ChewintheCud Podcast
The Team, based in the South West of England, explore their passion for cows and the dairy industry as they talk about a range of industry related topics.
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ChewintheCud Podcast
Bokashi Basics; For Better Manure Management
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What if your muck heap could hold onto its nitrogen, keep its carbon, and feed soil life the moment it hits the ground? We sit down with Andrew Sincock of Agriton to demystify Bokashi—an anaerobic, lactic-led fermentation of farmyard manure that turns a “waste problem” into a high-value fertiliser strategy. No turning windrows. No mystical inputs. Just weekly microbes on deep bedding, a sensible handle on carbon-to-nitrogen ratios, and a sheet to finish the job.
Andrew takes us from first principles to field results. We compare aerobic composting, anaerobic digestion, and fermentation, and unpack why carbon and nitrogen losses plummet when oxygen is kept out. If you understand silage, you already understand the logic: inoculate, exclude air, and let biology do the heavy lifting. We connect the dots between rumen microbes and soil microbes, showing how pre-digested, fermented FYM accelerates the soil food web, enabling practical moves like applying around eight tonnes per hectare between silage cuts without messy residue at harvest.
This is as practical as it gets. You’ll hear how to apply mixed microbes on bedding once a week, balance materials from straw to woodchip to poultry manure, and decide when to muck out, sheet, and spread. We dig into economics—independent comparisons reported about £15 per treated tonne more NPK against roughly £1 per tonne in treatment cost—and talk through where shortcuts still work and where they don’t. We also address slurry and lime: where microbes help, where acidification looks tempting but risky for soil biology, and why better management beats heavy-handed fixes.
If you’ve written off biological farming as “muck and magic,” this conversation gives you the science and the steps to test it on your own ground. Start small, measure your FYM like you measure your forage, and let the results guide your next move. If it’s simple to explain and easy to fit into chores, you’re more likely to stick with it—and your soils, crops and margins will follow.
Enjoyed this deep dive? Follow, share with a neighbour, and leave a quick review. Your feedback helps more farmers find practical, no-nonsense ideas that work.
This was recorded in September 2025, and all information was correct at the time of recording.
For more information about our podcast visit www.chewinthecud.com/podcast or follow us on Instagram @chewinthecudpodcast. ChewintheCud Ltd is also on Facebook & LinkedIn. You can email us directly at podcast@chewinthecud.com
This is the Chewinthe Cud Podcast, a podcast for the UK dairy industry, brought to you from the southwest of England and listened to around the world. Hello and welcome to Chewinthe Cud Podcast. And with me as usual is Sarah Bolt. How are you doing, Sarah?
Sarah Bolt:I'm really well, thank you, Andrew. How are things with you?
Andrew Jones:Stop lying to everybody. You're knackered, aren't you?
Sarah Bolt:I'm absolutely shattered.
Andrew Jones:I should say to people listening, yesterday, Sarah and I hosted the uh podcast live event that uh has been planned for a little while, and we both finished it yesterday going, we are absolutely exhausted.
Sarah Bolt:It was great fun.
Andrew Jones:Yep.
Sarah Bolt:But very, very tiring.
Andrew Jones:Yeah, it it you just don't realise it that coming to concentrate like that for four hours, okay. It was two lots of two, but concentrate like that for four hours, and even in between, you didn't really get a break talking to all our guests and everything, which was wonderful, don't get me wrong. Um, but it it was just yeah, it was afterwards we sat down, didn't we? As we were basically doing a debrief as we finished packing everything away, and we just went, oh and I think we I think we're both feeling it today as well.
Sarah Bolt:I think so. I think so.
Andrew Jones:Anyway, moving on today's uh topic. Um it's an interesting one. Um, I think I mentioned it in the podcast, to be honest with you, but I guess I would I decided to follow up on this because the name Bokashi just kept coming past or the word Bokashi kept coming past my desk. I'd have different conversations with different people on different things, and and the word Bokashi kept coming up. And it was simply let's go see what it is. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Let's go see what it is. So um uh yeah, it was great. Our guest came, um came and spoke to us about it. Uh I it was I think it's a really interesting, really interesting topic, actually. It opened my eyes. It was something I knew nothing about really, um, and it definitely opened my eyes to explain what it is.
Sarah Bolt:It is, and I think it's one of those products that supports sustainability. And I know sustainability is one of those words that's really overused, isn't it? But I guess um, you know, its purpose is to retain nutrients and enhance soil biology, which you know, both great for the environment, but more importantly, great for the farmer's bottom line.
