12th November 2021
With sustainability top of the agenda at this year’s CropTec event, Frontier Agriculture is sharing its seven-step sustainable crop production model and the opportunities associated with a changing industry.
“This new era for farming has raised a lot of questions for growers,” explains Frontier’s lead on sustainability, Jim Stotzka. “It’s important we provide answers and meaningful solutions – we’re excited to bring them to CropTec this year.”
The event takes place 24-25November at the East of England Showground in Peterborough and comes at a time when significant expectations have been placed on UK agriculture to help meet future sustainability objectives.
Jim continues, “A lot of responsibility is on our industry to adopt new approaches in the name of sustainability and while some growers have started on this journey already, others aren’t clear about what they need to do.”
This is particularly true for new environmental policy and carbon management. Although fast becoming popular topics on farm and with many regarding these areas as having some of the biggest opportunities, the requirements are not yet clear for many growers. At CropTec, specialists from Frontier and SOYL will share insight from farm-scale research into carbon benchmarking, auditing and management as well as some of the analyses available via its Soil Life services. Alongside, Kings advisors will be on stand to help growers transfer theory into practice, offering advice on scheme option selection and management within both Countryside Stewardship agreements and the forthcoming Sustainable Farming Incentive.
“Every farm is different and one size doesn’t fit all. There are a lot of new approaches on the table and our priority is to work with growers to explore them,” says Jim. “At Frontier, we have teams who specialise in all aspects of crop production and by pooling that expertise together with that of the growers we work with, we can provide end-to-end, sustainable and economically viable solutions.”
Growers visiting Frontier and its divisions at the event will be able to link to services around:
- Crop growth cycle
- Soil function
- Carbon management
- Regenerative agriculture
- Environmental management
- Digital solutions
- Compliance.
“These seven areas are vital parts of sustainable crop production in their own right but by considering them together, we can help growers take a holistic approach and make the most of new opportunities,” says Jim.
Investment in digital solutions: MyFarm
One key area of the Frontier sustainability model is its digital services, with visitors to CropTec able to see live demonstrations of Frontier’s farm management tool, MyFarm.
“Online tools have an important role to play in sustainable farming,” explains head of digital development, Tom Parker. “MyFarm adds value to all aspects of the farm business, supporting growers with day-to-day decisions as well as helping to set benchmarks and evidence work.”
Following significant development to become an all-encompassing platform, MyFarm supports growers with everything from account management, crop inputs and grain trading to precision data analysis, environmental mapping and record-keeping.
“A vital addition to MyFarm has been the environment manager tool,” says Tom. Developed by Kings, the tool utilises map layers from MySOYL to show agri-environment and stewardship project plans alongside commercial crop production data.
“Growers can take a whole-farm approach to environmental management, recording and monitoring natural capital assets in conjunction with their conventional cropping activity,” says Tom. “This is huge for meeting sustainable crop production objectives – work can be effectively planned, managed and evidenced to comply with new farm policy.”
Radar imagery: a new era for variable rate nitrogen
As well as updates to MyFarm, wider investment is also being made to the precision technology available to growers from SOYL – specifically its variable rate nitrogen service following the adoption of radar imagery.
Developed in partnership with agricultural satellite analysts, Geosys and following extensive trials and research, the use of radar enhances SOYL’s biomass imagery so that users can access some of the most comprehensive crop data in the industry. Radar is unaffected by cloud cover so even in adverse weather, growers will consistently receive accurate measures of crop growth and development throughout the main winter cereal application window.
“We invest considerably in the biomass imagery we provide to growers, sourcing our data from nine satellites so we can deliver images at set time intervals during the nitrogen application window,” explains Tom.
“The addition of radar for the 2022 season is fantastic and we’re very excited to launch this service to growers at CropTec. The technology has allowed us to overhaul SOYL’s variable rate nitrogen service and will help growers to reduce their carbon footprint and enhance nitrogen use efficiency, yield and grain quality through more targeted applications.”
Visitors to CropTec can find Frontier, Kings and SOYL in Hall 1 on Stand 1.26 at the East of England Showground, Peterborough, PE2 6HE on 24-25 November.
More information about Frontier’s seven-step sustainability model can be found at www.frontierag.co.uk/sustainable-crop-production.
