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CHANGE AND technology are two words that David Blacker has never feared at Church Farm in Shipton by Beningbrough , where he farms 500 acres owned in a family partnership . From here he also manages 1400 acres of stubble to stubble contracting and 1000 acres of combining with individual drilling jobs . It ’ s a wholly arable concern at Church Farm but it hasn ’ t always been that way .

‘ We ’ ve had pigs and cattle in the past but it ’ s all arable now and we have wheat , oilseed rape and beans on rotation with wheat making up half of what I grow and the other two crops 25 per cent each ,” he explains . ‘ I got rid of winter barley and second wheat as I couldn ’ t make them work financially . From the first wheat to second I was losing two tonnes per hectare .’

David has also changed from milling wheat to feed wheat .

This came out of his experience in harvesting for other farmers who were growing feed wheat .

‘ I used to grow all Group 1 milling wheat for bread but noticed through my contracting work that the newer feed varieties were much better on yield and so when I worked out the costs and time spent on fungicides and nitrogen for the milling wheat in comparison it made sense to move on to producing barn filling feed wheat .

‘ I tried Evolution last year but although it yielded well it is a quite late maturing variety and it sprouted in the ear even though it wasn ’ t a particularly wet year . That made me nervous about it so this year I ’ ve gone for Siskin and Crispin that are both KWS varieties and a bit of Skyfall , which is known as a milling wheat as is Siskin but I ’ m still growing them as feed . I ’ ve

chosen them specifically for their high yield potential and very good disease resistance . I ’ m basically trying to make the crops I put into the ground as easy to manage as possible . It ’ s all about de-risking myself more than anything else .’

David has kept with oilseed rape on a reduced acreage this time around . He ’ s taken the decision based on the diamondback moths ( aka cabbage moths ) that gave him a slight headache in summer .

‘ There was a plague of them that came over from mainland Europe and having seen some of the damage they did to cover crops decimating anything that was a brassica I was a little nervous they would do the same to the oilseed rape when the second clutch of eggs hatched . I ’ ll probably go back to normal with my rape acreage next year .

‘ I ’ ve only been growing beans for the last two years . I

now have a rotation of wheat , rape , wheat and spring beans with a cover crop in at stubble before them . The cover crop is a mix of spring oats , sunflowers , buckwheat and others . They ’ re each either scavenging phosphate or potash . The oats are very good at mopping up nitrogen .’

HOW FARMING HAS CHANGED

Looking after the soil is another of David ’ s concerns . He sees how much farming has changed .

‘ There are no longer as many mixed farms and that has led to a lack of natural resources in the shape of organic matter on arable farms . It ’ s an issue that I ’ m trying to address . I used to swap straw for muck but now that I strip till I see the spreading of muck completely compacting and ruining the soil structure before we plant our following crop . I work on the