Andrew Jones:Oh, definitely. I mean, for I'm saying it's as it's as it's explained to us, the process increases the nitrogen or retains, I think is a better word, as you said, retains more nitrogen. Well, surely that's got to be a good thing, potentially less fertilizer. As you say, then potentially more organ it is it's all organic matter, therefore it's got to be better for our soils.
Sarah Bolt:Definitely.
Andrew Jones:So let's go take a listen. This podcast has been brought to you today by Chewinthe Cud Limited, who offer completely independent dairy and beef nutrition. Our signals advice and training along with ROM's mobility scoring. For more details on these and other services available, please visit our website www.chewinthecud.com or email us directly on nutrition@chewinthe cud.com. ChewintheCud Limited now offers first aid training from a registered first aid at work trainer and experienced minor injuries practitioner. For more details, please visit our website www.chewinthecud.com or email us directly on training@chewinthecud.com. Hello, I'm Andrew Jones.
Sarah Bolt:And I'm Sarah Bolt.
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Andrew Jones:Enjoy today's episode. Hello and welcome back to ChewintheCud Podcast. And today our guest is Andrew Sincock. Good um morning, Andrew. Good morning.
Andrew Sincock:Thank you for having me. How are you? I'm very well. I'm rested. You're rested. Ten days in Brittany.
Andrew Jones:Very nice.
Andrew Sincock:Came back last night uh across the ferry, slept most of it, uh, which was delightful. It's a great way to travel. Forget flying, go with a ferry every time. So yeah, feeling good.
Andrew Jones:Good, good, good. So today uh we should say Andrew is the business over of Agriton, and I believe there's a few other little feathers to a bow you wanted to tell us about. But we'll we'll do that a minute. So we're here basically today to talk about Pikachu. I believe I've said that right. Um, it's a word that just keeps coming up in front of me all the time, and it's like, well, actually, let's go talk to a man who knows about this. But before we do, Andrew, tell us a little bit about how about yourself and how you got to where you are today. Um very good question. How long have we got?
Andrew Sincock:Well, usually about an hour, but I prefer you only be a couple of minutes. Yeah, no. Um, so in a nutshell, grew up on my grandparents' mixed dairy beef arable farm in Cornwall. As a child, I wanted absolutely nothing to do with agriculture or farming in general. I was sort of allergic to hard work, I think. I always remember a quote from one of the old US presidents that something along the lines of hard work never killed anybody, but I don't want to take the risk. Um I think I adopted that sort of principle as a child. Uh, didn't make it as a footballer, which was my my passion. So um farming was the only thing I knew. So started working properly really on farms, maybe at about 21, 22, and haven't left. Loved it, got my first job as an assistant herdsman, and have pretty much done everything you can imagine: sheep, pigs, chickens, tractors, arable, dairy, you name it. Worked right up until I think it's about seven years ago when I joined Agroton. And basically, I always say, and it's cliched, and for anybody that's heard it before, I apologize. I sort of swapped the the five till nine for a nine till five, ultimately, is what I'd done. I was single and miserable and had no life or friends. So wanted to just take life a little bit easier and thought actually that I would become a dairy farm consultant. So my last job was working for the Wills brothers down in Cornwall. Oh, yeah, yeah. And loved it. And if I went back to farming, although I know they're going through a few changes at the moment, would love to work with Robert Wills again. I thought he was exceptional, probably the best herdsman that I've had the pleasure of working with, and some amazing cows. And uh yeah, joined Agriton as a as a sort of technical ruminant specialist, I think was the title. The current owner of Agriton then was looking to retire, so it was always in the plan to slowly take over, assuming they liked me, I liked them, it was a good fit. It was, and fast forward a few years, I've now now the majority shareholder of both Agriton and their sister company Agravital, which is folio fertilizers, as well as a small Acer Palmatum nursery called Budlake Nursery, all based out of Devon, uh just between Tiverton and Taunton. So that's the day job. Um the owner and director of Agroton Agravital. And I've also recently taken on a tenancy, farm tenancy. So I've taken on a hundred acres of arable land um in Monmouthshire, which I am sort of share farming with a friend of mine called Dan Smith. And uh yeah, just just harvested our first harvest here, I don't know, probably four four weeks ago, maybe three, four weeks ago. Um, and I'm growing uh this year grew hundred acres of spring wheat for Wild Farmed. Okay.
Sarah Bolt:Fantastic. Which the Andy Kato.
