Mark Means of Terrington St Clement, Norfolk, is Farmers Weekly‘s Awards 2024 Arable Farmer of the Year.

Building a successful root cropping and arable cropping business, without compromising, on challenging silt-rich soils reclaimed from The Wash make Mark Means our 2024 Arable Farmer of the Year. 

Although very fertile, silts are difficult to manage being prone to capping and compaction.

See also: Farmers Weekly Awards 2024: Arable Farmer of the Year finalists

However, Mark has developed a system that enables him to extract high yields while at the same time improving soil health and eradicating blackgrass.

Mark has turned around the potato business, which struggled with high energy costs and low prices, becoming a price maker.

He has gained a reputation for being an early adopter of new technology and growing top-performing crops, including a 124t/ha of sugar beet and milling wheats with double-digit yields.

The business

The silt-rich soils at Terrington Marsh are prone to compaction as highlighted in the wet autumn of 2012 with reduced wheat yields.

And with climate change, these challenging autumns are becoming more frequent.

So it’s no surprise that soil health is at the heart of Mark’s approach.

He was an early adopter of controlled traffic farming with 36m permanent tramlines, he is a lover of VF tyres, which can run at 9psi (0.62bar), and he has developed a reduced cultivation approach to establish potatoes.

Mark has made radical changes to the potato business, cutting the area to 100ha and has focused more on quality to secure better prices.

He is adding value with other crops with milling wheat and vining peas.

He has tackled energy costs of the potato store, with the use of technology such as carbon dioxide sensors and inverters and he has invested in renewables with solar panels and wind turbines.

Technology is also being used to refine inputs with variable-rate seeding and fertiliser use.

And with no natural water sources, Mark has installed a unique water recycling system, using slightly saline groundwater.

Achievements

With the focus on potato quality, Mark is now a price maker supplying into Waitrose, Marks and Spencer, and Asda.

This, combined with the substantial cuts in energy use, down 28% and using renewables, has put it on a more sustainable footing.

This is being achieved without compromising soil health.

In fact, soils are healthier, with soil organic matters getting close to 4% and no compaction in potato wheelings.

Doing as little cultivation as possible has also cut fuel use by 11 litres/ha.

He is showing that by getting the biology right and adding plenty of organic matter, from muck and sewage sludge, he can mitigate the impact from potatoes.

The lack of compaction is evident in the high vining pea yields of 6t/ha, a crop that hates tight soils.

He is regularly in the top five in the HMC Peas grower rankings and he puts this down to the very even establishment achieved – aiming for all to emerge the same day.

Blackgrass is also under control with numbers still falling, helped by rotation and a zero-tolerance approach.

The future

Looking to the future, Mark hopes to increase the cropping area and, as an early adopter, he is excited by automation, such as that seen in irrigation.

He is also spurred on by the yield potential as demonstrated by the Recommended List trial plots, which equated to a 20t/ha wheat yield.