Who am I to talk, I have never been. However I have attended live shows where artists like Fleetwood Mac, Kate Bush and The Edgar Broughton Band have been on stage; but that is another story for another day.
The “Festival” is a five-day event of contemporary performing arts held near Pilton, Somerset, England. In addition to contemporary music, the festival hosts dance, comedy, theatre, circus, cabaret and other arts. (Such as magic shows?)
There are many other festivals held around the UK during the year. One was recently reported in one of the comics, at least 4 pages dedicated to it.
This one states that “it provides a forum for farmers, growers, or anyone interested in food production and the environment to learn about the theory and practical applications of regenerative farming systems.” ONE aspect of this has to be the use of “Biostimulants” perhaps Nitrogen Fixing Products?
Nitrogen Fixing Products.
These come in many forms and with many claims one of which is “to reduce reliance on artificially produced nitrogen for crops.” These crops would include, well just about anything so how could you possibly go wrong; should you use them?
Here at Revive Agronomy we believe it is good for farmers to be curious; however, the wise grower needs to test a product of interest in a small way on their own farm in a replicated manner. This should be done after performing a search for unbiased data on product performance.
Doing the background research for unbiased data on product performance is one of the tasks for a good Agronomist! Recently crossing my desk came (another) report (14 pages) with a summary that included the following.
“Sixty-one site years of Nitrogen (N) rate trials with and without the use of biological N fixing products were conducted in maize, spring wheat, sugar beet and oil seed rape in 10 states within the North Central Region of America. Of the 61 site-years, 59 site-years had no yield increase with use of these products over N rate alone.
Two site-years in maize had yield increases due to product use over the N rates alone. Given the low rate of positive benefits to the use of these products, growers should be sceptical of products that claim to provide asymbiotic / non-symbiotic N-fixation for the purpose of allowing a farmer to decrease fertilizer N rate.”
Of course this is American work and we are in England, so how could this possibly be applicable? That said I do seem to remember a recently retired and highly respected scientist going into print with the words “Regular effects from biostimulants have been almost impossible to come by in trials conducted by NIAB TAG, with inconsistent and unpredictable results a problem for the industry. Positive results have not been repeatable and demonstrating positive outcomes every year has not been possible.”