Harvesting your crop, everything you need to know. The who, what, when, and how of harvesting. Of course, there is a theoretical optimum time to harvest your crop, but our maritime climate often puts a spanner in the works. This webinar will provide some insight into getting the best from your plantation – maximising yield, reducing cost, optimising your storage protocol, reducing impact on the soil and your surroundings. Also, there will be an opportunity to ask the experts for their tips and Plan Bs for when the weather throws you a curve ball.
Speakers:
Jamie Rickerby: Willow Energy
Jamie Rickerby
Jamie has always been interested in farm machinery – with his 140-year-old family business being the main Claas dealer in the north west. For the last 10 years Jamie has run Willow Energy and accumulated an enormous amount of experience as a planting and harvesting contractor of Short Rotation Coppice (SRC) willow. In this time the company has planted 779 hectares and harvested 5,500 hectares of SRC with a total biomass output of 225,000 tonnes.
SRC contracting is not an easy occupation. Most of the machinery was not designed for the UK’s maritime climate and Jamie has accumulated a wealth of knowledge on what works and what doesn’t. Jamie is currently leading the BEIS funded Net Zero Willow project, which aims to construct, test and develop to full commercial deployment three innovations that will enable the rapid scaling up of the UK biomass supply chain. The proposed machines will facilitate the efficient multiplication, planting and harvesting of SRC willow crops through include increased automation, reduced handling and lighter machinery that result in a lower environmental footprint.
Willow Energy works in partnership with the Iggesund paperboard mill for whom they provide contract planting, maintenance and harvesting services. In the last five years WE has begun multiplying SRC willow varieties on license with Rothamsted Research.
Jamie is passionate about agriculture and the countryside. With advancements in technology, there is a huge potential to make British agriculture more efficient and sustainable for future generations. With the advent of artificial intelligence technologies, farmers will be able to tend to individual plants rather than fields of crop. The ability to tend individual plants will increase productivity per hectare and free up land to be used for biodiversity and energy production through parental energy crops. Jamie is excited to have been funded through the BEIS Biomass feedstock innovation program to develop artificial intelligence technology which will help scale up the production planting and harvesting of SRC willow throughout the UK and beyond.
Tim Russon: P Russon & Sons Agricultural Contractors (TBC)
Tim Prusson
In 1986, Tim attended Riseholme College in Lincoln, leaving in 1989, to return to the family dairy farm in Burton, Lincoln. It was at this point Tim decided to adopt a different career path. His father had already started taking on agricultural contracting work, which enabled Tim to do likewise.
Today the company’s main business is in providing a contracting service to farmers and landowners throughout Lincolnshire and the surrounding counties. Although a wide range of services are now offered, including muckspreading, drilling, combining, baling and spraying, the main focus remains a complete forage operation, from sowing to clamping. This is rapidly expanding with the advent of anaerobic digestion plants in the region.
He has been harvesting miscanthus since 2006, where he started off with one customer, covering approx. 100 acres, around Lincoln. He now harvests approx. 4,000 acres each year, stretching from Suffolk to Yorkshire, along the east side of the country. His choice of machines are two modified Claas Jaguar forage harvesters, which he already uses in other areas of the business, throughout the remainder of the year.
With modern day farming it’s really important to have your finger on the pulse and get all the latest information so you can make the right decision for your land. In this webinar our expert panel will demonstrate how to get the best out of the Envirocrops and Farm Carbon Toolkit web apps to help you understand the highest yielding crop options, the income potential, the markets that are in your area, the suppliers you’ll need, the carbon savings and more.
Speakers:
Róisín Alvy: Calvium
Róisín is a commercially astute, data-driven digital product specialist, with experience driving and delivering change for client, end user, and internal success. Her areas of experience include: Agri-Tech, UK Government, Aerospace, Museum & Heritage, Asset management.
Lizzy Parker: Farm Carbon Toolkit
Lizzy oversees the updates to our farm carbon calculator. Lizzy previously worked analysing large data sets from biochemical analysis of crop plants and led on projects supporting research software development at the University of Sheffield. Having also worked in the charity sector helping constituents communicate climate change issues with their local and national decision-makers, Lizzy is interested in overcoming barriers to the adoption of more sustainable practices. Her training as a soil biologist has led to a passion for the need to protect and safeguard the potential of our agricultural soils.
Lizzy grew up on the border of Somerset and Devon in a rural farming community. She is now based in Sheffield where she recently completed her PhD researching the effects of mycorrhizal fungi on barley during drought. She has a masters degree in Plant and Microbial Biology (MRes) and a degree in Biology with a Modern Language (BSc Hons). In her spare time, Lizzy volunteers with Foodworks, a Sheffield-based charity who repurpose surplus food and also grow their own within the city using regenerative principles.
When you are managing a perennial biomass crop with a 20 year+ lifetime, it is unlikely that it will all be plain sailing. There’s a lot that can go wrong: Weeds, rabbits, deer, pests, diseases, gappy crops, floods, droughts, changes in legislation, schemes and markets are all possible things that growers will have to face at one point or another. This webinar provides some possible options to meet these challenges and get the most out of your crop. Any grower who’s got a problem should tune in to hear our expert panel of “agony aunts”.
This webinar focuses mainly on Short Rotation Coppice willow and Miscanthus crops but many of the issues addressed will be familiar to any perennial biomass crop. Our very knowledgeable panel (Will Macalpine of Rothamsted Research and Chris Ashman of Aberystwyth University) have dealt with most of these issues over the years so have first-hand experience of how to find a solution whenever reality throws a curveball.
Our Speakers were William Macalpine, plant breeder at Rothamsted Research and Chris Ashman, Post-doctoral research associate at Aberystwyth University.