Andrew Jones:That's the Andy Kato, yes. Who you I believe you met recently.
Sarah Bolt:Sorry, just a little plug there. Yeah, I was very lucky. I was lucky enough to go to uh RAU's graduation where he was given his uh honorary doctorate.
Andrew Sincock:So uh yeah, so wild farmed grower, and we'll be growing for them again next year, which I probably a lot of people say, oh, what's it like? So the fact that I'm growing for them again next year probably tells everybody everything they need to know. Um I'm actually doing a little bit less myself this year, but I'm farming with a uh not neighbour, but a farmer quite close by, so the two of us are far farming and growing for Wild Farm this year.
Andrew Jones:So but that's uh what made you go Monmouthshire? Just the opportunity?
Andrew Sincock:The wife.
Andrew Jones:Ah, okay.
Andrew Sincock:Say no more.
Andrew Jones:Yeah, okay. I was just gonna say because the business is in Devon, and and if you're saying that's up in Monmouthshire, it's
Andrew Sincock:it was yeah, so I'm Cornish originally, so love Cornwall, that will forever be home. And got a job in we're literally on the Devon Somerset border, to be honest with you. It might as well be Somerset. And uh yeah, because the job went well, I thought I'd move, so I moved up to Wellington, Somerset. Couldn't possibly live in Devon being Cornish. Uh that friction runs deep. Um, so moved to moved to Wellington, and my wife was living in Bristol at the time, and she was originally from Lydney. So when we were looking for a house, we thought, well, somewhere in the middle, well, somewhere in the middle is the Somerset levels, yeah, which floods. So that's not so it's either closer to me or closer to her. And given that I travel a lot for work, it made more sense for me to move further into the country rather than for her to move out. So it was Bristol-ish area, and uh nobody wants to live in Wales for some silly reason, so it seems to be a little bit cheaper. Uh so we found a really nice house which we're really happy with. It's close to her family, so it works really well. So, bokashi. Yes.
Sarah Bolt:Start at the beginning.
Andrew Jones:Yeah, what is it? Yes, because I I just I just it just keeps coming across my name. Look, look, we're all talking about regenerative farming more, and look, let's be honest, I'm cynical's maybe not the right word. I believe there's a place for it. I just feel it's a little bit too wild west at the moment. With and I even heard someone come back from Groundswell and say that very comment that that people are now just telling you things without backing them up. And to me, I'm somebody that needs the backup, the proof science, yes, to show what it is. But this is one thing that does keep coming up as something that should. So, so I may be a little bit I I want to hear the facts, and that's why you're here. Because if I want to hear it, I'm sure there's other people out there and I'm like, well, what's Pikachu? What is it?
Andrew Sincock:So it was the it was probably one of the when I looked at joining Agroton, it I looked at the product portfolio. And this was one that I'd not heard of, didn't know of. And uh having come from a dairy farm management position, it was something that I saw and instantly thought, hang on a minute, that just makes perfect sense. Why don't I know about it? Was my initial thoughts. So, okay, fine. So went away and worked with Agriton and a guy called Jan Fius Mahoekstra, who's the owner of Agriton Netherlands and sort of the brains behind everything Agriton. He told me what it was, great, and he sold it to me as if I was a farmer and he was selling it to me. And I thought, okay, that's hugely expensive and massively labour intensive as well.
Andrew Jones:I say, because I whether it's relevant or not, but I like I understand biodynamics a little bit as well, because one of my neighbours in North Queensland was into his biodynamics and trying to explain that to people are kind of going, it's like organic plus, but it's all obviously more than that because it cycles the moon and everything else as well, and it's burying things in cow horn and whatever. But I don't, yeah, I suppose I'm sort of going, ah, so yeah.
Andrew Sincock:So it was it, I got the idea of it, and and okay, this is how I would explain it to anybody. And predominantly you're talking to livestock farmers because they're the ones with organic manures. So you're talking to a livestock farmer, which I'm going to assume 99.9% of livestock farmers are making silage.
Andrew Jones:Yep.
Andrew Sincock:So the initial question would be well, why do you make silage? Well, we grow an excess of nutrients in the spring and the summer that we then want to feed to our cattle during the winter months when we don't have enough feed and fodder. Fine. So, how do you preserve those nutrients from spring-summer to get them to the winter? Will we bring them into a silage clamp and we in sile? We make silage. You've spoken about silage additives and the art of making silage on your podcast numerous times. I'm not going to go over it again. Same principles apply with organic manures. We produce an excess of organic manures in the winter, and we want to use them predominantly in the spring and the summer months when things are growing, when those nutrients can be used. What is the best way of preserving those nutrients from one period of time to another? Fermentation. So it's the same principles as silage making, as we're taking and adopting with organic manures. What would happen if you took your first cut silage, put it in the corner of a field in a great big heap, and left it there? Or treated it just like you do with your organic manures?
