By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward
Farmer Ozzie has the answer to Norfolk’s “inclement weather”!!
An Australian farmer who has found green ways to grow crops in extreme heat and drought offers advice to his Norfolk counterparts.
Grant Sims was speaking at a virtual conference hosted by the Royal Norfolk Agricultural Society and its Productive (Youth, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Learn and Grow) rural business network.
With severe weather becoming more common in East Angliahe explains how he has optimized the health and resilience of the soil to withstand the rigors of the Australian summer.
He ranchs 8,500 acres in Victoria, including a herd of 300 Angus cattle.
He also runs Down Under Covers, a business that sells seasonal multi-species crop mixes to farmers across Australia.
And keeping the soil covered with crops between crops is one of the key “guiding principles” on his farm, which can receive less than 200mm of rain during the growing season and is often subject to 40 degrees of heat. temperature and big storms in summer.
“mulch is king,” he says, insulating the soil and improving its biology, while many rootworms break compaction and increase water retention.
“One thing we really focus on in soil health is improving water infiltration and retention,” he says.
“Most of the time we look at the area we’re farming in two-dimensional terms, but we’re actually farming on a three-dimensional plane.
“So if we can increase root depth and water holding capacity, we can take advantage of this unseasonal rainfall, hoard or plant something in the summer that we haven’t done before. be – and that’s where we implement our cover crops to get the variety in. “
https://www.edp24.co.uk/news/business/australian-farmer-grant-sims-speaks-to-norfolk-farmers-8628500
Somehow, I don’t see Norfolk turning into Victoria any time soon!
But what about this extreme weather and drought, I hear you say!
As for the April-September rainfall, there weren’t any trends in East Anglia. In the past, dry summers were as common as:
https://www.ecad.eu/utils/showindices.php?ajgkeo7oovr2mbo7te9b62mrik
There weren’t any trends in rainfall from October to March, nor evidence of unusually dry or wet years:
And with summer daytime temperatures averaging under 23 degrees Celsius, I suggest Norfolk’s farmers have more to worry about than the weather!
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