Tom Allen-Stevens, Martin Lines, Ed Schofield - How IPM works for us: a farmer and agronomist’s perspective

Episode 16 – How IPM works for us: a farmer and agronomist’s perspective

In this episode of the Defra Farming Podcast, guest host Tom Allen-Stevens—an arable farmer in Oxfordshire and founder of the British On Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN)—is joined by Cambridgeshire farmer Martin Lines and agronomist Ed Schofield.

Martin and Ed share with Tom how they are applying integrated pest management (IPM) on-farm to reduce reliance on chemical inputs while maintaining productivity and supporting biodiversity. The conversation covers practical approaches to IPM planning, monitoring and evaluation, habitat management for beneficial insects, the role of resistant crop varieties, and the importance of effective collaboration between farmers and agronomists.

The episode also highlights the launch of the UK Pesticides National Action Plan 2025 and how farmers can get involved in research and innovation through initiatives like the ADOPT fund and IPM NET.

🔗 Useful links mentioned in this episode:

• UK Pesticides National Action Plan 2025
• IPM NET
• Defra Farming blog - ADOPT Fund: guidance now available for innovation funding
• Innovate UK – ADOPT: How it works
• British On Farm Innovation Network (BOFIN)
• ASSIST Project
• The Voluntary Initiative
• Processors and Growers Research Organisation (PGRO)

Transcript

Tom Allen-Stevens (Host)
Welcome to the Defra Farming Podcast, produced by the Defra Farming and Countryside team. I'm Tom Allen-Stevens and I'm delighted to come on today as guest host. 

So just a little bit about me. I'm an arable farmer in Oxfordshire. I also lead the British On Farm Innovation Network [BOFIN bofin.org.uk], which represents farmers who do their own on-farm trials. We've got about 500 farmer members and we aim to get a more scientific approach.

A lot of the work that we're doing at the moment, especially with our Defra-funded projects, is around the area of our special topic today, which is integrated pest management or IPM. So it's a key approach to sustainable farming, but for many it can feel like a very big change.

So to help us explore this, we have 2 fantastic guests with us today who are very experienced in integrated pest management, so a farmer and an agronomist, to share their experiences and advice. 

01:00

Joining me is Martin Lines, a farmer who has been integrating IPM practices on his land, and Ed Schofield, an agronomist who supports farmers in making these changes.

Martin, Ed, welcome to the Defra Farming Podcast.

Martin Lines
Thank you.

Ed Schofield
Hello.

Tom
Martin, if we can start with you, would you like to just introduce yourself, say whereabouts you farm and your background?

Martin
Yeah, so [I’m] Martin Lines. We farm in Cambridgeshire, predominantly an arable farm, growing combinable crops. We've added some livestock into the system. We try and deliver environmental improvements and reduce our harm to our landscape, and really integrate integrated pest management into a whole-farm approach.

Tom
And Ed, would you like to introduce yourself?

Ed
Yeah, thanks Tom. Ed Schofield. I'm an agronomist for Frontier Agriculture. I've been working for the company for about 11 years, I’m from a family farm in North Bedfordshire, and I work mainly with combinables, over Bedfordshire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, it feels like everywhere-shire, and I get involved with all kinds of farm consultation, inputs, cultivations, everything to do with IPM. If it's on a farm, I do it. 

02:05

Tom
Fantastic. Well, we'll delve more into the detail of those aspects in a minute.

Now, what has been published, today, just as we're recording, on the 21st of March [2025], is Defra's National Action Plan for pesticides and that's available on the GOV.UK website [www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-pesticides-national-action-plan-2025]. It's a good read, actually, and it's worth looking at for anyone who is in this area at all, whether you're a farmer or an agronomist or an adviser within farming, and it sets out the government's action plan for pesticides.

There are 3 objectives that they've set within this National Action Plan, and the very first objective here is 'encourage uptake of integrated pest management'. 

The other thing that has happened recently is the government has come to the limit in how much funding it can give to the Sustainable Farming Incentive at the moment, but a reformed SFI scheme, with a budget to be confirmed in a spending review this summer, will direct funding to where there is greatest potential to do more on nature.

So potentially opportunities there in the future and I hope that what we're going to be covering in this podcast will give you food for thought.

03:13

I’d like to turn to you, Martin, first of all, and your understanding of what IPM is? What does it actually mean in practice to you?

