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Voices from the Fields

Glyphosate and regenerative farming – Farmer David Lord shares his views

England
United Kingdom
Glyphosate
Integrated Pest Management
Low-input farming
pesticide reduction
soil health

David Lord farms with his family on the North East Essex coast, managing 750 hectares of predominantly heavy London clay soils. His farm participates in Mid Tier Countryside Stewardship and the Sustainable Farming Incentive, with some land bordering an SSSI salt marsh owned by Essex Wildlife Trust. This unique setting attracts diverse birdlife and supports a range of habitats. With confirmed cases of glyphosate resistance emerging in the UK, he shares his experience of the role glyphosate has played on his farm.

"I use glyphosate on my farm. But a lot less than I used to. 

The inevitable bombshell of confirmed glyphosate resistance hit the press recently. It should be a shot across the bows for all arable farmers. It was found in Italian ryegrass, a grassweed that most arable farmers do not have the pleasure of dealing with, yet… Our more common grassweed enemy is blackgrass, which is a less likely candidate for resistance for various reasons. 

The conventional advice to combat glyphosate resistance is to maintain robust dose rates, apply in good growing conditions at the right growth stage of the target weeds, and pay close attention to pH buffering of the water. This, whilst being good scientific advice on how to use glyphosate responsibly, misses the point by a long way: we should be talking about how to reduce our need for using it in the first place. But not for the usual Monsanto/Bayer-hating reasons many would expect at this point. Independent scientific studies have concluded that glyphosate is one of the safest herbicides ever made - when used appropriately. My reasons for trying to use less of it are slightly more nuanced. 

As I move along my own farming journey towards a more regenerative, nature-friendly farming system, glyphosate is a key tool in helping me get to my goals quicker than if I was to limit myself to an organic system.

I want to have living roots in my soil as often and for as long as possible. Living roots promote the right biological conditions for crops to be healthy, both in terms of nutrition and disease resilience.  Understanding the science of soil biology is a relatively new learning experience for many farmers. I did a degree in agriculture in the late 1990s and it barely featured; subjects like estate management, accounting, economics and how many pints can you down in seven minutes took preference. We did study soil science, but it mainly focused on soil texture and chemistry.

After harvesting our cereal crops here on our farm, we try to establish diverse mixtures of plants (cover crops) as soon as we can to keep the soil alive and functioning before the next crop is sown. This may be only six to eight weeks, or it might be for up to six months if the next crop is not to be planted until the spring. These cover crops are multi-functional, capturing sunlight and turning it into stable carbon in the soil, improving water and air infiltration, solubilising inaccessible nutrients like phosphate, and mopping up excess nitrate left from the previous crop. And of course, providing a fabulous habitat for birds, insects, worms and all the bacteria, protozoa, and fungi a healthy functioning soil should have. 

But practical consideration has to be given as to how to destroy them so they don’t negatively affect the following crop. The easiest and most cost-effective way is to use glyphosate, as this leaves the soil structure intact and allows the next crop to be directly sown, which has the added advantage of reducing the weed burden in that crop, as there is limited soil disturbance, so less weed germination. The only negative of using glyphosate this way is that the living roots are killed, thus stalling the biological processes I so crave. Is there another way?

We have tried rolling or crimping the cover crop, particularly on a frost over winter, which does a marvellous job of killing the broad-leaved plants but leaves the grassweeds untouched, still requiring control with glyphosate.

There is the nuclear option of ploughing, which, whilst it has its place, is not the answer I want due to its destructive effect on the biology we want to promote. It’s also expensive… and I’m really bad at it. Other light cultivations are an option, but grassweeds will regrow and soil structure will become compromised.

With support from Wildfarmed, we have been experimenting with the use of living mulches. We planted a spring wheat blend for them last year, and once the wheat had been established, we cut in some clover varieties with a prostrate and slow growth habit. The idea is that with total ground cover, it will provide the benefits of a cover crop through the winter which I can graze (win-win) and of a companion crop through the growing season, protecting the soil from heavy rain and hot sun as well as providing some nitrogen. Turns out it’s really hard to achieve a good stand of clover in droughty conditions, so we are trying again this year having planted some of the clover in the autumn instead. 

But if this works, will it get me away from needing glyphosate? Maybe in the long term, as the number of grassweeds germinating reduces. Clover is quite tolerant of glyphosate and so the occasional dose to kill some blackgrass won’t be too detrimental. The longer-term worry would be thistles and couch grass, at which point a hefty dose and some cultivation will be needed, and then the process will start again. 

With our recent regenerative methods, whilst we still use glyphosate, we use half as much as we used to and half as often.

It’s important to get some perspective though. Twelve years ago under our conventional farming system, we would cultivate land straight after harvest and try to create stale seedbeds to get grassweeds to grow so we could kill multiple flushes with glyphosate before drilling (at which point a whole load more would grow and then we would need lots of residual herbicides to control them). The crop would grow in soil compromised of life from the lack of living roots, and would be more needy as a result, and grassweeds would flourish. We also used to grow a winter-based rotation of only three crops, with limited options for controlling grassweeds. 

What we have found with our recent regenerative methods is whilst we still use glyphosate, we use half as much as we used to and half as often. The team behind Groundswell Agriculture talk of the five regenerative principles of not disturbing the soil, keeping the soil surface covered, maintaining living roots, growing a diverse range of crops and having grazing livestock in the system. We now have nine different crops, which also helps to break up the grassweed cycle, further reducing our need to use glyphosate as often and not putting us in danger of driving resistance to it. We have a lower input system that is more profitable and has easy linkage to the Sustainable Farming Incentive, so we can stack public money for the public goods we provide. And we have so much more wildlife on the farm. 

As I move along my own farming journey towards a more regenerative, nature-friendly farming system, glyphosate is a key tool in helping me get to my goals quicker than if I was to limit myself to an organic system. I know some incredible organic farmers from whom I have learned an awful lot. If organic farming is financially rewarding, I take my hat off to anyone who succeeds in doing it. But I like an easier life with less risk and drama.