Growing soya replacements for a farm in better heart

Arable and beef producers, Peter and Richard Barker, have radically changed direction on their North Yorkshire family farm. And despite switching away from palm kernel and soya, and moving on to a home-grown ration, they have massively increased daily liveweight gain.

When Richard Barker looks back on the operation of his family’s mixed arable and livestock farm, he tends to think he was fighting with nature. His father, Peter, was both a renowned livestock producer and cropsman, always following best-practice, and running both the livestock and arable operations with skill and efficiency. The arable enterprise was operated in the traditional, chemical-based way and the rotation was based on wheat, barley and oilseed rape.

But times have changed since the reins were handed to Richard, and he is now at pains to run the 300-acre (121ha) holding at North Lingy Moor Farm near Richmond with fewer and more local inputs; more farmer-to-farmer trading; and generally at one with nature and on a more holistic basis than in the past. 

“We felt we were spending too much on the crops in their tight rotation – two years of wheat, two of barley and one of oilseed rape – and our heavy clay soil was getting difficult to work,” says Richard. “We were fighting with nature; not working with it.”

Continuing to work with his father, plus nephew, Harry White, and stockman, Jeremy Clarkson (really!), he describes his realisation of the need for change as
an epiphany.

Moving its focus away from intensive, chemical-based production, the team looked towards regenerative practices including direct drilling; integration of livestock with the arable rotation; feeding the stock largely from home-grown ingredients; and nurturing the soil using more considered methods and crops, including legumes, green-cover and catch crops, plus plenty of animal manure. 

Transformation in DLWG

The results have been beyond all expectations, and rather than accept lower performance with the less intensive system, the 1,000 or so head of Aberdeen Angus-cross dairy cattle finished every year now grow faster and enjoy better health than ever before. 

“Our cattle have never performed better,” says Richard, citing the current average daily liveweight gain (DLWG) across all stock of 1.65kg.

“We are over the moon with that. Prior to the change we worked on 1.35kg to 1.4kg and we were perfectly happy with that.

“Now we realise we shouldn’t have been. And even better – we have cut the cost of producing each kilogram of beef.” 

Selling at an average liveweight of 680kg, (deadweight 365kg), the average age at finishing is 24 months.

The farm’s carbon footprint per tonne of beef produced has also declined, while profits are also up.

Replacing soya and palm kernel

Changes to many individual processes have contributed to these results, key amongst which has been a switch away from bought-in feed ingredients – including palm kernel and soya – to feeds such as home-grown crimped cereals and wholecrop beans, with co-products sourced from local manufacturers. 

“We sell our cattle through Dovecote for Waitrose, and they don’t allow any soya in the rations,” explains Richard, although he needed no encouragement to make this change. “We can also see the writing on the wall for palm kernel, so we’ve scrapped that too – we want to get ahead of the game.”

It was in searching for a product to replace the protein from these imported ingredients that Richard’s interest was drawn to wholecrop beans. 

“We’d been working with Kelvin Cave [for crimping cereals] for many years so I spoke to Michael Carpenter [technical director] about growing a replacement protein crop,” he says. 

“His suggestion to try wholecrop beans was the best advice we’ve had. It’s allowed us to expand our crop rotation while cutting our growing costs; to drop oilseed rape as a break crop and try to reduce blackgrass and herbicide-resistant ryegrass issues. And it’s drastically improved the health of the soil.”

Now in their fourth year, the beans are generally drilled in spring, ideally in March but this year not until May.

“Despite their lower yields than a winter-sown crop, spring beans are cheaper to grow and, if conditions allow, you can over-winter a cover-crop before them,” says Richard. This could be something like a mix of stubble turnips, black oats, vetch and phacelia for winter grazing a neighbour’s sheep and which would now qualify for grant payments through the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI).

“We might also grow beans with a companion crop,” he adds. “We’ve tried peas but found oats work particularly well. You encourage more biodiversity with a second crop and there may be an element of disease prevention.

“It’s very low cost as we just mix the beans and oats on the floor and drill them together from one hopper,” he says. “We may try peas again as they spread and cover the ground, which helps with weed suppression early in the season, and then they climb up the scaffold provided by the beans, which keeps them standing later on.”

Also noting that they don’t need nitrogen fertiliser and little in the way of agrochemicals compared with other crops, he says a pre-emergence herbicide plus another in late May is the extent of the spraying for the spring beans. This is said to play an important part in ridding the farm of the grass weeds which are hard to tackle in cereal crops.

“When you’re using the preservative, CrimpSafe 300, you can safely preserve grain at 25-45% moisture,” adds Michael Carpenter. “Any drier, and you’d have to use a different preservative, but Richard aims for around 35%.”

Feed rates of the moist product can also be higher than dry grain, as crimp is known to be better for rumen health and digestion. 

 Weed issues with crimp

“There’s also a weed benefit from harvesting and preserving grain at the crimping stage, which has been demonstrated in black-grass trials carried out by ADAS,” continues Michael. “These have shown that crimping the crop with CrimpSafe 300 renders black-grass seeds completely unviable for germination – and this is in addition to the likelihood that fewer viable weed seeds will be shed in the harvesting process.”

Eventually, this is expected to reduce the weed seedbank on a farm which repeatedly harvests early for crimp, and will be one of the benefits experienced by Richard, who now chooses to crimp the entire 180 acres of wheat, barley and oats he grows.

 WhatsApp bean group

Similarly pleased with how the bean silage is performing, Richard says: “By the time we were considering alternative proteins, we’d had a long track record with Kelvin Cave and trusted what they told us would be correct. They also had a WhatsApp group of farmers growing beans so we can always speak to other producers – that’s been very useful.”

Advised to preserve the wholecrop bean silage with Safesil Pro, Richard observes: “This was definitely the right choice. We pack the crop down well, keep it well covered and weight it down – just simple things – and the feed stays cool, has no spoilage or waste, and the stock love the ration.”

Sheeting for both the crimp and beans comprises 150-micron side-sheets and O2 Barrier 2-in-1 over the top of clamps, with the bird-proof cover, ClampShield, securing the lot. 

However, admitting to untidy management at feed out, Richard has recently switched from a grain bucket to a shear bucket, and says it will probably pay for itself through the clean-cut face in its first year of use. 

 Farm in better heart

The willingness to embrace change at North Lingy Moor Farm has led to a newfound feeling of optimism and hope. The farm is in far better heart than just a few years ago, with its soil structure in particular continuing to build the bedrock for future performance.

“We have massively improved our soil structure,” says Richard. “It is a better
colour; it’s more friable and workable;and it has both better water retention and filtration – it’s really surprising how quickly we’ve seen these changes occur.”

Insulated from world feed markets by largely growing their own, the farm is also in far better financial shape.

As former pig farmers, the business had previously fallen victim to the notoriously cyclical nature of the pork market but is now much more stable since it moved towards self-sufficiency and the more sustainable system.

“I’m a big believer in having more than one string to your bow – with complementary enterprises running both on and off the farm – and I feel this is serving us well.

“We have the next generation now coming through and I feel we have a strong financial security – even with the uncertainty of farming,” he says.