BOKASHI…in the press again

Achieving the twin goals of improving efficiency while simultaneously reducing costs might seen difficult to achieve, but…

But Northumberland farmers Guy Douglas and Peter Brewis are investigating ways they hope will achieve that.
The pair farm a few miles from each other in Northumberland, and share machinery, co-ordinate cropping plans and co-operate on new ideas.
And Guy thinks a combination of two novel approaches to crop nutrition can help achieve their ambitions.

MINIMISE LOSSES

The first is that they are producing and using bokashi together, this being a Japanese technique that ensiles the manure, minimising the loss of nutritive value.
And Guy is also moving from granular fertiliser to foliar applied products to ensure the nutrition gets straight to the plant.
They have been producing bokashi for several years now, with Guy crediting it with helping him cut fertiliser applications by 25%.
Over time he expects it to improve soil organic matter and microbial activity levels, boosting soil health and aiding overall performance.
He farms near Seahouses in Northumberland on sandy/silty loam soils, while Peter farms slightly further North near Budle Bay.
Both farm within the Northumberland Coast National Landscape, and very conscious of the responsibilities that entails.
Both farms rotations include arable crops, beef and sheep.

Cut inputs

Their long-term aim is to cut input use and restore natural processes by adopting regenerative techniques like direct drilling or non-inversion tillage, as well as adaptive grazing of their herbal leys and cover crops. Their arable rotation includes winter wheat and winter barley, the former grown for the biscuit market and the latter as livestock feed, as well as spring barley for malting. They also grow feed crops of arable silage. spring beans and lucerne, as well as grass and herbal leys. Guy believes feeding animals a range of forages helps maintain healthier rumens and aids their performance. Both he and Peter finish their animals without any bought in feed and work closely with buyers to understand what the market is looking for.

MANURE CHALLENGES

He returned to the family farm some seven years ago and knew he faced an instant challenge from the imminent introduction of the Farm Rules for Water: *We were not handling manure well, nor harnessing the nutrients it contains. I felt that was counter-productive and risked running into problems with the new rules, and that we had to do it differently". While considering that issue he came across the Japanese technique of bokashi. This involves inoculating manure with a product that combines selected types of microorganisms including bacteria, yeast and fungi. Through fermentation, these help break down straw and also have some nitrogen fixing value.

HOME BREW

They use a starter supplied by Agriton to brew their own Actiferm, preferring to use unchlorinated water from their own spring and adding an extra carbon source like molasses. The fact that bokashi suffers much less nutrient loss than conventional manure or compost is helping reduce the farms' reliance on bought-in inputs: "We want to run as much of a "closed loop" system as we possibly can, and reduce applications of artificial fertilizer so we do not inhibit the natural soil life. "If we apply bagged N we should consider what we are doing to that biological activity in the soil, which is key. "We have to consider more than just how much green mass we can generate by adding that nitrogen".

FARMING WITH NATURE

"We aim to farm with nature as much as we can, and bokashi is a very good way of recycling nutrients and enhancing the soil. "All the straw we use to bed down animals is our own, and we return it to the land as a really good fertiliser". "There is much talk of composting nowadays. We are using bokashi to compost anaerobically using fermentation, just like silage. "We compost to make great 'food for the soil' rather than trying to make a soil equivalent". The bokashi solution is sprayed onto the animals' bedding using a watering can just before spreading fresh straw. The cattle then trample it into the bedding, where the fermentation process breaks down the lignin and cellulose in the straw very quickly. He mucks out the sheds once every eight weeks and the material can be ready for use almost immediately.

SPREADING CHANGE

It is now spread using a spinning disc mounted on the back of the muck spreader, working to 24 metre width, with applications of up to five tonnes/hectare for cereals in the spring if ground conditions allow, and 20t/ha on grassland. When applying to grassland he has moved recently to spreading into a thick sward so there is a warm and damp microclimate at the soil surface to helps the bugs in the bokashi kickstart the process of breaking down the manure. The partners continue to experiment with new approaches to producing and using the product, which includes running two wormeries to enhance the farm's existing populations. Once spread on the land, Guy says worms - especially the acecic ones that dig deep burrows - play an essential role in drawing the material into the soil where microbes can access it. "We can spread our bokashi treated manure on autumn-sown crops in March/April as they start to grow actively in the spring, when ground conditions allow, or on the seedbed ahead of spring grown crops.

ACTIVE MATERIAL

"It is a game changer biologically, because of instead of spreading granular nitrogen we are spreading a really active material on the growing crop. "It's a far better way of using manure than just piling it in the corner of the field and letting it putrefy". This spring was different, he says: "We waited for better, warmer weather and applied it to grassland with a decent sward length to encourage rapid breakdown in a damp, warm micro-climate".

Storage Practice

The text book on making bokashi advocates covering or sealing any stored material - something that Guy cannot do because he has neither dedicated covered storage for fym or a spare silage clamp.
And his attempts to sheet it over were thwarted by winter winds off the sea.
He would love to cover the heaps, but has to leave them un-covered, while ensuring they are packed tightly and neatly to minimise the surface area, so most of the material is still kept in appropriate conditions:
"If you store the bokashi correctly it develops a sweet smell. The pickling bugs produce an acid and before long the heap doesn't look like dung.
"The process breaks down the cellulose and lignin in the straw. Physically it feels soft and squidgy; it has some real body to it. The bugs seem to give it some structure".