Sarah Bolt:It compost.
Andrew Sincock:It would heat up, it would be smelly, stinky, it would shrink. Would the cows then eat that grass six months later?
Andrew Jones:No.
Andrew Sincock:No.
Sarah Bolt:No, because it's it's in the air. So it's all to do with air, is it?
Andrew Sincock:It's it's a lot of it's to do with the aerobic nature of it. So a lot of the losses occurred, and when we talk about losses, we're talking about the oxidization is happening in that aerobic state or in that aerobic environment. So bringing it and putting it into an anaerobic state, into an aerobic environment, reduces those losses from the research done by Wetsus, which is the European Centre of Excellence for Sustainable Water Technology. Don't ask me how they got Wetsus from that.
Andrew Jones:Well I was gonna say.
Andrew Sincock:Um they looked at it and they compared aerobic compost, so turned thermophilic compost. So you said water, what they were looking at from potential runoffs from it.
Andrew Jones:Right.
Andrew Sincock:So the the the leaching, if you're not. So they compared traditional compost, they compared anaerobic digestion, and then they compared fermentation. And it was a lactic acid fermentation, which agroton commercial name Bokashi.
Andrew Jones:Yep.
Andrew Sincock:Um and the thermophilic composting, the total carbon that went into a heap, say it was 100 tons, when they finished the process and they came to take it out again, they reanalyzed it, they had just 25 tons left. So that effectively meant 75% of the total carbon disappeared.
Andrew Jones:Right.
Andrew Sincock:Nitrogen was 60 something 63, I think, off the top of my head. Yep. Um, so huge, huge losses. Yep. Anaeric digestion was less. So I think there was about 40% loss from the carbon in anaerobic digestion, which ultimately is taken and captures methane and used as energy, but it's not in that material at the end. Yeah. Bacashi lost 1%. So if you're talking about retention of carbon, 1% from Bakashi versus a 75% loss from aerobic compost. So so leaving it in the corner of the field or something. In this situation, it was being turned effectively turned, which is accelerating those losses even further. Yeah. Um, whereas a farmer that would leave it in the corner of the field in a heap and probably not turned, you'd probably be looking at losing about 40% as opposed to 75%, just because you're not turning it as much.
Andrew Jones:But even if we take that 40%, 40% loss compared to 1% loss is quite significant. Yeah. Yeah.
Andrew Sincock:Yeah. And when we think about carbon, we want it in the soil, not and this is where the regen stuff can get a bit carried away. Ultimately, increasing organic matter is nearly always a good thing. Yes. So if we can increase soil organic matter by putting more carbon back into our soils, we're going to be better off in the long term, you know, um, than than if we don't. So that was really it in a nutshell. It was a really good, simple way of retaining nutrients that we can then put back onto the soil and use on farm rather than being lost to the atmosphere or through leaching into watercourses and causing pollution with effluent runoff, for example.
Andrew Jones:Now you mention uh carbon, but we don't fertilize with carbon. I'm not saying that that isn't you know, that's become part of the whole, as you say, carbon sustainability. But if we talk to somebody who is not in the regen field, they're traditionally going to talk about your NPKs. How is it affecting your other nutrients to make it more effective than the traditional way that manure is handled on a farm?
Andrew Sincock:If I had teed up a question for you guys to ask me, it would probably have been that.
Andrew Jones:Because let's be honest, you know. This is a great question. Yeah, you know, uh the whole point of this podcast is for people to listen and learn, and that's why I do this podcast myself is to listen and learn because I know I don't know anything about this at all, really. I knew it's fermented, that's all I kind of know. Uh, but as I say, there are going to be people that like myself may be more cynical than me or want to know that information. You know, that this is coming from something completely different than what the way we've farmed for the last, what's it been, hundred years, then where you know, we've been told that you need to add fertilizer, you need to do this. It's a complete sort of change back maybe to some of the old ways, but that's how we're you our mindset is. So, yeah, what does it do in terms of the the nutrients we're used to thinking about?
Andrew Sincock:Okay, so I love this, and the fact that we're on a sort of livestock focused podcast that makes it perfect. What's the first thing you look at when you get a silage analysis at three?
