The head of Scottish Agronomy is calling for all crop inputs used within UK and Irish agriculture to be independently trialled.
“Many new products are brought to market here on the back of trial work that was carried out in other countries,” Adam Christie said.
“This does not guarantee that such claims will hold up under the growing conditions that prevail in this part of the world. This is why new crop inputs introduced here should be independently trialled in order to fully verify their potential.
“And making this happen requires the application of real and fully verified science,” he added.
Scottish Agronomy provides crop trialling and product assessment services for its farmer-shareholders, operating from 25 trial sites located across Scotland.
Currently, the Scottish government funds approximately 4% of the crop development and research work carried out in Scotland.
“The potential to increase the scope of this commitment is obvious. We need to cooperate on crop research to create a sustainable agricultural industry,” Christie said.
“As the sector undertakes some major changes to meet the challenges of net zero it is essential that this change is driven by science and not sentiment.
“And we need a call to arms to get the whole sector working together to gather this science and joined up thinking that allows us to tackle climate change as one.
“We are not big enough to tackle sustainability on our own, as an organisation or as individual growers; we need to learn from each other, see the mistakes as well as the successes, and most importantly to take science out of the lab and into the field to ensure it works in both,” he added.
Scottish Agronomy was set up in the 1980s by a group of farmers who wanted to run their own crop trials and share the findings to guide their variety choices and crop management on their own farms.
The co-op now has 250 members and over 25,000 trial plots in three key locations across Scotland as well as on some members’ farms, trialling varieties of wheat, rye, oilseeds, barley and triticale, chemistry, and, more recently, cover crops.
Meanwhile, Adam Christie is confirming that the vast majority of winter crops drilled in Scotland last back-end are looking well at the present time.
Establishment rates have been excellent with tiller numbers in cereal crops equally promising.
“The priority for growers now is to get first nitrogen applications on these crops. Thereafter, the planting of spring crops will become a priority for growers,” Christie said.
Significantly, Christie, sees the potential for an increase in the area of spring legumes grown in Scotland, namely, peas and beans.
“There is the prospect of a protein payment coming on stream from the Scottish government,” Christie said.
“And with this in mind, Scottish Agronomy is committed to a new project, which will seek to identify how the income generated from spring bean and pea crops can be maximised on behalf of arable farmers in Scotland,” he added.
