Farming’s environmental impact and its ability to sequester carbon is under the spotlight like never before, there is much talk of soil protection, management and making carbon pay. This year, the Soil and Water Management Centre conference strongly addresses these issues with a group of leading farmers and researchers - Thursday 13th January
Programme:
Morning session – 9.50am – 12.30
- 9.50am – Welcome and introduction – Chairman – Guy Smith
Ten years of Tillage and Traffic field experiment (timings of presentations to include Q&A)
- 10.00 Introduction, background & design, Paula Misiewicz
- 10.20 Soil physical conditions and health, Magda Kaczorowska-Dolowy
- 10.40 Crop performance & yield, Ed Dickin
- 11.00 – 11.10 Comfort break
- 11.10 Economics, Richard Godwin
- 11.30 Farmer Case Studies- Chairman – Andy Newbold
Tim Parton, Brewood Park Farm, Staffordshire and Mark Lea, Greenacres Farm, Shropshire
- 12.20 General discussion
- 12.30 Close of morning session
- 12.30 – 13.00 Lunch
Post lunch visits and demos in rotation, 13.00 – 14 .00
- How can electric autonomous vehicles help to protect my soil? Auto Spray Systems. Q&A Representative: Rob Pearson.
- Update on GNSS systems and RTK correction, Darren Roe, John Deere
Afternoon session – 14.00–16.00
Carbon, an opportunity – but what are the knowns and unknowns?
(Kindly sponsored by Bayer)
- 14.00 Farmer perceptions of carbon sequestration – Jonathan Cooper HAU
- 14.20 Building soil organic matter – Matthew Shepherd, Natural England,
- 14.45 Sequestering carbon in arable soils – more difficult than you think – David Powlson, Rothamsted Research
- 15.10 Comfort break
- 15.20 Farmer case study – Approaching the carbon market opportunity as a farmer. Doug Wanstell farms 360Ha in a mixed farming business with arable, Lucerne, free range hens and Sussex cattle in Kent.
- 15.40 An overview of the Bayer CropScience Carbon Programme Initiative – Nick Duncan, Bayer
- 15.55 General discussion
- 16.10 Chairman’s concluding remarks
For more information visit: Events (soilandwater.org.uk).