The unseasonably dry weather has made us consider some spring fieldwork several weeks earlier than usual.

Having said that, my phone’s photos app has just reminded me that we had snow this time last year, so I won’t get too complacent.

First up, we are looking at some cover crop trials we are conducting with Syngenta on alternative methods of destruction.

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Andy Barr

Andy Barr farms 320ha in mid-Kent, aiming to farm as regeneratively as possible. He stopped ploughing 25 years ago and over this time restructured the business with less land farmed and increased the use of contractors, environmental areas and diversification projects.

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Both He-Va and Horsch have promised me a demo of their front-mounted machines for cutting and crimping cover crops, so we will, hopefully, try them with and without the Vaderstad cross-cutter mounted behind.

The main point for me will be to try one such strip without glyphosate. However, if it works, I’ll then need a renewable energy-powered tractor to avoid burning more diesel.

Who knows what the future of glyphosate will be, but organic no-till was one of the subjects touched on by John Pawsey, who I was lucky enough to share speaking duties with at the recent inaugural Kent Farming Conference, run by the county agricultural society.

In addition to myself, another home-grown Kentish speaker was James Smith, who co-produces the rather pertinent Farming for Change podcast with fellow Nuffield scholar Ben Taylor-Davies.

One of the episodes discusses moving towards a lower-input, more regenerative approach. Regardless of our personal preferences, we may actually be forced down this route by the high price and lack of availability of what we now see as traditional inputs such as nitrogen fertiliser and pesticides (plus the added spice of net-zero carbon?).

I saw some similar economics at work in Argentina many years ago, when a group of Kent farmers visited the country to sample their beer.

We also managed to visit a number of vast farms and a sprawling agricultural show and saw nothing but direct drills and cover crop crimpers; the explanation given was that they simply couldn’t afford to do anything else.