Sarah Bolt:Energy and protein.
Andrew Sincock:Energy and protein. Energy first? Probably much of a munchiness. What's happening in a rumen? Rumen microbes.
Sarah Bolt:Fermentation.
Andrew Sincock:Fermentation. Rumen microbes.
Andrew Jones:Glad one of us is on the ball. I was fear I'm gonna be asked a trick question here and I don't think it's the wrong one. I know, but I was afraid I'm gonna trip up.
Andrew Sincock:There's no no trick questions. It it in my mind, what's happening in the rumen is also happening in the soil.
Andrew Jones:Yes.
Andrew Sincock:And I'll explain that.
Andrew Jones:Someone else said to me before as well, actually. That was it, yeah. Bronwyn.
Sarah Bolt:That's it.
Andrew Jones:I was gonna say it's bron that's told me that. Yeah.
Andrew Sincock:So rumen microbes breaking down complex organic structures, cellulose, into its constituent parts, volatile fatty acids, to drive yield. Yep. What's happening in the soil? Soil microbes are breaking down complex organic structures, generally more lignin based, um, into their constituent parts to drive yield. So the same function is happening in the rumen as what's happening in the soil. Yet the way in which we treat them, and as you just said, fertilize them, is completely different. Entirely different.
Andrew Jones:Now that's wrong. Because uh, yeah, going back to Bronn, there's there's arguments that yeah, you want to be adding sugars to get those microbes. Absolutely.
Sarah Bolt:Um to feed the microbes rather than feeding the cow.
Andrew Sincock:A hundred percent. So it's it's the the old anal an analogy we feed the rumen, not the cow, and we should be feeding the soil biology, not the plants. Um, so that's it in a nutshell, but we can expand on that a little bit further. Um, within carbon, so organic matter will contain roughly 55, I think it's 58% carbon. The rest of it is made up of other minerals and nutrients. If you're putting more organic matter onto your fields ending up into your soil, you will be also applying nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. So just like the carbon retention that we see with the Bakachi process, we're also seeing an increased retention of things like carbon and nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. So not only have you got more carbon to put on, but you've also got more nitrogen. So if you put on one tonne of your standard organic manures, RB209 would say that when you take that out of the shed, it's probably got six kilos. Of nitrogen, roughly. By the time it's been sat in the corner of a field for six months over the winter until you come to spread it, you might be looking at maybe three kilos per ton, possibly ish.
Andrew Jones:I should say this is one reason why you should test your a hundred percent degree. Because I've definitely seen um NRM do a report, and was it I think six was your average, but the range was anything from about two up to about 35 or something like that. So that 35 isn't extreme because it's down at six, but that obviously there's a massive variation in you should be testing human years.
Andrew Sincock:I had a conversation regarding RB209 and its value, and actually said um in when I gave my presentation in uh in Belfast last year, Nuffield presentation, at the end of it I said, forget RB209 and and analyze because of that difference. Again, I've seen those ranges, they're huge.
Sarah Bolt:Farmers can save so much money by by analysing slurry amine because it's no it's no different than forages.
Andrew Jones:I know I've got a client I still work with, been working for nine, ten years, and when I first saw him, he goes, Oh, I don't bother analysing my maize because maize is maize. Yeah, which is not which is not exactly, and I said, let's analyze it, and it cost him, I know, was it 15 quid, 20 quid, whatever it was, and we ended up saving half a kilo of cow for the winter for blend. I mean, that just paid for itself without even thinking about it.
Andrew Sincock:And and this is so I said, forget RB209, and I also said at the same time that it should be a fertilizer tax, because when it was more expensive in 2022, everybody valued every kilo they put on far more than what they did when it was half the price.
Andrew Jones:I remember writing an article at the time for who I was working for, like all the different ways that you should be trying to make better use of your fertilizer, as you say, in the hope that maybe people would learn that year to then not necessarily everything, but start implementing some of those things going further forward to be more efficient, etc.
Sarah Bolt:And at Kings Hay, we that's exactly our tune as well. Um, you know, you've got to measure it to be able to make an informed management decision and save those pounds.
Andrew Sincock:It's I would say it's probably one of the things you talk about, like Kings Hayes, the top 5%, top 20%. They're probably doing that exceptionally well. They're analysing everything, they're looking at things, they're not overfeeding. And I feel that if you're applying your organic manures without having them measured or sort of analyzed, you could be over-applying or underapplying. Now, if you're under applying, you're not going to get the best returns. You're not going to have the, you're not going to be hitting those high efficiency figures. And if you're over applying, then you're causing pollution. Now, I live in the river Y area where the Y particularly sensitive, the over-application of organic manures is a genuine problem. So both underapplying and overapplying are issues, which is why you have to analyze.
