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PhD research gathering field-scale conservation agriculture insight

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Crucial insights into conservation agriculture are being gathered by a PhD student whose hopes his research can help make the system an economic success for farmers.

The Conservation Agriculture Systems Experiment draws on data from two different farming systems – one conventional, and one using conservation farming techniques.

The farmer-led trial forms part of the PhD research of Harper Adams student Joe Collins, who devised the long-term, field-scale experiment.

Joe’s design has run for three years already on Whitegates Estate, near Whitchurch in Shropshire.

The site is a 24 metre, multi-strip blocked design whose strips vary between conservation agriculture and conventional crop production.

Each system is then independently managed by agronomists who make all their crop management decisions based on regular field observations. This means that the agronomy, crop management and crop rotations are different between the two systems year on year.

Across the experiment, both agronomists are competing to have the most profitable system, and therefore, all decisions are made with this in mind – and all are already industry practice.

The conventional system is managed by Alistair Sibbett from and the conservation system in managed by Paul Cawood from .

Joe’s PhD work involves not only designing the system, but also managing the trial and collecting data on crop yield, soil, greenhouse gas emissions, and system economics.

As the project is both large-scale and one which has been run over several years, Joe hopes it can demonstrate how conservation agriculture can work on-farm - helping provide economic data to advise farmers thinking about conservation agriculture properly during their transition period to the technique.

The size of the project – and the competition between its agronomists on the same site, is a change to some previous trials – which typically focus on a single aspect of conservation versus conventional farming.

However, when a farmer transitions to conservation agriculture, they will often change several variables, such crop rotation, agronomy, and farm machinery at the same time. This means that assessing agricultural systems using traditional scientific methods can result in one, or potentially both, systems being managed in a sub-optimal way – as it does not allow for the number of different changes farmers may make in-field.

Joe hopes his research will demonstrate how Conservation Agriculture in the UK can reduce agronomic expenditure for farmers - whilst remaining profitable, showing the complex system interactions farmers will face on their own farms, and providing useful data help those who are transitioning to Conservation Agriculture techniques.

The ongoing project has now secured new sponsorship from BASE-UK, which Joe has welcomed.

He said: “The new sponsorship of the experiment guarantees the project's continuation, allowing for the expansion of the existing dataset.

“This growing body of knowledge provides valuable support to farmers, helping guide and advise them through the transition to conservation agriculture.”

Speaking about his wider PhD journey, which has taken him both across the UK and across the globe talking about his research, Joe added: “My time at Harper has been excellent. I am lucky to have been working with a great supervisory team of Simon Jeffery, Ed Harris, and Karl Behrendt, who have all been a great source of advice, motivation, and engaging discussions throughout the four years.

“The university’s strong connections with the agricultural industry made it an ideal environment for my research, providing access to experts who offered valuable advice on various aspects of my project. In addition to my primary research, I had the opportunity to contribute to several other projects, including the PotatoLITE project and the Earth Rover Program, where I now work part-time while completing my PhD.

“I have also enjoyed working alongside the farmers and agronomists involved in my project - coming from a farming background before my PhD, this is important to me."