National Arable and Grassland Awards – Cereal Grower of the Year

Winner of Protein Crop Grower of the Year in 2023, and a finalist last year for Cereal Grower, Lincolnshire farmer Colin Chappell runs a carbon negative arable operation growing milling wheat, milling oats and marrowfat peas, with the rest of the farm split between environmental measures, forage barley and occasional energy crops. Crusoe has been the wheat variety of choice until recently, with an average yield of 10.5t/ha and a carbon cost of less than 200kg CO2eq/t. Winter barley has replaced rye as a forage crop, bringing harvest forward to get ahead of blackgrass, while seed crops of winter and spring wheat, winter barley and oats add a premium for the farm. The focus with all crops is nitrogen use efficiency, with total applied reducing by a third in the last five years, which, in turn, has reduced fungicide applications. Companion cropping and three years of spring cropping within the wide rotation helps with weed control, while the addition of legumes ahead of the primary ...