Martin
Well, I think within the NAP, the objective 1 sets it out quite clearly, the stages: prevention, monitoring, thresholds, integration and control, managing resistance, and review and evaluation. That's the kind of approach I have taken is, we've recognised we've had some weed burdens, becoming resistant to some chemicals, so instead of looking for the next chemical, can I change my farming practice, delayed drilling, spring cropping?

And we've looked at all of the issues we may have on the farm, whether that's a weed issue, a pest issue, disease or soil, and how can we tackle those problems from usually a whole-farm or a nature-based approach. Can we improve our soil quality so the crops are less stressed, so they get less disease, or the weeds aren't growing as much? 

04:07

Are we growing the right varieties that have disease tolerance? And if we've got some pest problems, are we looking for the predators as well as the pest?

When we're out looking across the fields, not only looking for the slugs or the aphids, are we also then looking for the beetles that may eat that and trying to find that balance in our farm?

And for me it’s been quite a journey of not really focusing on IPM, but trying to improve our farming system and reducing costs. Good IPM should reduce a lot of the input costs because you're trying to change your practices, not needing that additional input.

And then a review at the end of each year, if we spent a lot on a fungicide or herbicide, what could I do next year to reduce those costs? And that might mean changing a variety or changing a cultivation or drilling at a different time, but work with my agronomist, and I think that's critical to have that relationship so that they are understanding what I'm trying to do and they can support those actions at the same time. 

05:04

Tom
It’s good that you point that out, Martin. Of course the agronomist is a really important part of the picture here, and if I can turn to you Ed, thinking about your clients and about those farmers perhaps who are starting out on their IPM journey, if you've got a problem a disease, a pest or whatever, the easiest thing is just to reach for the can, isn't it? So how do you start your clients on that journey of thinking, well, actually let's consider other things first?

Ed
The key is communication with it. I think a lot of people don't realise they're doing IPM every day. Every conversation we have, everything we do on farm is IPM. To try and, like you say, the can is the last solution. We found the same with Martin. We've had certain problems later in the season, we've had to backstep, the process starts before you even drill the crop. You work right back and start from the very beginning and integrate all these solutions together. So I think key communication with your agronomist about what you're planning to do. I spend most of my life telling people solutions to problems that could have been avoided 3 months ago. 

05:58

So yeah, it's just building that whole system up and yeah, rotation, looking at the bigger picture rather than just waiting for a spray rack to turn up and fix it like magic. The whole-farm approach is part of IPM. 

Tom
I suppose one of the areas to start when it comes to integrated pest management is with an IPM plan. Martin, just talk me through what it is and what it tells you.

Martin
Yeah, so it's about setting, well, for me, it's about setting out what our problems are and what are we doing going forward? So we look at every field. Is there a weed issue, an issue that we need to tackle? So we'll start the conversation with the agronomist even before we've done the plan to say, how are we going to tackle that? We know we've got a weed issue there. We've had 2 wheats there, what else can we grow in that rotation? 

And then it's structuring it out to say, right, so we know we're going to put some cover crops in there. We've got to then be mindful of that and what that may do. So then we're going to put a crop of wheat in there. Which variety are we going to grow? What disease tolerance has it got? What's the drilling date?

Have we got some weed issues? Should we delay it? And then, will it need a pre-em [pre-emergence] herbicide? Will it need some post-management? Has that field got wild oats that may pop up in the spring? So it's looking at the whole approach.

07:07

So then we've decided your rotation. Do you need to do any seed treatments? You've got your rotation. And then it's the continued adaptation of a plan that you set out at the beginning of a season to continue that conversation every time you walk the fields. We talked about this, this is happening. We hoped this wouldn't need to be done, but we've got a problem. Can we record it? 

The critical part is at the end of the season, have that dialogue again, we have planned to minimise herbicide, but we realised we had a weed. What are we going to do to not spend the cost of the chemical next year? Can we change the rotation? Can we change the cultivation? So then we have that relationship with our agronomist. I want to minimise the amount of cheques I write for chemicals, but pay for the time and the advice and the support. 

07:51

Ed's eyes, walking across the fields, are as important as my eyes and we see things differently. So it's about coming together, recording it, remembering it, and improving it, recognising some years it doesn't work brilliantly, so we go backwards, but there's that continued improvement of a whole approach, of a whole farm system of cover crops, soil management, varieties, drilling dates, but keeping Ed, my agronomist, informed because I see some farmers where they've done all the drilling work, then they tell the agronomist what they've got.

