Cereals LIVE 2020: A “virtual” success!

by Vaughn Entwistle, Managing Editor, Milling and Grain

In past years, attending Cereals may have required wellies or a windbreaker as its usual venue was a farm field in Cambridgeshire. However, this year, the COVID-19 pandemic required Cereals to change to an online webinar event, called Cereals LIVE.

Held on 10-11th, June 2020, the two-day event featured an ambitious amount of content delivered by a comprehensive line-up of speakers who Zoomed and Skyped in from home. The same was true for the nearly 9,000 live viewers. But despite the change of venue, Cereals LIVE 2020 was remarkably well-presented, and featured highly knowledgeable speakers who provided first-rate content.
 

Food wars
Food security and imports have been a hot topic in the news lately, and so it was interesting to see Defra Minister Victoria Prentis going toe-to-toe with NFU President Minette Batters on maintaining high food standards—especially after the NFU’s recent petition on keeping our high food standards recently tallied up 900,000 signatures over a two week period. Mrs Prentis insisted that Britain will not compromise on environmental protection, food safety, and animal welfare standards. 

The event was spread over two days and covered a wide range of topics, from practical on-farm practices, to management and analytical skills that have become a necessity to running a modern farm in the UK.

I sat through many of the lively presentations which covered many topics from a variety of viewpoints. Here, then, is a sampling of just some of the topics that were featured during a very full itinerary.

Getting more from less
Getting more from less proved to be a recurring theme of the entire event. With resistance to pesticides increasingly compromising control, this session explored new strategies to get ‘more from less’ in managing weeds, pests and disease.

• AHDB’s Paul Neve looked at smarter solutions for next generation crop protection and IPM in the arable rotation

• NIAB's Bill Clark argued that it’s time to ditch those high yielding ‘disease-prone’ varieties. A fungicide armoury that can no longer tackle resistance alongside a potential reduction of UK £60/ha in fungicide costs makes a compelling case for choosing varieties that are more disease-resistant

• John Hawkins, Dorset farmer, has adopted a low input regenerative farming approach which, alongside a water quality trial, is delivering significant economic and environmental benefits

• Lise Jorgensen, of Aarhus University provided an overview of Danish farming experiences in cutting back on pesticides. Professor Jorgensen explained that Denmark has a long history of reducing the use of pesticides and has stricter rules for their use than any other country in the EU. Danish methods for reducing pesticide use since 1985, King history of tax on pesticides. Long history of focusing on organic farming. Denmark uses less than half the pesticide the UK uses and has a tiny arsenal of products they are allowed to use.

In Denmark some years see little to no increase in yield despite spending money on fungicides. Danish wheat cultivars have relative good septoria resistance. Breeders have done well with cultivars that have high resistance with good yields. A recent study used a variety of mixtures By combining three varieties they decrease septoria by 15 percent with greater yields and also needed fewer fungicide treatments.

Read more HERE.

 

The Global Miller
This blog is maintained by The Global Miller staff and is supported by the magazine Milling and Grain
which is published by Perendale Publishers Limited.

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