Kickstart your cereal establishment
George Hepburn
Crop Health Consultant, East
Systems Approach
At Aiva we promote a systems approach to farming which involves viewing farms as interconnected ecosystems, focusing on improving the health and resilience of the whole system rather than individual components.
This holistic approach tries to integrate soil health, biodiversity, water management, carbon sequestration, and animal integration to create regenerative and productive agricultural systems.
By applying a systems approach to our programmes at Aiva, Nutrition is only part of what we are looking to apply to the crops to get them off to the best possible start in life. Even in nutrition it’s not just NPK we are also looking at Mn, Mg, Zn, B, Mo, Carbon, Silicon (yes a nutrient but is becoming more important), and beneficial bacteria and fungi.
Carbon can be added as Humic / Fulvic or molasses and is an important energy source for the existing soil microbes. Amino acids are excellent at this stage to as building blocks for many processes.
Even just as a non chemical PGR it stacks up, but add the plethora of other benefits it brings like thickening the palisade layer giving greater resistance to leaf diseases, a thicker waxy layer, more trichomes, and Nitrogen synergist to name a few and it’s an easy decision.
We then add biology to try and speed up the associations between plant and the soil biome and steer it gently the way we want.
If you have a liquid applicator then these products can be mixed as a seed drench, as many are doing currently. The plan B approach is to wait until the crop is up and at 2-3 leaves then apply as a foliar using the same components but maybe slightly different products.
We are not really making more passes (although we might), we are mixing more parts together at once, who doesn’t love a 12 way mix!
The pre-Winter spray is going to be a key one this year with many farmers opting to take the £45 ha no insecticide payment.
We know, from John Kempf and others, that if we get the nutritional balance right in the plant, it makes it much less attractive to aphids. John talks about making sure you have good levels of Magnesium, Molybdenum, Sulphur and Boron. All of which are in Pulsar.
Combine that nutrient application with some Silicon to improve the morphology of the plant and amino acids for energy and building block then we are doing all we can do to prevent aphids at a modest cost (c£15 ha for Nutrition, Silicon and Carbon).
Below is our Systems Approach flow chart showing how Aiva’s advice might differ from the chemical choice.
About the Author
George Hepburn
Crop Health Consultant, East
Hi, I’m George. I’m a Crop Health Consultant at AIVA. For my whole career, I’ve been working on promoting Crop Health through more natural methods, trying to renew and preserve fertility. Working on benefiting mainly arable systems, I also have expertise in root crops, focusing on building better nutrition and natural crop health.
Got a question? Contact Me.