That's not a relationship that's going to work because you're on the back foot. Working with your agronomist, you're on the front foot, sharing the load, and sharing responsibilities of trying to get the right outcomes towards your plan. It’s an agronomist who wants to help you reduce your inputs and save you money, but grow you the best quality produce you can and help you drive your business forward. Proper integrated pest management looks at the problems and finds solutions. 

Tom
Ed, Martin was saying there, it's a plan that I own, but my agronomist is an incredibly important part of that. What are your feelings when it comes to the IPM plan?

Ed
My job is to keep the plan on track and adapt to change within that plan. I keep records of where we have weed problems because sometimes the farming calendar merges into one big blur and my job is to remember where those problems are. 

09:12

Nothing beats a good old scouting app or a scribble down map of where these problems are and try and keep that approach going well. It's good to talk all the way through. There’s nothing worse than being told a field's been drilled, and you get there and it’s already up, because you're already on the back foot and we've missed some serious steps of IPM there. 

Communication is key between both of us to get the best out of it and implement IPM the best way, whether that's herbicides, diseases, weeds. The whole approach needs both of us to work together. 

Tom
Absolutely. One of the interesting aspects of this is knowing what results you're going to get, and, just to give you an example, if you look at slugs, there's only one way you can tackle slugs and that's with pellets. 

09:46

As farmers, we go out and we routinely apply pellets everywhere. I would suggest that there aren't many of us who are doing proper monitoring of their slug numbers and then applying the pellets as a result. Although, equally, I would suggest that if you are doing proper monitoring, you're probably going to do the same action anyway, broadcast pellets over a lot of your field. 

Now, the reason I mention this is because we've got a project on at the moment where we’re trying to do precision application of slug pellets. So we're getting farmers to monitor 100 slug traps in a hectare grid on their land. One of the things that's come out of that is, at the same time as monitoring the slugs, they've noticed just how many beetles there are in the field. So we're wondering just what contribution beetles make to the picture.

You know, to a certain extent, if you apply pellets, then you're going to get a certain level of control from those pellets, but we don't really know what level of control of the slugs we're getting from the beetles. So Martin, how do you balance that knowledge, if you like? When is it okay to rely on the beneficials? When is it actually better to reach for the chemical solution?

Martin
We try to build a landscape for the beneficials, for the predators, and at home we do use some slug pellets but not a lot compared with some other farms we manage or other sites because we're concentrating, making sure there's homes and habitat for those beetles actually within a distance that they can travel across the field.

11:12

We've got some big Cambridgeshire arable fields and that's a long way for those beetles to walk from the outside in. So let's put some strips in the fields, and we've tried to take an approach of, if we've got slugs, beetles eat slugs, so if we can host and manage the habitat and the soil to benefit them, they actually do the slug control for me. So we take the pressure off us that, yes, we'll have to use them in some circumstances, but the amount we use is significantly less than other places I see them used a lot.

And it is about monitoring, not just about where the slugs are, but how many beetles have you got, have you put a little cup in there, a little pitfall trap, and just count, you know, it is about finding that balance. We've found the same with aphids. Having habitat that's good for ladybirds, hoverflies, yes, we'll see some aphids, but I kind of trust nature now to come and do a lot of that for me and then we're there to back it up.

12:04

And we have data and we've done some research and we look at that whole-farm approach again that if we've got some habitat and we see the beetles, they will do some of the work for us. And I’ll also look at organic sectors. They don't have the tools that we have. So what are they doing? What can I do in my farming system?

And again, it’s working with the agronomist because I want to take ownership of the products I put on and it's not just always doing what the application says or the advice is. It's trying to question it and work together, and say, actually, I might miss some of that out and see what happens. I'll accept there may be a problem and I'll come back and top it up.

Tom
Yeah, that's a really good point. It's about where do you get that knowledge from? And I suppose there are projects that have looked at this. The one that stands out is the ASSIST project [farmpep.net/project/assist], for example, there’s some really good granular data on the sort of approach that you can take in terms of the margins that you're talking about in the beetle banks, Martin, and the control that you can get with things like aphids and slugs. 

But, turning to you, Ed, where do you get your knowledge from? What knowledge sources do you point farmers to in order to help them down this journey?

