The Farmers Mart Feb-Mar 2019 - Issue 61

46 DIKES MARSH FARM FEB/MAR 2019 • farmers-mart.co.uk ALL TOGETHER NOW AT RAWCLIFFE BRIDGE AND THORNE Chris Berry talks arable farming, soil and no till with Richard Hinchliffe. ARABLE farming has come in for its fair share of flak in recent times over destroying soil quality but farmers such as the Hinch- liffes at Rawcliffe Bridge and Thorne are amongst the leading lights in best practice having gone no till some years ago and chopping all their straw across their nearly 1400 acres. Richard Hinchliffe farms with his father David and uncle James and lives with his young family at Dikes Marsh Farm near Thorne. Their land is largely between 2-3 metres above sea level and all either grade 1 or 2 warp land and silty loam at Rawcliffe Bridge and cold, wet and challenging mag- nesium clay at Thorne where it is below high tide and where water is pumped into the embanked Dutch river. The other farm sits on the bottom of the Rover Don river- bank. All water ends up in the River Humber and from there the North Sea. ‘Drainage is a massive thing for us and although we’ve never been flooded climate change has the potential for it in the future. Dad, my uncle and I are all involved with the local drainage boards of Black Drain and Thorntree.’ ‘Soil on many farms has been neglected, abused and basically forgotten about for whatever the reason and we all have to get to know soil better. It is so easy to damage it RN GOLDEN LTD Family Business Established in 1964 www.rngolden.co.uk Suppliers of New and Used IZUZU pick ups Call Mat Golden on 07771 666442 Address: RN GOLDEN LTD, Wakefield Road, Lepton, Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, HD8 0DL yet repairing and improving soil is a long- term process. We’ve had this farm nearly 20 years and we are still seeing gradual improvement. The most underutilised tool today is the spade. We should all use it, get out there, dig with the soil, smell it and almost taste it. If you’ve been farming and doing this long enough you know when your soil is happy and when it’s not.’ ‘We didn’t go No Till immediately back in 2000 when we first looked seriously, but we haven’t ploughed since then and went Min Till at first on what is best described as a Horsch system with a tine cultivator and drill. We’ve still kept the equipment as No Till isn’t a religion despite what some say. You’ve to be pragmatic. We still subsoil where soil con- dition means we need to but where we’ve not moved the soil for quite a time, we are finding crops are rooting better.’ ‘Our main crop is winter wheat growing first and second wheats. Barn filling feed varieties in the ground this year are Grafton, Evolution, Motown and new this year Gleam and Belepi. We also grow oilseed rape, win- ter beans, spring beans (but not this year), linseed and spring barley. Main characteris- tics we look for are bushel weight and short and stiff disease resistant crops. Shorter va- rieties are easier to chop. We don’t do fixed rotations anymore although generally on the better land we will go two white straw

The Farmers Mart Feb-Mar 2019 - Issue 61 | Page 46