Tillage Newsletter - July 2024

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In this month's edition:

• Water quality
  • Cover crops
    Cover crops improve nutrient cycling and serve as a mitigation measure to reduce nitrate leaching. Nitrate leaching can occur on all tillage soils, but is likely to be greatest on intensive spring-sowing tillage farms where the land remains fallow during the winter.
  • Conditionality – green cover
    Conditionality refers to a set of baseline conditions, which all beneficiaries of the Basic Income Support for Sustainability (BISS) scheme, and other area-based schemes, must adhere to.
• Glyphosate label changes
  As a result of the re-registration of the glyphosate products, there are some significant changes to the labels (including changes in PCS numbers), which will impact on the use of glyphosate.
• Resistance testing
  The results of herbicide resistance testing from 2023 harvest samples paint a worrying picture. Greater than 75% of blackgrass or Italian ryegrass tested was resistant to ACCase (Axial, Falcon, Stratos) and/or ALS (Pacifica, Broadway) herbicides. We also found chickweed, corn marigold and speedwell resistant to ALS-type (Ally Max) herbicides, and poppy resistant or tolerant to ALS and/or hormone type (2,4-D, Zypar) herbicides.
• Health & Safety - Avoid long working hours
  July is a particularly busy month on farms, with long hours of hard and high-risk work, usually involving tractors and machinery. Farmers and contractors must never underestimate the impact of excessively long working hours. Long hours can lead to long-term embedded fatigue and mistakes that would not otherwise happen.