Andrew Jones:You're not being as efficient as you should be, are you?
Andrew Sincock:Nope.
Sarah Bolt:Both ways are costing pounds. Exactly. It's as simple as that, isn't it?
Andrew Sincock:Yeah. So it's it's something that people should be doing for the cost of an analysis. And then somebody will say, Well, I've got my young stock over there, I've got my rearers over here, I've got, you know, calving over here, I've got lambing pens back there, I've got growers and finishers, I've got six different sheds, all with different rations, all with different. Okay, well, I think if you take a sample from each shed, it is still worth doing rather than take an average. And okay, maybe you don't need to take it every year, but maybe every two or three years, just analyse to make sure, yeah, we haven't changed too much. That's what it is, that's what's worth.
Andrew Jones:Sensible. I mean, because like for an sake, take red tractor, you're you're supposed to is it soil sample every a whole farm every three or four years? Five. Five years. Five years, five years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Five years.
Andrew Sincock:So, you know, what's what's different? It should be exactly the same. And the the information you get is is huge. But ultimately, you're gonna have more carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium in that Pikachie compared to untreated or standard sort of stack carbon.
Andrew Jones:So if we say uh would you say six is the standard for nitrogen under RB209, um, and you said possibly even half of that by the time it's spread, what would it be if it's been fermented?
Andrew Sincock:Five to five and a half. So what the trials that we did with Innovate Um Innovative oh, it was a Dutch company. The name escapes me now. So we commissioned trials, so we paid for an independent company to do some trials, and we actually saw an increase in nitrogen, which is ridiculous. And this this is a conversation I had with um Jo Valley, Tim Meade, uh, Will Mayer, Tom White when I had a conversation with them about Bakashi. If you take 100 grams of milk and you look at the calorific value, and then you take 100 grams of Greek yogurt, for example, and look at the calorific value of the Greek yogurt, both 100 grams, the yogurt has more. The difference between the two is fermentation. Yeah, you've not added anything else. So, why is there more calories in yogurt than there is in milk? Well, the fermentation process, those microorganisms are actually unlocking and breaking down some of those complex organic structures, in this instance, some of those proteins that you wouldn't otherwise be able to absorb. Exactly that. So the same thing happens. What would happen if I ate uh wheat, for example? Not much, it would go straight through me. What if I drank beer or ate bread?
Andrew Jones:Yeah. I'd put on quite a bit of weight. It's been pro it's been processed to allow access, which is the whole point why we roll wheat or roll barley to feed to cattle, because they can't it would go straight through them anyway. So we've got to break it down for them to get to it.
Andrew Sincock:Yeah. So the same principles happening with the fermentation. So the fermentation of milk increases the calorific value of that hundred grams of milk. So the ferment there is some, and I I'm on the fence with this. There's no data to support this. So I say it with that caveat. But the fermentation process makes available nutrients that potentially weren't available before, which is why in that trial we saw an increase in nitrogen. It could just be that the analysis was taken and from a little bit more manure and less straw.
Sarah Bolt:Yes, I mean my my brain's going, you can't magic something from nothing. So actually the volume will have gone down to have made it more effectively concentrate.
Andrew Sincock:So that's what's happening with thermophilic compost. Right. Where you're turning, you lose a lot more moisture, you use lose a lot more carbon at a higher rate than you lose your nitrogen, for example. So if you analyse a kilo of fresh farm yard manure, there'd be six kilos. If you then analyse a kilo of um processed, complete mature compost, you might actually find that there's eight or nine kilos of nitrogen in that sample. So it's increased, but actually it's just sort of diluted the volume as uh not diluted, the opposite of what's the opposite of concentrated. Yeah. It's concentrated because you've diluted the carbon more so, actually, per kilogram of end compost, you've possibly got more nitrogen. So it's it's hard to then compare apples with apples because you've lost loads over here, which is concentrated in nutrients, whereas over here it's still fairly dilute, so it appears slightly less on an analysis, which becomes really complicated. I've complicated things, haven't I?
Andrew Jones:No, no, it's just thinking about the implications of this.
Sarah Bolt:So I want to ask. So we're we're talking about a fermentation process. What is triggering this fermentation progress?
