because of compaction. It will naturally restructure, but not as well as a bit of metal going through it,” he adds.

This clear focus covers more than establishment, as reducing inputs or using cover crops, which have been key areas for the programme, require careful management.

2. Changing environmental strategy

The strategy behind the farm’s stewardship has evolved from a focus on intensively farming fields while concentrating environmental benefits on the poorer performing areas, to trying to create a more holistic system.

“Rather than having a green industrial estate and a nature reserve, we are taking the whole farm and making fields benefit the farm wildlife and soil biology, and the environmental mixtures benefit the cropped areas,” says Patrick.

“That’s been a real change over time, and in doing so we’ve upped the whole wildlife value of the farm off the chart,” he adds.

A key example was creating a grassland wildlife corridor through the middle of the farm, which helps protect the most important watercourse on the farm and connects different habitats.

They are also using linear flowering margins for beneficials, while using bigger square areas for other types of stewardship.

A marginal land analysis project with Niab’s David Clarke has been critical in identifying which areas to take out of production.

Brian says: “Don’t do small triangles here, there and everywhere. These parts of the farm need to be managed as actual crops – so big and square for AB9 winter bird food, AB16 autumn bumblebird mixes and AB15 two-year legume fallows.”

3. Integrated Pest Management consequences

That environmental strategy has led to work on the practical consequences of flowering margins.

Three fields were compared, one with flowering margins around the edge and through the middle, one with a margin just around the edge, and one with no margin.

Dr Aoife O’Driscoll, senior specialist at Niab, says the objectives were to understand what effect natural enemies have on pests, whether plant species in the margin cause a weed burden by encroaching into the crop, and the economic impact.

Gout fly and slugs are the main pest issues on the farm, and that might mean ground-based predators could be more important than aphid-feeding lacewings and hoverflies.

“It’s worth thinking about whether the beneficials you’re trying to encourage are useful for the pests you’re trying to target,” Aoife says.

On weed ingress, there has been some movement of grassweeds – but not the floral species – into the cropped area. Leaving a sterile strip between margin and crop probably helps reduce that risk.

Taking land out of production in the centre of the field cost £160-£350/ha depending on the crop and commodity prices, with that figure based on using an Emorsgate mix – the gold standard of mixes, which costs about £750/ha to establish.

Understanding the consequences as well as the benefits of such margins is crucial. Brian says: “In future, are these areas better than using broad-spectrum insecticides, which we know are not working in some cases as effectively as they used to?”

Further research by two ecologists last summer, funded by the Felix Cobbold Trust, recorded 278 species using the flowering margins, says Patrick.

“That includes 23 species of butterflies, 47 types of birds, including reed buntings which we hadn’t recorded nesting on the farm, meadow pipits and grey partridges nesting in the margins, and nine species of bats.”

4. Cover crops research

The Strategic Farm programme is undertaking research on the impact of cover crops in the rotation – an area under-researched in favour of immediate impact following cover crops, says Nathan Morris, farming systems and soil specialist for Niab.

About 340 water samples have been taken from ditches on the farm over five years to look at nutrient and pesticide capture by cover crops, while soil structure has been tracked.

Initial results show the value of nutrient capture by cover crops, but it is less clear when those nutrients, such as nitrogen, become available, Nathan admits.

On the farm, Brian says he has a love/hate relationship with cover crops. “Nitrogen capture: massive tick; wildlife and biodiversity: massive tick, but I do find they add a lot of risk to that following crop and I still haven’t found that perfect system or method in using them.”