The Yield Enhancement Network or YEN is now ten years old and to celebrate this major step, the annual conference was combined with an awards dinner at Peterborough on Tuesday 24 January 2023 with almost 200 attendees.
Prof. Roger Sylvester-Bradley, Director and a founder of YEN, said the YEN’s major achievements are
- Creating a highly motivated YEN community including farmers, advisors, sponsoring organisations and scientists, who believe they can make progress together
- Developing a whole new way of working which he called ‘Learning by Sharing’, which involves lots of self-help, detailed crop post-mortems, benchmarking and reporting. This approach has proved so attractive that YENs have now been initiated in Atlantic Canada and in the Great Lakes region of north America.
- And what is more YEN has revealed farms regularly producing world-beating yields and it is discovering how these are achieved. To cap the YEN’s successes in 2022, it’s tenth harvest, Tim Lamyman’s farm at Worlaby Lincolnshire produced 18.0 t/ha of wheat and 16.2 t/ha of barley, both new world records.
Over the ten years since it started, YEN has studied yields of wheat, barley, oats, oilseed rape, peas beans and recently linseed. YEN has also recently ventured to enhance nutritional efficiency (YEN Nutrition) and reduce carbon intensities of cropping (YEN Zero). The UK-based YEN has now accumulated over 5,000 crop yields with over a million explanatory data items. This puts the YEN in a unique position to analyse the complexities of how to make progress toward the urgent twin challenges of raising farm productivity in the UK, and ensuring its sustainability.
The YEN has been supported and funded almost entirely by the industry itself through efforts of farmers and their advisors, sponsorship from their support industry and levies, and lots of back-room work of scientists to organise the reports, collate the data, and deduce the most telling conclusions.
Dr Pete Berry said one of the main headlines from YEN is the extent to which farms differ – what he is calling ‘the Farm Factor’. Pete led debate at the conference on the distinguishing features of high-performing farms so that other farms can adopt similar approaches.
Dr Daniel Kindred said “the YEN has fundamentally changed the way I think about how to approach crop science, through working collaboratively with a shared understanding, common metrics, shared data and shared ideas. The YEN is unique in providing an incentive for farmers to share data to benchmark their crop performance against peers, which enables insights to be gained and shared by the community. The million data points now provides a real opportunity for learnings for both farmers and scientists, and provides an exciting basis to build out from.
Dr Sarah Kendall said 'It is fantastic that we are celebrating ten years of the YEN and our attention now turns to how YEN develops into the future. We want to ensure the YEN remains relevant and allows members to use the approach at the whole farm as well as field level. Identifying the funding mechanisms to achieve this will be vital.’
Prof. Sylvester-Bradley described how the 2022 season had proved challenging not only to farmers, with massively increased input costs, record heat, and prolonged drought, but also to scientists in explaining how the farmers could still produce such high yields. All YEN entrants are told their maximum theoretical potential yields; but this year for the first time many farms managed to exceed these potentials. He said “either the farms are not understanding how good their soils are, or our science is too pessimistic about how good our potential yields are”. In either case, 2022 has been a good year for sharing lessons about crop yield prospects in the UK.
Award Winners from harvest 2022 were as follows:
Cereal YEN
Best Wheat, Rye or Triticale Yield
- GOLD: Tim Lamyman of Lincolnshire, supported by Frontier (World Record TBC) 18.0 t/ha
- SILVER: Mark Stubbs of Lincolnshire, sponsored by Hutchinsons 16.7 t/ha
- BRONZE: Vagn Lundsteen of Zealand, Denmark, independent entry 16.1 t/ha
Best % of Potential Wheat, Rye or Triticale Yield
- GOLD: Ashley Jones of Cornwall, sponsored by Limagrain 132% of 11.7 t/ha
- SILVER: Mark Stubbs of Lincolnshire, sponsored by Hutchinsons 116% of 14.4 t/ha