Ed
I guess, experience is the first one. Looking at what we’re seeing in the field when we're actually drilling. This year, we didn't get much rolling done. You have to step back and look at the mechanical side of things, of the IPM plan, before we even consider slug pellets. We look at drills. I go to a lot of trial sites, pull information online, but I've become accidentally a drill consultant, as many of my agronomist colleagues have, because drills have become more and more important.

Martin's got a disc drill and a tine drill, and we even had to get more of a conventional drill this year to get it in the ground, and the autumn, we experienced lot of slugs because a lot of consolidation was missing in these crops once they went in, and that's where we need to be approaching from the trapping point of view for slugs, and keeping on top of these thresholds.

My problem with slugs is though, like you said earlier on, actually trapping slugs is done very few and far between because most people don't have time to put 9 traps out and check them for 4 slugs every morning and the best of them are putting a few out but it's the time which is the issue. So, we just try and approach slugs from the very start, looking at the drill, look at the seed bed.

14:04

I found this year, farmers who cultivated more, got on a lot better slug-wise. But even farms that have never historically had slug problems were losing crops from under the ground this year. So they're there to challenge us essentially. So we have to pull all the IPM measures together and try and combat them because there's nothing more disheartening than losing a crop to slugs after a tough autumn.

Tom
Absolutely. The other aspect of this, sticking with beneficials, a lot of the pesticides that we apply also affect beneficials as well, and Ed, if I can start with you, pyrethroids are the obvious one. You'd apply pyrethroids in the autumn to control aphids, for example. What sort of damage are you doing to your beneficials and your beetles in that situation? How do you approach that?

Ed
I personally don't like pyrethroids, but it's part of the job and sometimes we need to use them, so there's many ways of approaching it. I'll firstly say, like, the approach has changed significantly. Pyrethroid use has declined massively. When I first started, they were being applied nearly every spray, but people's outlooks have changed and it's great to see, and I do think that's where the SFI has won.

So, I think there's 800,000 hectares insecticide-free in the UK now through the SFI, and I think that's a great step forward. And my customers' mentalities have changed. They don't like putting insecticides on until they really, really have to, and that’s the approach I take. We do everything we can with, say, BYDV [Barley Yellow Dwarf Virus], we monitor through T-Sum.

15:14

In Martin's case, we use resistant varieties. We grow winter barley, so we use KWS Feeris because we were experiencing quite high levels of BYDV. The wheat varieties, they're not quite there, in my opinion, yield-wise, but that technology will come on. But yeah, the whole pyrethroid approach, I think people are stepping back from them.

But I think the real solution with pyrethroids is actually to make them more expensive. They're too cheap at the moment. I think that would significantly change people's approaches to them. But I find, yeah, people are moving in the right direction with them.

Tom
Well, that's an important point. If we look at the National Action Plan for pesticides, one of the core elements behind it is the voluntary initiative, and the voluntary initiative has a very important role to play, there’s been a huge benefit for the industry, bringing IPM on there.

But turning to you, Martin, you’re involved with the Nature Friendly Farming Network, what are your feelings as far as that’s concerned, to encourage farmers to go down the IPM route?

16:05

Martin
It’s how do we incentivise but also recognise change needs to happen particularly on insecticides and a number of the other pesticide products we use. They are causing water quality issues and wider biodiversity impacts. So we've got to take ownership ourselves in really trying to reduce that impact and use them safely and sensibly, and on the insecticide part, our farm, we do not use insecticides. We stopped that 11 years ago now.

Yes, there'll be occasional impact. It isn't big but we do have to change our rotation and drill later and try and find resistant varieties. So we can do some of this. Some trials we've done on the farm with PGRO [Processors and Growers Research Organisation]. We had 2 thirds beneficiaries living in our landscape to a third pest, compared with farms that occasionally or regularly use insecticides.

There is a lot of that biodiversity that we do not see that gets lost when we do an action. So, it is how can we incentivise the right thing? And some of that's got to come through supply chain. Government policy and incentives could be one thing, but the supply chain needs to take some ownership that actually fruit, vegetables and crops may be not perfect.

17:11

As a farmer, I'm sometimes encouraged to do another application to make sure the product doesn't have any blemishes or has a very low disease threshold at the end. So where is the balance of what the responsibility is and it's not all on the farmer to take all the load. We need to share some of it.

