Improving soil fertility on heavy soils farms

David Corbett, David Wall, Ger Courtney, James O’Loughlin, John Maher, Bridget Lynch, Pat Tuohy

Industry impact: Increased nutrient efficiency is a key requirement on farms in order to meet environmental sustainability and production growth targets. Heavy soils with high proportions of fine soil particles tend to offer particular challenges in terms of nutrient-use efficiency and achieving good soil fertility status. Over the past number of years, we have generated a dataset from the Heavy Soils Programme (HSP), which allows for analysis of soil nutrient dynamics across these soil types. An intense regime of data collection at a paddock scale in terms of nutrient inputs (chemical/organic fertiliser, concentrates) and off-takes (milk, meat, silage, grass) allows for an in-depth understanding of changes in soil nutrient levels when compared with annual soil tests over an extended period (five years). Data on the response rates of these soils, being gathered both through real farm data and controlled studies on HSP farms, is allowing for soil-specific nutrient management recommendations for the 10 heavy soils farms. Targeted nutrient improvement measures across the HSP farms have seen them move from a position where only 2% of paddocks sampled in 2013 were optimum for pH, phosphorus (P) and potassium (K), to the current position where 30% of paddocks achieve this status. Recommendations from the Programme are benefitting farmers working on similar soils through the Knowledge Transfer programme.

Correspondence: patrick.tuohy@teagasc.ie

Other contributors and collaborators: University College Dublin.

Funding: Kerry Agribusiness.