SOYL have undertaken a nitrogen sampling project at a number of sites across the UK. These sites had a range of differing soil types, allowing us to assess over-winter changes in soil nitrogen levels. A comparison of nitrogen levels in March, compared with those measured in November, has shown a significant over-winter loss, averaging 50kg/ha N or ...

Well, the winter workshop campaign has finished for another year and was hugely successful – it is always a pleasure to tour the country seeing our customers. At the workshops, I talked about what we have been developing at SOYL over the last year, as well as how and why farmers should be using these innovations within their businesses. Importance ...

SOYL have been conducting trials using variable rate plant growth regulators (PGRs) on both winter oilseed rape and winter wheat. The premise for variable applications on both crops is the same – that there will be a yield benefit from applying a full rate of PGR on crops that are at risk from lodging because of over-large canopies. However, if the...

Over the past few seasons, SOYL has been developing precision farming services for the grassland industry. Grass is the UK's largest crop and is grown in every county. A particular area that became a focus was that of pasture management and we discussed this during our winter workshops. A grassland and livestock famer needs to make constant decisio...

Please click here to visit the SOYL website For those of you who have visited one of our Winter Workshops you will have heard about our launch of the largest ever variable rate nitrogen trial. Here at SOYL we have recognised that an area of huge potential in precision farming is the ability to carry out on-farm trials. While it not only aids ongoin...

The establishment of crops is measured by the percentage of seeds that result in a viable crop. For example, what would be considered the 'good' part of a field might establish at 90%, whereas a 'poor' part may only establish at 50%.SOYL customers have access to several tools designed to aid with managing crop establishment, as well as lots of info...

With harvest winding up and drilling beginning it seems timely to share how I use a number of precision tools to create the 'Rolls Royce' of drilling plans - using variable rate seed to give each field the capacity to reach its full potential. For a long time farmers have 'manually' adjusted seed rates in poorer performing areas of the field on an ...

I run the Applications Team at SOYL and we provide P, K, Mg, Lime, Nitrogen and Seed recommendations for over 1 million UK arable hectares. The agronomy models that we use are based on SOYL's 24 years of crop nutrition experience alongside the industry nutrition guide - the RB209. We have been waiting for the updated version of the new RB209 since ...

It's been a busy time for SOYL's development team. These are the people who are the nucleus from which all of our precision innovations, used on farms up and down the country, are hatched. There's certainly no shortage of ideas from the team or interest and demand for their work right now. Just last week we've hadFarmers Weekly reporting on our Cus...

You don't know what you don't know! It's easy for us to assume that, since we provide support, training and tutorials, our customers understand how to use the tools we build, but while we use these tools every day, our customers often only use them seasonally.How many of us have thought "I know I did it last time but I can't remember how!"? So this...

Between the showers, combines are rolling across the country with the purpose of gathering the result of a year's work. At the same time, many are gathering important information in the form of yield maps, but are you using your data to its full potential?The more years of yield data you have, the more valuable that data is, but it's never too late...

As the head of SOYL's technical and R&D department, one of my responsibilities is to look at the latest developments in precision agriculture research and keep an eye on the 'next big thing' for customers. To find out more about what's happening in the industry and to share more about SOYL's own work, some colleagues and I went to Edinburgh ear...

In response to feedback from customers and to complement our popular annual Winter Workshop campaign, SOYL is offering summer training events for the first time this year.Distinctly different to the winter events, the summer training is a programme of practical, hands-on sessions with a much smaller group of growers, with 15-20 typically attending ...