Tom
It's really encouraging to hear you say that you've been no-insecticide for 11 years. We're just starting no-insecticide. I've been sceptical about it for a while, if I'm honest, haven't been confident enough to go the full hog.

Martin
I see lots of farmers have taken up the SFI option to not put insecticides on. You've got to deliver the habitat to host the things that you want there. We've got to join this together and deliver a landscape so the predators and the pollinators are there with you. Just cutting the insecticide out, but carrying on everything else as normal, you may cause yourself problems.

18:00

You've got to understand, if you're going to stop this, have we got to drill a bit later? Have we got to find a different variety? Have we got the habitat in the landscape correct? And then you can start to trust nature to do some of that work for you, but you still carry on monitoring.

You still carry on checking, but also check to see the thing that eats the aphid, the ladybirds and hoverflies, have you got some of those in your margins or amongst your crop? But they're always a little bit later than when the pest comes. Have you got a little bit of time just to wait for them to come and do their job?

Tom
Yeah, it's a really good point that you were talking about, having the habitats there, and I don't think I quite realised that I do have the habitats on my farm. Once you actually look at it and you think, well, that area over there, that's where beetles are going to be, and that area there, that's where some of these beneficial parasitic wasps will be developing, and it's not until you actually open your eyes to that, that you realise all the stuff’s already there.

Martin
It’s got to be management of those edge features that make the lifecycle work for that parasitic wasp, and it's good that there's public funding and some private funding to help deliver a healthier landscape that removes some of your pesticide use.

19:05

Tom
Yeah. Now, I want to move on a bit because we've very much focused on insecticides, but of course that's only one of the tools in the box. Ed, let's open it out a bit more. So IPM, when it comes to things like fungicides and herbicides, what sort of measures should we be looking at to reduce our reliance?

I have to say, one of the big problems on my farm is black-grass. So for farmers like me who are labouring under black-grass pressure, where do you start to reduce your reliance on herbicides?

Ed
I think the key with black-grass is rotation. Rotation, rotation, rotation. If you've got a decent rotation and we're not relying on chemicals. Much of the area where I work, it was rape-wheat-wheat, on repeat, and people have moved away from that. And then black-grass is becoming less of a problem as we open that rotation out.

Cropping decisions are changing. Oil seed rape is becoming very hard to grow, as everybody knows. But these open better rotations are key to controlling black-grass, and then, in turn, you can reduce your reliance on herbicides.

Obviously they are still required. We still need them to do the job so we can get the yield quality, but they should be our last defence. And then, moving away from herbicides, moving towards fungicides, variety choice is key.

20:07

I know there's a lot more work being done at the moment with blends, but it's also key to remember that farming is a business and we need to grow for the markets that work in your area, and that's what we're trying to do at Martin’s. Rather than just growing feed wheat, we like to grow soft wheats, milling wheats, that go into the food system.

There is limitations with these milling wheats, as you all know. We've been growing the same rusty wheat varieties for years now, and it's quite positive to see some newer, cleaner varieties are coming on board now. I'd like to see the millers back them a bit more and then we can reduce our reliance on fungicides.

There's new chemistry coming in, which is positive, but yeah, sticking to the right varieties in a nice rotation following that IPM approach is key.

Tom
Yeah, it’s interesting that you touched there on things like blends and also some of the methods that you can use to tackle black-grass. There's things like inter-row hoes, there's harvest weed seed control, all sorts of other things that you can do, but the difficulty is that there's often a lack of data on exactly how much that's going to help, and this is a subject that's close to my own heart in terms of experimentation on farm, doing your own farm trials and finding out what works for you.

To turn to you, Martin, is this something that you do much of, explore new techniques over an area or over a tram line, or in a field to find out how it works?

21:14

Martin
Absolutely. We don't know if something works unless we do it. Yeah, let's do some different things in different fields, and I'm a great believer of turning the sprayer off in places and then it's up to the agronomist. When we walk it in 3 or 4 weeks’ time, can we see the impact of missing something? And if we haven't, can we then build some trust in ourselves and say actually, under these circumstances, we could have maybe done something a little different, and we remember that for next year because we've got to embed those memories for the year ahead and hope the weather conditions are exactly the same.

I think that's part of the real challenge for farmers. No 2 seasons have been exactly the same for several years now, and you've got to try things, but the only way to learn is what's it like on your farm? What happens if you don't do something or if you do something differently?

