Sometimes in life you have to stop being concerned with keeping up with the Joneses.

Rightly or wrongly, we’ve taken a certain approach to the use of artificial fertiliser on this farm over the last few years.

Soil sampling every two years, combined with better utilisation of slurry and clover, has resulted in €81/ha being knocked off the fertiliser bill since 2011. In the same period of time, the stocking rate has increased from 1.92LU/ha to 2.16LU/ha.

I could have made it sound more dramatic if I used the 2013 fertiliser bill, which was €130 higher than that used in 2017. A total of 70 units/acre of artificial nitrogen were spread last year. Because of slurry use, it was 11 April before urea was spread in 2017.

In 2016, it was 9 March and, this year, it will most likely be sometime in between those two dates. That’s all weather-dependent of course.

The figures showed a jump in spending and little return on fertiliser the previous year, so he did something proactive

Fertiliser used to be put out as soon as weather allowed after the closed season came to an end.

There are a number of reasons for the change. The initial one was due to my absence.

To give credit where it’s due, it was dad who decided to approach fertiliser a bit differently. In spring 2014, I was travelling as part of my Nuffield Ireland farming scholarship. Dad played the conditions at the time, rather than the prescribed advice.

Grazing went a small bit later and slurry was used where possible. The figures showed a jump in spending and little return on fertiliser the previous year, so he did something proactive. When I got home, we agreed to keep trying to reduce the amount of artificial fertiliser needed.

The second driver of the change were the people I encountered while I was travelling. Most were farming in far more challenging environments than me. They needed value for money for their inputs. Technology allowed dry land cereal farmers to apply variable-rate fertiliser. They also used nutrients to maintenance levels for the growing season.

I came home with more questions than answers.

This year saw soil sampling take place a little bit later than usual. Unfortunately my initial samples taken in December got lost in transit, so I had to redo them.

Slurry had been put out on some of these so this was noted when comparing the samples with the 2015 results.

Salt and sand exposure

The home block is showing its salt and sand exposure. The samples taken there returned an average pH of 7.5. There were small changes in both directions for the P and K indices, but nothing of any great concern.

Artificial potassium will continue to only be spread for maintenance levels on fields that might have two cuts of silage.

If the price of fertiliser continues to increase, then it may be worth thinking a little bit differently.

The inclusion of Ken Gill, an organic farmer, in the current beef BETTER farm programme is interesting. He was in the top 10 of 27 farms involved for the amount of grass dry matter grown.

Calving has started, with the heifers leading the way. With the exception of one animal, they should have all calved before the cows.

This is beneficial in a few ways. They can access to grass first and I have more time for them if more attention is needed.

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Farmer Writes: preparing for the beast, calving and grazing