Using precision technology to enhance farming efficiency

David Fuller has been farming in the Scottish borders region since 2008 as the farm manager of McGregor Farms.

The farm has expanded since then and now totals 3,906ha, all within a 12-mile radius.

The core family business comprises 250ha with the remainder contract farmed in conjunction with 16 landowners, ranging from absentee landowners to retired farmers with no successors and farmers with other enterprises, which they manage themselves such as potatoes.

David aims to “farm every acre the same as our own farm”.

Along with David and an assistant farm manager, there are five full-time staff and a work placement student from Harper Adams each year.

On top of this, Colin McGregor is the head of the business, and his wife Jill is in charge of the finances and budgets.

The contract farming agreements allow the landowners to remain as active farmers. They remain in full control of the farm, with McGregor Farms basically acting as contractors.

The risks and rewards are shared between the two parties, and this is done throughout the year rather than at the end of the year.

In previous years, the Basic Payment Scheme area payments stayed with the landowner. However, these payments are now reducing. Therefore, David is investigating to see how his farm can take full advantage of the new Sustainable Farming Incentive for themselves and their landowners.

He explained that it is currently a “blurry subject” and he will have to distinguish between payments for farming practices such as cover crops, and payments for land use changes, such as fallow payments or wild bird cover when dealing with landowners.

David’s location can also cause issues with regulations. “One-third of our ground is in England, two-thirds is in Scotland, which brings its own problems from the perspective of meeting requirements from the government with different rules in England to what we do in Scotland.”

However, for the new UK inheritance tax, it will be the same on both sides of the border.

David explained that it would affect a lot of farms. He also added that there are other taxes potentially being put in place, including a £50/t nitrogen tax which would cost his farm £32,000 per year, and a tax on pick-ups.

Inputs are purchased through a buying group co-operative set up for McGregor Farms and their clients. This handles around £3 million in purchases each year.

This level of investment gives the farm the buying power to negotiate deals and buy products in bulk.

While the farm has significant amounts of grain and potato storage of its own, they also use grain stores on many of their landowner’s farms. Their own farm has 150kW of solar panels on the shed roofs.

David added that the secret to making solar a success is having a use for it. 80% of what is produced is used for cold storage for the potatoes, totalling about a third of the farm’s annual electricity usage, stabilising electricity use and ensuring a quick payback on the initial investment.

Crop management

Winter wheat is the main crop on the farm. “Wheat is our most profitable crop, our most reliable crop, and you can drill it early in the autumn. We aim to fit our rotation around wheat.”

The five-year average yield of winter wheat is 10.1t/ha (4.01t/ac), while it stands at 9.08t/ha (3.7t/ac) for winter barley, and 4.72t/ha (1.9t/ac) for oilseed rape.

The farm is part of a vining pea group that supplies peas for the frozen vegetable market. The peas and potatoes are grown on a one in eight-year crop rotation, while the oilseed rape is on a one in four-year rotation.

David noted that his area is quite lucky as it does not seem to get as many issues with cabbage stem flea beetle as many other areas of the UK do. However, he has seen more significant damage in the past couple of years so he will be keeping a close eye on this in the coming years.

In terms of establishment, the majority is deep non-inversion tillage. For winter wheat, a Simba SL is used to create a stable seedbed after harvest.

Glyphosate is applied ten days before secondary cultivation with a Horsch Joker or Simba Cultipress. Drilling is done by a Horsch Pronto and a Cambridge roller follows this when possible.

David tries to get 100ha per day drilled with that machine. David tends to plough for winter barley as he finds that “it creates a better start for the barley and buries any wheat volunteers as barley follows wheat.” Ploughed ground is drilled with a Lemken one-pass system.

The spring cereals are also established via ploughing. David finds this more reliable; it warms and dries out the soil more quickly, allowing him on to land earlier in the spring.

Oilseed rape is planted by the Simba SL. The machine has a set of discs followed by tines that are working at a depth of 250mm. Liquid fertiliser is dribbled behind the legs and the seed is then planted in 450mm bands behind the legs.

David noted that this system was revolutionised when a flexible Aqueel roller was fitted to the back of the Simba. This improved seed-to-soil contact, especially when dry. A pre-emergence herbicide is applied within 48 hours of planting.

David finds that pre-emergence herbicides provide better control on his farm.

Fortunately, blackgrass is not an issue but he does have sterile brome in some fields. Rat’s tail fescue and resistant ryegrass have also been seen on the farm but rotational ploughing is keeping them in check.

In terms of crop protection, a four-fungicide programme is used on winter wheat. A biofungicide called Iodus is applied at T0, giving David security in case there is poor weather at the T1 timing.

