Question

Experimental plot +farmer led experiment +objective+ importance

Answer 1

Learning and progress in farming have, for centuries, occurred through sharing of experiences arising from ‘trial and error’ across multiple farms within a locality (Sylvester-Bradley, 1991). Through the last century, as farming became more sophisticated and farms became larger and less numerous, farmers have become increasingly reliant on more formal small-plot experiments and theories (‘recommendations’ e.g. AHDB, 2017) provided by their suppliers or advisors, or by the broader agricultural science community. However, the extensive extrapolations required in deriving broad-scale recommendations from small-plot experiments incur large uncertainties, particularly concerning the influence of soil variation, but also the effects of weather, farming system, and farming skill, which are all difficult to mimic and control at the small-plot scale. Thus, farmers are increasingly questioning whether these recommendations are relevant to their own farms or whether local factors might confound the experimental results (e.g. Pannell et al., 2006) and farmers are increasingly making field-scale comparisons of their own husbandry options.