Yorkshire farmer vows to make soil 'healthy' and fellow farmers financially better off

Mr Gowthorpe is a successful early adopter of the use of cover crops and was recently named as Farmers Weekly’s Environmental Champion of the Year.

He has been awarded funding through the Farming Innovation Programme, delivered by InnovateUK, the UK’s innovation agency, in collaboration with the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) as part of the Research Starter Competition.

The competition aims to support farmgate ideas from farmers, growers, and foresters to solve major problems facing their business on themes of sustainability, productivity, and resilience.

Healthy soil is fundamental to productive farming and the use of cover crops as an effective method to achieve healthy soils has never been more important.

Cover crops are a non-cash crop that farmers are increasingly turning to, to decrease nutrient losses, improve soil health and vitality, disrupt pests and diseases, and to provide much-needed habitats for on-farm biodiversity between commercial crops.

Cover crops are now recognised as being the cornerstone for emerging ‘regenerative agriculture’ approaches within future farming policy.

Mr Gowthorpe’s cover crops project aims to develop the UK’s first accessible, independent, farmer-led and scientifically supported ‘Farmers’ guide to cover crop selection, establishment and termination’ to provide confidence for farmers wishing to plant the right cover crops for

their farms.

This approach will draw together existing resources into a ‘one-stop-shop’ web platform and will seek to incorporate a range of on-farm variables such as soil composition and regional climates to help farmers establish an appropriate approach to planting, rotating and managing the benefits of cover crops on their farms.

Mr Gowthorpe said: “There are a great deal of questions surrounding cover crops, ranging from what should I grow, to how should I kill them and all manner in between. By developing this guide, we hope to provide a resource that can be easily accessed and can be a source of a great deal of information and answer many of these questions.”

He added that the use of cover crops comes with risk and uncertainty. As with any newly adopted approach to farmland management, it is not always ‘one size fits all’, and a poor decision at any stage of the process, from seed selection to termination, can result in failed crops, wasted time, financial loss and missed opportunities.

The project will be delivered in collaboration with key partners, including the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, Frontier Ltd/Kings Crops, Newcastle University and PhD Researcher David Purdy.