A product with an azole fungicide, sometimes Inatreq, is used at T1 to protect against eyespot and septoria before a robust T2 spray of Miravis, with the active ingredient Adepidyn, is applied.

The total fungicide spend is about £130/ha, depending on the drilling date and the chosen variety. Adepidyn is not yet available in Ireland. There are 6m buffers in every field to protect watercourses. When spraying, David sprays the middle of the field first and the headlands last.

This prevents pesticides or liquid fertilisers from being brought out of the field on wheels. It can also help to prevent corrosion when applying fertiliser.

Four weather stations across the farmed area ensure that David is fully informed of the weather conditions in all areas, allowing him to see where he can spray, cut, or drill on a certain day if there have been showers in one area but not another.

On such a large farm, a good logistical set-up and operational planning is essential. A high level of efficiency helps the farm to run smoothly with a relatively low number of staff for this size of farm.

Individual farms have their own crop rotations, but the fields are blocked so that there is a large area of a crop in one area, improving efficiency.

A converted trailer with an auger ensures that seed drills are not idle for long, with the auger capable of filling up to 2t/min into the drill. David said that this allows the drill to plant an extra 10ha/day compared to traditional filling with a JCB.

Liquid fertiliser tanks are placed strategically around the different farms to ensure the sprayer does not have to drive too far to fill up, with a 15,000l bowser also present on the farm.

To keep track of inputs and finances, the farm uses Gatekeeper software. The John Deere Operations Centre software controls a lot of the day-to-day operations. It hosts boundaries and guidance tracks for every field, with John Deere Greenstar guidance accurate to <2.5cm.

It also allows staff to track every piece of machinery on the farm, which helps with the logistics of keeping seed drills and sprayers filled up and working, as well as tracking tractor diesel levels.

Data analysis is also important, and the software allows David to overlay yield maps with application maps and perform tramline trials on the farm with ease. The GPS guidance allows the farm to practice controlled traffic farming.

The guidance is on all tractors, combines, and sprayers, with auto shut-off on sprayers and seed drills. All machinery operates on a 12 or 36m width, including the combine but excluding the Simba SL which is 7m wide.

There is also a GPS receiver on the seed drills. This is connected to the tractor, and rather than the tractor following a guidance track, the seed drill does, ensuring that there are no misses or overlaps when working on the farm’s rolling hills.

David noted that it’s a “no-brainer” to have this guidance when working with such wide machinery, as it would be quite difficult to be accurate without it. It also ensures that there is no waste of seed, fertiliser, pesticides, or diesel.

While David tries to keep to this system as much as possible, he realises that machinery cannot be kept to these widths at all times.

For example, it is difficult to side-fill a trailer if the straw is not being chopped due to the huge swarth of straw produced by a 12m wide combine header.

Soil and crop nutrition

While the farm bales barley straw, 80% of wheaten straw is chopped. David does this for a number of reasons, including soil health, a strong straw market in his area, and to reduce the harvest workload.

Chopping straw also returns potassium and phosphorus to the soil. The remaining requirements of these nutrients are variably applied. The same is done for lime. The farm spreads about 1,500t/year of lime. With the variable application, the rate varies between 0 and 5t/ha, with an average of 0.75t/ha.

These variable rate application maps are made possible through SOYL one-hectare grid mapping, Omnia gamma radiation-based soil sensor mapping which measures soil nutrient supply and physical properties, and soil conductivity mapping which has allowed David to drill his crops with variable rate seeding.

Nitrogen is also applied variably through the use of N-sense technology on the farm’s sprayers. For example, in oilseed rape, the system will measure the biomass and “greenness” of the crop before instantly deciding on the nitrogen rate.

This will then average out at about 220kg N/ha when crops are poor and 170kg N/ha when the oilseed rape has a good amount of biomass. David is currently trialling this on his cereal crops too and hopes to roll it out across all crops.

David has embraced technology when spraying too. Pulse-width modulation spraying involves individual shut-off nozzles. The nozzles can pulse up to 100 times per second, meaning that different rates of products can be applied where needed.

Forward speed is not an issue with this system either, as the nozzles will pulse less when driving slowly, meaning that an accurate amount of product is always applied. When driving around a bend, the nozzles on the inside of the bend will pulse slower than the ones on the other side of the sprayer, ensuring that there is no overlapping or double spraying.

This is important for David, especially when applying liquid fertiliser.

It also has the ability to only spray certain parts of a field, perhaps weed-infested areas, but the application maps required for this are currently created manually. With so much expensive technology on the farm, security can be an issue.

David experienced three break-ins in 2023, with £100,000 worth of GPS equipment stolen.

This led McGregor Farms to invest in £37,000 worth of cameras, alarms, keypads, and stronger doors. All GPS equipment is now removed from machinery each night too.