How to avoid headland headaches

Taking poor performing headlands out of production should improve profitability – as long as you’re not just migrating the problem further into the field.

 The key is understanding why headlands are performing poorly in the first place, says Dick Neale, technical manager for Hutchinsons. “Is it because it’s a north-facing headland, or under a wood, for example? Or is it always the wettest part of the field when you drill, and establishment is poor?” The latter is often caused by overcultivation, exacerbated by a switch to wider, shallower, and faster cultivators with a press on the back, he suggests. “A lot of growers are not picking the cultivation kit up when they get to the headland – just tipping the cultivator back onto the press to take it out of work and screwing round on the headland.” That leaves the press still cultivating soil as well as the tractor tyres, he explains.

“Then, when they finish the field, they go around the outside to take the turn marks out, so every time they cultivate the field they’re cultivating the headland twice, if not three times, for every pass.”

”Dick Neale Tom Jewers The result is an overworked, fine seedbed, that is typically still wet when drilled after the rest of the field has dried enough, leading ultimately to poor establishment and yields.

"Moving the headland out in that situation is counter productive.”

10-70% Reduction in soil pore space at 0.5 m depth due to compaction+

Let roots do the work

In those situations, a short-term fix, such as putting the headland into a cover crop for a year, might make sense, Mr Neale suggests

“There’s potential to get paid for doing it under the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), or Countryside Stewardship agreements, where the cover crop forms part of the percentage area of cover crops needed.”

Cover crop roots will help restructure soil that has been subsoiled to address headland compaction. That will be more effective than growing a wheat crop, even drilled with lightweight machinery, as a carefully selected cover crop will have deeper roots than the wheat, where the bulk of roots only go down four inches, he explains.

Identifying issues

While historical observation is effective at identifying long-term issues, digital tools, such as FieldView and Omnia, can help both quantify the initial impact, and whether you have moved it further into the field, if action has been taken. Yield maps collected and downloaded in FieldView can be analysed in Omnia to highlight drops in yield. Just make sure the data is accurate, Mr Neale stresses.

“For example, some combine drivers don’t fully pick up the header when turning, which isn’t enough to click the microswitch on and off, leading to errors.”

Accurate yield maps can be corroborated by NDVI images and used to create cost of production or margin maps to highlight profitability and consistency of performance in different parts of fields, he says. “Headlands do feature very strongly in this type of analysis, and then you come back to why is it underperforming.” 

Managing no-till headlands

Data analysis using Omnia does help to make such decisions, Suffolk grower Tom Jewers says “But it is a much more nuanced decision when you’re signing up for a five-year scheme and trying to guess how much cost of production is going to be, and understanding whether you will still make money on that piece of land in different crops.”

He has seen incidences where the headland effect appears to be migrating into the field after taking out a previously poor performing headland, but it is not due to over-cultivation in his no-till system. “I don’t think it is quite as bad, particularly where we’re further out from a wood, but you are still turning on it.” One possible way of avoiding turning in-field is to use the stewardship areas. This will depend on the stewardship option whether it is allowed or not, but Mr Jewers has been able to take advantage while drilling a spring crop of turning on an AB9 wild bird mixture that, after 15 February, can be prepared for re-establishment. Other possible opportunities could include leaving the original headland tramline in some options to use for turning the sprayer and fertiliser spreader around. “You just don’t claim for that area,” Mr Neale says.

“This removes some of the risk of moving the active headland into the field. You can also turn the combine on some rotational options, especially if it is largely dried up and broken down, but you need to look at the rules on an individual basis.”