RevYstories: Toby Hogsbjerg

About Toby

Toby grew up on a farm in Suffolk and after attending Harper Adams and gaining an HND (Agric) started his career with Broadoak/Coop Farms in Norfolk where he specialised in root crop production. He is now back in Norfolk again, manager of the Wicken Farms Company, a job which he started in autumn 2018. In the intervening years he has managed farms in the south of England, specialising in growing root crops and potatoes and a move across the water to Southern Ireland saw him involved in growing onions as well as root crops.

Toby manages 950 ha for the Wicken Farms Company, growing winter wheat, winter barley, winter oilseed rape, spring barley, sugar beet, potatoes, spring peas and game cover for the estate’s partridge shoot.

The soils range from blow away sand to sandy clay loam and tend to be low in organic matter content because of the light land and the root crops in the rotation. Good soil management is, Toby says, crucial to achieving his production targets, and routine soil sampling coupled with prescriptive and targeted fertiliser applications are undertaken to maintain indices. Toby is hoping to build soil organic matter which will help retain nutrients, however, he said, “It’s not an easy task on sand.” With over 200ha of spring crops, cover cropping is a key part of ensuring the soils are as good as he can get them with the limitations that he has. Toby added, “Destoning and potato planting is a fair amount of harassment for soil quality.” Toby is aiming to move towards min till as much as he is able to and is interested in looking at new technology and new products. His aim is to make the farming system as efficient economically and productively as possible, utilising the benefits of each crop in order to bring advantage to the next crop in the rotation. Toby said, “I need to ensure an efficient rotation, we are 1 in 10 on potatoes at the moment, which is good and that is keeping soil disease levels low on the farm.”

Toby is currently establishing a Countryside Stewardship Scheme with buffer strips, flower rich margins and pollen and nectar strips up the centre of fields connecting woodland areas.

Toby's RevYstory

Toby has been involved with Real Results from the outset and finds it a good way to trial new chemistry and new methods on his own farm. One of his biggest challenge is managing the timing of his input applications due to the demands of the root crops in the rotation. Unpredictable weather is also a big challenge. For him, having flexibility is critical.

Toby said, “Our T0/T1 can be put to the back seat if we are busy doing other spring cropping activity. Therefore, we need products that can have a slightly bigger window of application.”

For Toby, flexibility of application timing is not only why he believes in using Revystar® XE.

“I decided to use Revystar® XE on my seed crops last year, purely because they are higher value, they were later drilled and variable in growth stage, so I wanted to give the best protection. As a result, I’ve seen greener and cleaner seed crops.

Last year, Toby’s trial was a field of KWS Firefly that was previously in Oilseed rape. He used an application of Revystar® XE 1 litre/ha at T2. The T1 application was the same across all trials. The Revystar® XE treated area yielded 1.05t/ha benefit compared to the farm standard, 1.9t/ha more grain biomass and 46 more grains/m2.

“The main difference was the noticeable greening. The plots were a different shade of green between the treatments, but to the eye we couldn’t see a massive amount of disease, although we knew there was Septoria creeping up, especially after all the rain events we had during the season.”

“Revystar® XE has given me longer-lasting disease control at T2. It has performed brilliantly. We’ve seen consistently higher yields, thanks to its excellent protection against Septoria and broad-spectrum control of other diseases. Our yield is the heart of our business, and I think Revystar® XE protects yield more than any other fungicide.”

Looking ahead to this season he said: “Based on what I have seen, I will potentially use more Revystar® XE. I think we have to get used to using the newer chemistry and fitting it into our programme. The results we’ve seen, both statistically and visually, are showing we are getting more green leaf and disease control so why wouldn’t you use it?”