Climate change and farming – it’s a hot topic. With belching cattle and evil fertilisers at the top of the press agenda, it seems farming is being fried up nicely as the sacrificial lamb, taking a large chunk of the blame for our climate woes. But really. Why?!? Why would…

Mid October and it is time to put a crop of winter wheat behind potatoes at Kinblethmont. The field in question was only about 50% potatoes, due to a build up over the years of Pallida PCN (Potato Cyst Nematodes). These can be very long lived and so, the parts…

Your will have heard me talking about or read my blogs wittering on about the importance of natural capital as the key opportunity to tackle climate change. There have been a few voices trying to raise this to the top of the agenda over the last few years. I was…

Every year we have the great pleasure of spending time at our local show near Edinburgh. We travel and visit lots of international shows but “The Highland” is always a firm favourite. This year in particular we had two new employees who had only joined us that week, along with…

And so the government has made a bold move looking for zero net carbon by 2050. Expect massive pressure within land based industries. We are far from a perfect industry, but we do deliver on our raison d’etre, affordable healthy food. We are working hard to ensure sustainability. However our…

Back when I started using precision farming, what I was after was information. I wanted to challenge assumed knowledge and find out what practices were actually beneficial. The tool I used was yield mapping. It taught me that we were engaging in unnecessary cultivation and that many of my lower…

I am just back from attending the AgriTech and Climate Smart Agriculture Conference 2019, in Prague. These events follow a pattern, a mixture of academics and policy people, a sprinkling of commercial suppliers and the odd token farmer. Some interesting new thoughts, ideas and products that we will of course…

We have been privileged working with the Agri-EPI Centre and visiting some of the most forward looking farms in the UK. This week we were hosted at their South West Dairy Development Centre in Somerset. You all know that we are interested in technology here at SoilEssentials, but that it…

Agriculture 2.0, data farming, digitalising agriculture. Whatever you see it being called; the spread of data in farming is very much the zeitgeist at the moment. Investors are after a piece of this revolution and start-ups are raising money as fast as they can. But who will survive? We have…

We had the great pleasure of hosting a leadership group from Florida this week. This was the 10th rural leadership group from the Wedgworth Leadership Institute in Florida. They had already travelled to Swaziland and for this leg, were meeting farmers and rural businesses in Scotland. I have personally joined…