French natural farmers proceed to ‘break new floor’

A dedication to the best requirements of precision administration is a trademark of France’s natural farmers to their manufacturing practices.

And this precept extends nicely past weed management; it additionally contains the optimum use of land on which to develop crops.

A latest, Lemken-hosted go to to France by a gaggle of Irish cereal and potato growers included a stop-off on the farm of the Rousselat household.

The daddy and son staff, Jean Cristoph and Arnaud, develop a mixture of wheat, sugar beet, sunflowers, soya and alfalfa near the village on Neully within the Yonne area.

They’re dedicated to natural manufacturing practices. Nonetheless, they recognise the necessity to trial and introduce new crop administration practices, to be able to preserve the sustainability of their enterprise.

French natural farmers

The land they’re working options soils with very excessive clay contents. Limestone comes very near the floor throughout the entire farm.

Soil pH values are very excessive, within the area of 8.4. As a consequence, soil accessible phosphate ranges are very low.

Efficient crop rotation is on the very coronary heart of the Rousselat enterprise mannequin.

From a crop administration perspective, efficient mechanical weed management is critically vital.

For essentially the most half that is achieved utilizing a precision hoeing system, manufactured by Steketee.

Making this work in a cereal setting requires crop row width to be prolonged to 25cm.

Nonetheless, this diploma of spacing permits for alfalafa and soya to be planted out between the rows of wheat throughout the months of April and Might.

To make this occur, Jean Cristoph and Arnaud have particularly hooked up a seed drill to the Steketee hoe. This then delivers a mixture of weed management and the institution of the extra crop on the similar time.

Water availability

Water availability for crops is a continuing problem for farmers within the Yonne area of japanese France.

Within the case of Jean Cristoph and Arnaud Rousselat, they’re at present trialling the usage of energetic charcoal pellets as a means of retaining moisture all through the rising season.

They’re additionally allowed to make use of poultry litter pellets as a fertiliser supply. These are sourced from Belgium and the Netherlands.

One other function of the Rousselats’ strategy to crop manufacturing is their use of microorganism-based spray options to stimulate each crop development and improve inherent ranges of illness resistance.

This yr has seen Jean Cristoph and Arnaud Rousselat attaining natural wheat yields of 3t/ha.

Their soya crops got here in at 0.4t/ha. These figures are nicely down on projected ranges, because of the intense drought situations that gripped their area for many of the 2022 rising season.