Speakers:
William Macalpine: Rothamsted Research
William is a willow breeder at Rothamsted Research. He has over 21 years’ experience in willow breeding, perennial energy crop agronomy and in making phenotypic and physiological measurements. He has performed over 700 crosses, carried out research to overcome crossing barriers, produced mapping populations and elite SRC willow varieties. He has planned, planted and managed around 100 perennial energy crop field trials. William has an in-depth knowledge of the UK National Willow Collection, a unique Salix germplasm resource, which is located at Rothamsted Research.
Chris Ashman: Aberystwyth University
Post-doctoral research associate at IBERS and Demonstrator Hub manager at the Biomass Connect Aberystwyth site.
Biomass Crops – some interesting alternatives: Poplar and Hemp
This webinar will provides the latest developments in two exciting land use options: Poplar and Hemp. The presentations give a quick-fire introduction with information on agronomy, variety choice, yields, cropping regimes, markets and the potential for carbon removal. There were plenty of burning (and non-burning) questions to our expert panellists.
Speakers:
Jamie Bartley: Unyte Group
Jamie Bartley is the CEO of the Unyte Group and also Co-Chairs the Cannabis Industry Council, working closely with the UK Government via the APPG for Industrial Hemp and CBD products. Having launched the group in 2019, with a diverse set of business units covering Hemp, Energy, Waste and Medicinal, the focus has always been the improvement of human and planetary health. Jamie’s passion is about impact at scale, as this is the only way we will achieve the net zero targets, therefore focussing on the decarbonisation of construction products and bio char as scalable solutions that Hemp can provide.
Pietro Alasia: AL.Wood
Pietro Alasia is a fourth-generation entrepreneur from Italy. After completing his studies in agribusiness at the Minoprio Foundation, he dedicated himself to the family business, AL.WOOD. Originally starting as a small local nursery, the company has since specialised in poplar cultivation, focusing on both traditional poplar plantations for plywood production and biomass plantations. AL.WOOD has now expanded its market, commercialising its varieties across Europe and beyond. Currently, the company is also engaged in research on new hybrids to enhance the genetic improvement of poplar species.
Webinar 8 contained a number of slides with detailed, complicated information on them and due to time constraints we had to skip over these relatively quickly. A number of people have asked to see them again so here is the entire Powerpoint presentation from Webinar #8: Managing fuel storage and drying to best practice quality standards.
You can also view the Webinar video complete with the slides and the audio here:
Managing fuel storage and drying to best practice quality standards.
Biomass crops produce high yields in a short period of time. However, depending on the crop type and the end use there will be a myriad of ways to store and dry your material. You have to consider storage space, logistics and economics and the end use specification. This webinar provides information on the different options and how you can make sure you are producing the best quality biomass for your chosen market. It also flags up important aspects of health and safety and legal obligations. The webinar also includes case studies from two farmers who are using biomass crops in their boilers and will pass on their experience.
Our Speakers are Will Richardson, Director of RDI Associates, Johnathan Andrew, a farmer from North Devon and David Christopher of Langaller Farm in Somerset.
Biomass crops and their surrounds are brimming with life – birds, bees, butterflies and predatory arthropods all live in, or on the edge and in the surrounds of these plantations.
This webinar provides information on emerging research into understanding how to marry up yield productivity from these crops whilst incorporating simple measures (such as buffer strips and flower-rich grass margins) that increase the edge effect, promote pollinators and maximise biodiversity net gain. There will be some information on recent Sustainable Farming Initiative (SFI) payment measures and what this means to growers of different biomass crops.
Our Speakers are Dr. Rebecca Rowe, a terrestrial ecologist from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (UKCEH) and Ed Drewitt, a freelance naturalist.
Rebecca covers topics such as the trends in biodiversity in UK farmland, how biomass crops might help and which crops are the best from a biodiversity point of view. She’ll also cover current research projects and the grants available to biomass crop growers for biodiversity enhancement.
Ed takes a look at biomass plantations from the perspective of a naturalist, investigating how birds and other animals use them, how such plantations could be designed to increase biodiversity and how biomass plantations could contribute to protecting endangered species.
Some biomass crops are more well known than others, but it’s not all about Willow and Miscanthus as they can’t possibly be the best crop for all situations. There are many others to choose from and this webinar will delve into just two of the alternatives, Black Locust and Energy Canes.
Márton Németh (Silvanus Forestry) will talk about Black Locust, a medium-sized tree native to the southern United States that is one of the most commonly planted commercial hardwood trees. It is fast growing producing large amounts of biomass which can be easily coppiced. Biomass Connect are growing varieties of Black Locust at all of our Hub Site trials. The tree produces high-density wood which can be harvested and produced into pellets with high energy content. Black Locust also has many other uses and benefits that will be discussed.
Paul Carver (New Energy Farms) will give a presentation about Energy Canes.
With Kevin Lindegaard (Crops4Energy) steering the discussions, the webinar is an interesting and lively foray into these alternative biomass crops.
Fast-growing biomass crops can play a part as a toolkit measure in water quality protection from diffuse agricultural pollution as well as managing point source discharges such as those from rural waste water treatment works, agri-food processing, septic tanks and even leachates from landfill sites. More recently these crops are finding a role for waste water management in contained Zero Discharge systems for individual houses and hamlets in parts of the country where such containment is deemed necessary. Furthermore, biomass crops can play a role in flood mitigation (stemming the flow of water and stopping large objects floating downstream and blocking culverts). This potentially allows these crops to enable people more time to prepare for a flood event and leads to a reduction in the economic impact and threat to life. This webinar explores the opportunities and the obstacles to harnessing this potential.
Multifunctional Landscapes slides from the talk by Professor Yit Arn Teh presented at the Biomass Crops and Diversification event at Cockle Park Farm, Newcastle University.