Andrew Jones:Great question. Well, yeah, I guess it ties in. I was there going, well, okay, how do we actually achieve this? Fine. So same thing ultimately, isn't it?
Andrew Sincock:Yeah, absolutely. What we're doing, there's a number of ways of doing it, but the simplest, easiest, best, cheapest way of doing it that farmers have adopted, and probably why you keep hearing it being mentioned, is the application of microbes onto the bedding once a week. So we've cultured, gathered, collected, uh, put into a bottle a number of microorganisms. There's about 80 different microbes, yeasts, fungies, actinomyces, now actinobacteria, phototrophic, and lactic acid. Nothing strange, nothing weird, um, just fairly generic bog standard microbes that we're and are they normally found in our soils?
Sarah Bolt:Yes. So that there's nothing you're not adding something that's not normally found in in nature in that.
Andrew Sincock:No, they are all very present and abundant in nature, no question. Um so we're adding those microbes, and they are what we call uh cultative anaerobes. Getting a bit technical. Really simply, they can work both aerobically and anaerobically. So think of lactic acid bacteria. It's naturally occurring, naturally present on grass when it's in a field growing. As soon as you bring it into a clamp and you turn it from an aerobic into an anaerobic environment, the way in which that lactic acid bacteria behaves and works changes. Same with the microbes. You're adding the microbes onto the bedding, they start that fermentation process.
Andrew Jones:So when you say bedding, can it be any kind of bedding? So whether it's straw yards, cubicles, cubicles, probably less effective. It works best with deep bedded housing. So you it's not really to go on, say, sawdust on the back of cubicles? There are people that do that.
Andrew Sincock:So there's a guy, um Mr. Reed, whose Somerset Farmer featured in the Farmers Weekly a few years ago now. He was applying the same microbes onto the back of the beds, walking through knapsack sprayer, spraying the microbes onto the beds, helping control mastitis, um, and then starting the fermentation process with the organic manure. Obviously, it ended up in the slurry, yeah. And he was treating his slurry by adding the biology that way. Right. So it is absolutely possible.
Andrew Jones:But the should we say preferred method then is is on deep bedding.
Andrew Sincock:Yeah, that's so that would be generally speaking, those microbes in that situation would end up in the slurry as opposed to into solid muck. And the two are vastly different.
Andrew Jones:Yeah.
Andrew Sincock:Um, I know always have this conversation, and I always get drawn on slurry, and I always say something I shouldn't, so I'm not going to.
Sarah Bolt:Can I say it for you? Go on. Slurry is not a natural product. We don't, a cow would not naturally mix urine and dung. So we're dealing with a product that is not natural when we have slurry. Is that the same?
Andrew Sincock:So what I would you've said it far more succinctly than what I would have. My comment would be, and one of the first things that Jan told me when I joined Agroton was if poo and pee were supposed to be mixed together, they'd come out the same hole. Which of course they do with chickens. Um and that had a conversation with somebody, oh, but I've got my cows in a field, 200 milking cows in a paddock, and the poo and pee is being mixed together all the time. I said, hang on a minute, that in itself isn't natural to start with. You know, that doesn't happen in nature. But also, when you look at a cow can do a poo while it's walking, but it stops to do a wee. And when it does a wee, it arches its back to the point where if it was in a field, if it was standing still, the poo and the pea wouldn't actually mix. So it is not a natural product at all. Anyway, um, microbes onto cubicles is an option, but generally speaking, with Pikachi, we're talking about it with deep bedded cubicles or solid manure. So that could be stable pens, it could be um lambing, calving, young stock, you name it. Anything deep-bedded, and that could be straw, wood chip, wood finds, paper waste, any organic matter.
Andrew Jones:Right, I was gonna ask, could it cause it because it just got to be straw, but it can be any organic matter.
Andrew Sincock:Any organic matter. The there are a few principles you need to consider with composting in general that also apply to Bakachi, and that's carbon to nitrogen ratio.
Andrew Jones:So going back, how are you applying it then weekly in that situation?
Andrew Sincock:Uh is it with a knapsack sprayer? There's guys that are applying it onto the straw before it goes through a straw chopper and gets blown into the shed.
Andrew Jones:Right.
Andrew Sincock:Uh Tim Downs, um, dairy farmer that most people are aware of, has retrofitted a misting system onto his straw blower. So when he turns a straw blower on, um I think it's a Teagle straw blower, flitches flicks a switch in the cab, that sprays microbes onto the nozzle so that it's onto the microbes is being blown into the shed. Right. Um Ben Taylor Davis has a misting system built into his shed, so set on an automatic timer. So once a day for a one minute, these misting systems come on and spray microbes across the animals onto the bedding and eat applying.
