Crops and Soils

Soil Health – A Route Towards Net Zero for the Scottish Livestock Industry

Farm Stock (Scotland) Limited (FSS) was awarded a KTIF grant on 10/11/2021. The grant covered a project entitled A Route Towards Net Zero for the Scottish Livestock Industry to be…

A collage of three photos depicting severe weather from climate change - drought as shown by cracked earth and struggling plants, flooding with deep water lying on a road behind a 'flood' warning sign and storminess as shown by a windblown tree with damaged trunk.

Getting the farm ‘climate ready’

Farmers and land managers are constantly making business decisions whilst having to factor in and account for various unknowns; fluctuating commodity prices, market trends, changing regulations and new schemes are…

2022 SAF Forms – are you going online?

The window for 2022 Single Application Forms (IACS) forms will open on the 15th March and close on Monday 16th May. In 2021 over 93% of forms were completed online.…

Disease Planning Starts Early

Planning out a disease management strategy in cereal crops needs to start earlier than usual this season. Programmes can be adjusted as the season goes on but setting out the basic framework makes it possible to work in a diversity of chemistry to minimise resistance risks and cover the main diseases and timings.

Integrated Pest Management – Top Tips from High Scoring Farms

The IPM planning tool for Scottish growers is starting to give useful insights about what high scoring farms do and where they get their information. Filing in an Integrated Pest Management plan is now standard practice on most arable farms and is a useful tool to explore what can be done on individual farms to increase IPM practices. IPM plans are also being picked up across mixed and grassland farms too. Almost 5000 arable plans have been completed to date for arable farms and nearly 300 for grassland plans – just launched at the end for 2021. Average scores for arable farms are 64.8% and for grassland farms 56.9%. This provides really positive evidence about what the farming industry is already doing to produce crops in integrated and sustainable ways.