Growers embrace net zero challenge

There is growing evidence that arable farmers are responding positively to the pressures surrounding Scotland’s drive towards net zero carbon emissions by 2045.

Feedback from crop and soil scientists involved in this week’s online-based Arable Scotland event and Cereals 2021, the first major face-to-face farming event to be held in the UK this year, was that growers are now much more focused on all-round crop production and climate change impact issues than previously.

“Farmers are responding at a practical level to the net-zero debate,” said professor Adrian Newton, cereal pathologist/ agroecologist at the James Hutton Institute, Dundee.

“Low-input agriculture is now being actively discussed at events, where before the talk tended to centre on which varieties would yield the most and what crops needed in order to achieve maximum output, these are no longer the dominant questions we’re being asked, and I’m hearing the same from other researchers.

“Today’s growers are much more interested in production efficiency, wanting to know which varieties do well under systems which target reduced inputs, while also seeking to improve soil quality. Farmers are taking this whole issue very seriously now.”

Involved at Cereals as a specialist contributor to the event’s seminar session on Restoring and Maintaining Soil Health, Prof Newton focused his own presentation on the potential for farmers to make more use of intercropping as a way of adding diversity to existing arable systems.

“Increasing from monocrop to two components will get you big payoffs,” he said, listing biodiversity, production efficiency and disease control as good examples of the sort of gains that could be made.

Feedback, meanwhile, from Arable Scotland’s online session on the benefits to be derived from Integrated Pest Management (IPM) also reflected a growing on-farm awareness of carbon/net zero issues.

“We were pleased with the level of farmer engagement in arable Scotland,” said professor Fiona Burnett, IPM session lead and head of Connect For Impact at SRUC.

“Interaction across all the conversations was good with people beginning to think more in a systems way, inevitably leading to carbon issues, net zero and markets. It is certainly healthy as an industry that we are looking at the whole picture.”

GOOD CROP: Attendees at the Cereals 2021 event.