Building arable soil health

Building soil health and broader ecosystem health underpins the success of biological and regenerative arable systems. Here we explore what this means to Canterbury arable farmers David Birkett and Nigel Greenwood.

Video description: David Birkett explains how soil is the key to his system and how good soil structure supports good soil biology.

Video description: Nigel Greenwood discusses his transition to a full no-till system, proactively building soil structure over time to achieve this.

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David Birkett’s approach to building soil health

After many years retaining crop residues, David has observed much quicker gains in soil health from more recent changes to keep living roots in the ground using cover crops.

Cover crops vs sub-soiling trial:

Wheat establishment into ex cover crop using different techniques to see if any yield advantages.

Paddock History:
Paddock in seed beans harvested in January and planted into a cover crop of beans/oats/phacelia/buckwheat on 31/01/21. Cover crop terminated and wheat drilled on 20/4/2021

Establishment Techniques: Four different techniques used
1. Direct Drilled
2. One pass with discs
3. Sub Soiled then rolled
4. Sub Soiled then disced

Results:
1. Direct Drilled = 12.7t/ha
2. One pass with discs = 12.6t/ha
3. Sub soiled then rolled = 12.9t/ha
4. Sub soiled then disced = 12.8t/ha

Conclusion:
Previous sub soiling trials have provided about 0.5-0.6t/ha advantage, but this trial ex cover crop showed no benefit from the sub soiling.
When digging holes in the paddock it was clear that the cover crop had done the job of the sub soiler but to a far greater depth.
As there was no statistical difference the techniques, the direct drilled was the best returning technique along with all the other benefits of direct drilling provides.

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