A cluster of Welsh farmers will test four biological crop products—fish hydrolysate, humic soil conditioner, fungi-bacteria mix, and seaweed extract—on ten fields across five farms from spring to summer 2025. Welsh agriculture faces soil degradation, chemical resistance, and rising input costs, while farmers need solutions that cut pollution and support net-zero targets. Many biological products exist, but independent, field-level data on their real-world performance is scarce. This project fills that gap by running controlled trials on arable and grassland crops, measuring changes in soil health, crop quality, and yield. If the trials show clear benefits, farmers in the cluster—and eventually the wider farming community—gain evidence-based options to replace or reduce synthetic inputs. That could lower costs, improve soil resilience, and reduce agricultural pollution. The project also plans to share results through events and a public summary report, and may expand to measure greenhouse gas emissions or livestock methane from treated crops. For now, the work is practical and applied: it generates usable data, not fundamental science.
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Welsh agriculture is facing challenges such as soil degradation, chemical resistance, disease pressures and ongoing input volatility creating financial issues to farmers. With pollution concerns, climate change and the need to transition to net zero farmers are seeking innovative solutions to solve these issues and ensure long-term economic, environmental and practical farm resilience. This forms the motivation of "The Terrafarmer Biologicals Project" (TTBP). TTBP will set up a cluster of farmers that use crop inputs and are interested in biologicals within the Mid/North Wales. TTBP will trial four strictly selected products through field-based trials on arable and grassland crops to monitor the changes in soil health and crop quality and yield (from spring 2025 until summer 2025). This will take place on across five farms (two fields per farm- ten total) in Mid/North Wales. Events will be planned to disseminate the data from these trials and transfer knowledge surrounding biological inputs and other relevant topics such as soil health and nutrient use efficiency. The data/ results from the trials will be collated in a summary report which will be made available to the cluster and where relevant a wider farming audience. This project is focused around providing data, resources and ultimately value to farmers within the cluster. Terrafarmer has strictly selected the proposed products to ensure optimal value for the cluster which are a: * Fish hydrolysate product containing nutrients, amino acids and fatty acids. * Humic based soil conditioner product containing vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and fatty acids. * A Fungi and Bacteria based product containing Abuscular Mycorrhizals, Basidiomycetes and Nitrogen Fixing Bacteria. * A seaweed (Kelp) product containing naturally high levels of Potassium and bioactive compounds such as proteins, peptides and phenolic compounds. Terrafarmer is at the forefront of driving positive change within the farming sector. As an independent farm consultancy business that focuses on regenerative, resilient and profitable farming. The team has a strong track record of undertaking trial work, delivering biological input advice and delivering data dissemination/knowledge transfer to farmers. Once this project is completed, it is planned to keep the farm cluster activities progressing through subsequent trial work (including replication of the proposed trials) and workshops/events through additional funding sources. This could include replication of trials, using flux towers to measure GHG from the trials or looking into livestock methane production of crops that have used biological against a control and even wider innovative farming concepts/products.
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