LUXIMO® ON FARM: Ed Ford
About Ed
Ed and his brother, Charles, took over their parents’ 600ha farm in Essex nearly fifteen years ago and have recently taken on a further 500ha farm in Bedfordshire.
The original acreage, Childerditch Farm, sits predominately on heavy London clay, is zero till and has a rotation that includes winter wheat, winter beans, spring barley, linseed, and oats.
Ed studied at Harper Adams University and was the former Chairperson of the National Federation of Young Farmers’ Clubs. He continues to give back to the farming sector and dedicates time to a number of charitable organisations. Ed is a trustee of The Farm Safety Foundation.
Black-grass
When Ed took over, black-grass was rife on the farm and it’s been his mission to bring populations back under control. Ed takes a zero-tolerance approach to grass weeds and is well known for stopping the car, tractor or sprayer, to pull individual plants.
Cultural controls have been key to Ed’s success and that includes spring cropping. Ed also delays drilling and uses stale seedbeds but finds that crop competition is equally important. With heavy soils, he has to find a balance and sometimes that means bringing the drilling date forward to ensure the wheat gets off to a good start.
Rotation
This year, Ed’s growing 350ha of wheat and is focusing on the milling varieties, Skyfall and Crusoe. All the wheat receives a robust pre-emergence herbicide stack, followed by an early post-emergence treatment.
In early summer, Ed deploys the final weed control tactic - hand-rogueing. It’s an important part of that zero-tolerance approach; removing any survivors to prevent seed return. He’s also not afraid to spray off patches or whole fields when needed.
Autumn 2022
Ed describes 2022 as challenging: “It’s been a funny year,” he says. “Dirtier than most, and certainly challenging.”
With a baby coming in October, Ed’s autumn was slightly unusual and drilling started earlier than he would have liked.
“Autumn 2022 was very dry at Childerditch Farm, and it wasn’t wet through the winter, so farm jobs were generally completed as ‘normal’ up until the end of March. Then it got really wet, really quickly,” he recalls.
“We were drilling in the dry in February but couldn’t get Atlantis on where we wanted to. While it wasn’t ideal, it also wasn’t a disaster,” he says.
Spring 2023
The effects of the challenging season can be seen in Ed’s bill for hand rogueing. “We spent £17,000 and were £3,500 over budget,” he admits. “But of the 350ha of wheat, only the 15ha trial field and another 30ha were not rogueable.
“With hindsight, that 30ha ought to have been sprayed off, but it looked reasonably clean when that decision had to be made in January. As a result, we’d already spent the money on inputs over the spring, when the full extent of the black-grass became apparent, and have had to let it run through to harvest. At around 2 plants/m2, it wasn’t that you could see the black-grass from the road, but it’s too much for my liking.”
Looking ahead
This autumn Ed intends to increase his use of Luximo®, applying it to the headlands, as well as selected wheat crops.
“Ryegrass is creeping in from our neighbour’s fields,” he explains. “Fortunately, this year, levels were low enough for us to be able to hand rogue the headlands, as opposed to spray. We pulled 200 ryegrass plants in total.”
“I’m also intending on using Luximo® on our second wheats this autumn, as well as our first.”
Having spent years lowering black-grass populations and keeping ryegrass at bay, Ed’s keen to stay ahead of the grass weeds and considers Luximo® an important piece of the jigsaw.
“It’s partly about resistance management. Just like everyone else, we know we’ve resistance to flufenacet. It’s trying to chop and change weed control strategies in order to reduce the selection pressure.
“We also need the experience to understand it’s strengths, and gain the knowledge about how to get the best from it before we really need to.”
