Ground-breaking trial reveals how 'regenerative' farming can beat conventional crops
That is a key finding from a ground-breaking commercial-scale trial at the Elveden Estate, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border near Thetford.
Now in its fifth-year, the trial field has already grown winter barley, beans, winter wheat and spring malting barley - before sugar beet was brought into the rotation for the first time this year.
More than 100 farmers joined an open day co-hosted by British Sugar and Syngenta to see the results of the study, which explores how a whole crop rotation performs when farmed under three different systems.
Farmers discuss crop trials at the Elveden Estate (Image: Denise Bradley)
The field has been split into blocks including a conventional block where "yield is king", using ploughing and 120kg/ha of nitrogen fertilisers to maximise outputs.
Meanwhile regenerative blocks were farmed with a focus on soil health and sustainability, with minimal synthetic chemicals and "strip-till" cultivation, using cover crops or clover living mulch to boost soil nutrients and suppress weeds.
In between, an "IPM " (integrated pest management plus) block aimed to balance economic and environmental returns.
Farmers were told that, amid fluctuating grain prices, the average net margins across all crops for the........