21:57

And try a little bit? Do an extra drill width, turn something off, do an approach. If you're embarrassed or you think it's going to be full of rubbish, do it where no one can see it, but then work your agronomist and evaluate. Oh, that's actually better than we thought. We've got some areas where we might have missed a pre-em. You look and you think, hasn't that done a lot of good? Because look at the pressure that would have been there.

Right, so if that weed burden is there because there's additional black-grass, we know we’ve got a burden in our soil, we need to take a different approach to try and get it to germinate before we get it in the crop. And it's that kind of approach of try things, and if you can find someone who wants to measure, monitor and assess it, that even gives you a bit of data you can use to build a picture and to hold on till next year or 2 years later or 3 years later when circumstances have come together.

And I'm a keen believer of taking pictures. If you walk across a field and see something different, take a picture. It gives you a memory, but also we've got satellite imagery and all sorts of tech we can use. We can layer data to see is it a soil issue, a wet area, start to try and understand what is the thing that needs fixing, proper integrated pest management solutions, rather than just reach for another product.

Tom
Yeah.

23:04

Ed
It makes you walk the fields, I'll tell you that. I suddenly walk into a patch of horrendous yellow rust or some black-grass that's swallowing up, I'm like, he's definitely turned it off here. [laughs]

Tom
Well, we have a saying in BOFIN, a spray miss is never a mistake, it’s a learning opportunity.

Ed
It shows what we’re doing, doesn’t it? When you see a dead corner of Zayat or a missing pre-em, you see why we do them. 

Tom
You're quite right and just turning off the sprayer for a little patch gives you an idea of exactly what you're doing and what the results are, and referring back to the National Action Plan that we talked about earlier, this area of experimentation, it’s a very important part of that.

There are now quite a few areas where you can get involved as a farmer, if you want to help build the knowledge base in integrated pest management. One area that's worth flagging up is IPM NET [farmpep.net/initiative/ipm-net], which is Defra working with ADAS to build a resource around IPM uses, and there's also the Adopt scheme [farminginnovation.ukri.org/adopt], which is going to be introduced this spring, which is going to encourage farmers to do on-farm experimentation. There'll be money available, look out for details on that. This is really a great area in which on-farm integrated pest management practices can be tried and get some experimentation in there.

24:08

Is this something that you'd like to be involved in, Martin?

Martin
Very much, and I think the beauty of going to see it happening on someone else's farm, work together, that peer-to-peer learning. Each farm doesn't have to try everything. Work at that farmer trial, then bring some fellow farmers along to share it and talk about your approach, and the failures, because we learn as much from the failures as we do from the successes, and that approach, and that peer-to-peer, bottom-up, with the right research resource, engages the farmer. I think it’s a great opportunity for the future.

Ed
From my point of view, as well, I love people trying things and that's what the beauty of my job is. Because I cover 4 or 5 counties, I see so many different farming systems, from very regenerative to very traditional, and getting people to try different things in different areas, and show them, and I can go around and see the results and try and apply them to other farms. I think that's great.

And more people are more open to try different things, companion crops, like Martin's, for example, we do cover crops that morph into rape crops, but if they don't they're just a cover crop, and we're trying all kinds of things which really do make it a bit more exciting, a bit of experimentation, it works well.

25:10

Tom
Farmers learn best from other farmers and knowledge has value, and farmer knowledge has more value than perhaps we give it credit for, but it only has value when you share it, and farmers who do share their information find they get a lot more back from those people they share it with than the knowledge they've actually shared themselves. So there's a real credit in our industry. You're gaining knowledge for the entire industry when you do that.

So going back to on-farm experimentation, Martin, you said you’ve been non-insecticide for 11 years, if you compare the farm that you have now to the farm that you had, say, 10–15 years ago, what do you think are the biggest IPM lessons that you've learned?

Martin
So we were a very mixed farm. We went very intensive cereal production, mow everything to the edge, trim every hedge up, and then we softened and softened. And you see hedgerows as a vertical flower margin now. What I've had to learn is, the biodiversity that lives on those farm edges, and now we put them in strips in the middle of the field, have intrinsic value to my business and to the environment, and it's trying to get that balance right.

