PX Farms has seen success with controlled-traffic farming in its cereal crops — as we discovered in our October issue — and it has trialled the technique when growing potatoes for the first time this year
We’re used to root crop fields looking like a scene from the Somme after harvest – mud, deep ruts, compaction. But PX Farms has pioneered another approach this year to potato production.
A first-time potato grower, managing director, James Peck, is no stranger to root crops, as sugar beet is already part of the rotation in the Fens and Cambridgeshire. However, he has opted to implement a Controlled-Traffic Farming (CTF) system for his first potato crop, restricting kit movements to set wheelways. Never one to merely ‘dip his toe’, he planted 150ha (357 acres) in the Fens, working with Grimme to source suitable machinery.
“From our experiences with other crops we know that moving from large-scale random traffic to CTF on a 12m system reduces compaction from 86% to 13%. Typical compaction for sugar beet and potatoes can be around 140%, which we aim to cut to 50%,” says Mr Peck.
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