- BRONZE: James Loder-Symonds of Kent, sponsored by Bayer 106% of 12.2 t/ha
Milling Wheat Protein Yield & Baking Quality Awards, sponsored by UK Flour Millers
- GOLD: Chris Eglington of Norfolk, sponsored by AHDB
- SILVER: Paul Cornwell of Suffolk, independent entry
- BRONZE: Richard Budd of Kent, sponsored by BASF
Best Cereal Yield in trials
- GOLD: Richard Budd of Kent, sponsored by BASF 15.5 t/ha, and 112% of 13.8 t/ha
Regional Awards
For the Highest Cereal Yield
- Scotland: Neil Ramsay of Berwickshire, supported by Scottish Agronomy 15.0 t/ha
- Northern: David Richardson of Northumberland, sponsored by Ilex-Envirosciences 15.0 t/ha
- East Midlands: Matthew Denby of Lincolnshire, sponsored by AHDB 14.6 t/ha
- East Anglia: Andrew Robinson of Essex, independent entry 12.6 t/ha
- The West: Ashley Jones of Somerset, sponsored by AHDB 15.5 t/ha
- South East: Richard Budd of Kent, sponsored by Yara 14.5 t/ha
- Outside UK: Lars Riis of Søgaard, Denmark, independent entry 14.7 t/ha
For the Highest % of Potential Cereal Yield
- Scotland: Neil Ramsay of Berwickshire, supported by Scottish Agronomy 97% of 15.5 t/ha
- Northern: Edward Manningham-Buller of Co. Down, sponsored by AHDB 92% of 12.9 t/ha
- East Midlands: Tim Lamyman of Lincs., supported by Frontier 105% of 17.1 t/ha
- East Anglia: Andrew Robinson of Bedfordshire, independent entry 92% of 13.7 t/ha
- The West: Mark Doble of Somerset, sponsored by BASF 81% of 17.8 t/ha
- South East: Richard Budd of Kent, sponsored by Yara 91% of 15.9 t/ha
- Outside UK: Vagn Lundsteen of Zealand, Denmark, independent entry 89% of 18.0 t/ha
Best Winter Barley Yield
- GOLD: Tim Lamyman of Lincs, supported by Frontier (Confirmed World Record) 16.2 t/ha
- SILVER: David Bell of Fife, sponsored by AHDB 13.4 t/ha
- BRONZE: Will Jones of North Yorkshire, Independent entry 11.7 t/ha
Best % of Potential Winter Barley Yield
- GOLD: David Bell of Fife, sponsored by AHDB 117% of 11.5 t/ha
- SILVER: Anthony Turnbull of Lincolnshire, Sponsored by Ilex-Enviroscience 98% of 11.3 t/ha
- BRONZE: Rory Lay of Shropshire, sponsored by AHDB 96% of 10.1 t/ha
Spring Barley YEN
Best Spring Barley Yield
- GOLD: Simon Budden of Hampshire, Independent entry 11.0 t/ha
- SILVER: Dyson Farming of Lincolnshire, Independent entry 10.6 t/ha
- BRONZE: Thomas Todd of Northumberland, sponsored by Syngenta 10.5 t/ha
Best % of Potential Spring Barley Yield
- GOLD: Dyson Farming of Lincolnshire, Independent entry 129% of 8.2 t/ha
- SILVER: Paul Spink of Norfolk, sponsored by Hutchinsons 113% of 9.1 t/ha
- BRONZE: René Lornholt of Galten, Denmark, Independent entry 92% of 8.5 t/ha
Oats YEN
Best Oats Yield
- GOLD: John Anderson of Caithness, independent entry 9.4 t/ha
- SILVER: Annabel Hamilton of Berwickshire, independent entry 9.3 t/ha
Best % of Potential Oats Yield
- GOLD: Annabel Hamilton of Berwickshire, independent entry 86% of 10.8 t/ha
- SILVER: John Anderson of Caithness, independent entry 64% of 14.7 t/ha
Oilseed YEN
Best Oilseed Yield (gross output - seed yield adjusted to a standard oil content)
- GOLD: Tim Lamyman of Lincolnshire, supported by Bionature 9.0 t/ha
- SILVER: Mark Stubbs of Lincolnshire, sponsored by Bayer 7.8 t/ha
- BRONZE: David Fuller-Shapcott of Roxburghshire, sponsored by Limagrain 7.3 t/ha
Best Linseed Yield (gross output)
- GOLD: Nick Peake of Nottinghamshire, sponsored by Premium Crops 3.3 t/ha
- SILVER: Steve Abbott of Dorset, sponsored by Premium Crops 2.2 t/ha
- BRONZE: Mark Grimes of Warwickshire, sponsored by Premium Crops 1.8 t/ha
Best % of Potential Oilseed Yield
- GOLD: David Passmore of Oxfordshire, supported by KWS 96% of 7.0 t/ha
- SILVER: Mark Lawson of Wigtownshire, sponsored by Limagrain 84% of 7.4 t/ha
- BRONZE: Tim Lamyman of Lincolnshire, supported by Bionature 83% of 10.8 t/ha
Best % of Potential Linseed Yield
- GOLD: Nick Peake of Nottinghamshire, sponsored by Premium Crops 61% of 5.4 t/ha
- SILVER: Al Brooks of Hampshire, sponsored by Premium Crops 49% of 3.0 t/ha
- BRONZE: Mark Grimes of Warwickshire, sponsored by Premium Crops 47% of 3.8 t/ha
The YEN particularly seeks to celebrate innovators; in 2022 it gave special recognition through the:
YEN Innovator of the year award, to:
- Russ McKenzie of DJ Tebbit, Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire
For his commitment, innovative ideas, and use of trials and analysis for yield enhancement.