26:10

My father, when I was working with him, it was very much farm to the edge, put loads on, but we went through a journey, we had a winter wheat crop we drilled and it came to spring, we'd had pre-emergence, post-emergence, some Avadex on, and it was full of black-grass, and he said, “Oh, you’ve got to harvest it, you’ve spent the money,” and we’d been hit by 80% yield reductions in places, and actually, if we look back, the old ways were diverse rotations, we just need to step our mindset into that piece, and now the marketplace, the supply chains, are asking for produce to come from regenerative farming systems, so how can I put those principles in?

And they also coexist and support an integrated pest management approach because you can stack those benefits, instead of leaving that soil bare, could you put a cover crop in there or companion crop? So it's about stacking them together, and our farm has more cover, it's scruffier because you don’t trim everything up, and reducing costs, reducing our risk in the landscape when the weather changes, we’re not exposed to high-cost input systems.

27:11

But we still have the tools. We still have, if a disease comes in the beans or in the wheat, we go and talk to Ed about it, you’ve seen it in neighbouring farms, what can I do to stop it completely destroying the crop, but take it from a proactive way that we're trying not to put them on, understand that we may need to put them on, so how do we work at that relationship?

And I'm willing to take some of the risk financially and risk of crop because at the end of the day, I have to write the cheques out and I have to sell the produce. It's not the agronomist, it's not somebody else, and we just need to take some of that ownership of how do I be a more profitable business in the long term?

And I think that profit focus around the whole landscape, valuing the outsides, the edges, public money and private finance to deliver some of that, good value from the crops we grow and work with the supply chain and get the join-up of actually look at the benefit we’re delivering, because we may have removed insecticides or some fungicides, how do we communicate that to the customer?

28:03

Because the customer, either the supply chain or us as consumers, lots of people are interested in it and are keen to support it. So I want the government to be behind us to be able to support me in delivering that landscape that delivers good food and is good for nature at the same time.

Tom
Well, it's interesting that you touched on there, the market opportunities, and I noticed in Farmers Weekly, the Green Farm Collective have just launched their new flour, RISE Re:Gen, I think they call it, which is great, farmers getting a premium for delivering benefits in the countryside, which is exactly what IPM is all about, and if you look at Wildfarm, for example, that's another example of where you can get a premium from the marketplace for introducing these IPM practices onto your farm. It’s a start. It’s a small start, perhaps, but it is growing. 

Ed, what’s your view in this area then?

Ed
Yeah, I think there's a lot of opportunity out there with these contracts. Frontier have got quite a few as well, but other merchants do. For example, there's wheat, there's spring barley, there's oilseed rape contracts that are all out there, that are paying you per hectare to deliver IPM environmental options to go alongside contracts.

29:03

You stack this with your current farming system, like you say, Martin taking out the poorer areas and pushing the better, and you bring all this together and you've got a new approach to farming. It takes a bit more admin, which some of my customers don't like, and I get quite a lot of emails because you have to put the data in, you take photos of your cover crop, produce an IPM plan, produce a nutrient plan, and present all this data.

The money and opportunity is out there to get rewarded for this, and wheat is quite exciting, some of these milling wheat growers are pushing now with some decent contracts and people are listening, they want to be involved.

But yes, going back to that approach of taking the poorer areas out and putting them into beneficial areas and pushing the better fields is something I've been pushing on farm for a couple of years now. There's always a few fields that get eaten by deer or surrounded by woods. If you take them out and put them into a better option or find a more beneficial solution to them, there's no harm in doing that, and then maybe spend a bit more on P [phosphorus] and K [potassium] and lime on some of your better fields and try and go for that extra bit of yield. Quite a few of my customers have taken that approach and we're seeing the rewards of it already.

29:53

Tom
Oh, great. That's an interesting area to look at. So I hope there have been a few positive aspects that we’ve talked about in the podcast, and we ought to bring this to a close.

Thank you so much, Martin Lines and Ed Schofield for coming on the podcast today. It really has been great talking to you and hearing about how IPM works in practice.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, you can subscribe to the Defra Farming Podcast wherever you normally get your podcasts, and if you'd like to stay updated with the Defra Farming and Countryside Programme, you can follow the blog at defrafarming.blog.gov.uk

There’s plenty more information on IPM and the government’s Action Plan for pesticides on the GOV.UK website [www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-pesticides-national-action-plan-2025]. Do have a look at the VI [Voluntary] Initiative [voluntaryinitiative.org.uk], as well, and do take a look at IPM NET [farmpep.net/initiative/ipm-net].

Well, that's really all we've got time for. Thank you very much for listening and we'll see you again next time. Goodbye.