Andrew Jones:So it's applied as a liquid, then it's not applied.
Andrew Sincock:Liquid microbes applied neat directly onto the animal bedding before fresh bedding is applied. But it only needs to be applied once a week. So work out, and generally I'd say if you apply a ton of straw a day, for example, that's seven tons a week, you would apply 14 litres of microbes neat into that shed once a week. So part of the routine, if you're walking through the stock checking them, you could walk through with a knapsack spray on a Monday morning or a Friday lunchtime, spraying it on as you go quite easily. I generally make a joke and say, well, most farmers could do with checking their stock a bit more often and walking through a shed. You'll get in trouble for that. Well, I know, and it was because I had it drummed into me as a child that standing over a gate and looking at them is not checking them.
Andrew Jones:No.
Sarah Bolt:So you mentioned the carbon to nitrogen ratios. So we pick back up on that.
Andrew Sincock:Yeah, carbon to nitrogen ratio is really important. When it comes to composting, if there's too much carbon, nothing is going to break down. So think about the reason why we use straw for a roof material, for example, thatch. High carbon lasts a long time, doesn't rot, doesn't break down. You know, stack of straw in the shed will last a hundred years, no problem. Um, if it was high in nitrogen, i.e. lawn clippings, everyone can relate to lawn clippings, put that in a heap in the corner of a field or in the shed or in the corner of your garden, they're going to heat up and start rotting really, really quickly. So there's a difference. One is high in nitrogen, one is high in carbon, you need a balance of the two. And that comes back to the balanced diet that we talk about feeding ruminants, carbon, carbohydrates, nitrogen, protein. You need a balance of both, which is roughly 20, 20, 24 to 1 carbon to nitrogen.
Andrew Jones:I was going to say, it from that point of view, is there a diet that you think works better for producing Picassian?
Andrew Sincock:Probably straight farmyard manure of average consistency. So not we're not talking about your calving pens, um, or we're not talking about the the growers that you know in the off-farm that you maybe sped up once a month. Um, somewhere in the middle, just your average FYM. It's probably the most ideally suited feedstock. But if you want to get creative, you can. So you could add wood chip, for example, and adding wood chip and increasing the carbon to nitrogen ratio will actually promote the fungal populations within that organic matter to dominate because they've got a more pref preferred food source. If you apply poultry manure, for example, with more nitrogen, you're going to be feeding the bacteria a little bit more than the fungi. So you can manipulate it to suit the microbial populations that you want to promote and then apply onto the fields at a later date.
Sarah Bolt:I'm just picking up, so I'm coming at this from a soil point of view. I understand soil carbon nitrogen ratios, but hadn't really thought about them within pharmaid manure so much, and thinking about actually how you can manipulate that within pharma. So it's exactly the same as two, depending on those ratios as to whether we're promoting that bacterial growth or the fungal growth in exactly the same way.
Andrew Sincock:Exactly the same way. So it's talking about crop residues. Think about crop residues in the same respect. If you've chopping straw, for example, after an arable crop, you've got high carbon material. When that's being processed within the soil, it's highly likely that the soil organisms are going to be pinching nitrogen from your soils to then break down that high carbon material. So actually, a lot of farmers find the following crop after they've chopped straw, there's a nitrogen deficiency through that CN ratio.
Sarah Bolt:And that was why we always used to take the straw away, isn't it? Because we didn't want to use up that nitrogen.
Andrew Sincock:Take it away, add some nitrogen from your livestock, as in cattle, manure's urine, and then bring it back with a perfectly balanced CN ratio, which means it's going onto the soil and it can be processed really simply and easily, and you are then increasing the efficiency of that return of nutrients through the soil.
Andrew Jones:So if you've added this once a week, how long can it sit there? Great. In ten.
Andrew Sincock:Yeah. Generally speaking, we're going to say the winter is six months. So if your winter housing is six months, I would say you really need to muck it out after three. So we're saying we're aiming three. Three months is because some people are like every six weeks. You could push it to you could push it to four months, probably.
Andrew Jones:Yep.
Andrew Sincock:But I wouldn't want to go any longer. If you do muck out every six weeks, that's not an issue. Um the whole process would take two months. So from the day you apply microbes to organic manure to the day that that material is then ready to apply onto the land would be two months.
Andrew Jones:I'm just trying to think, as a kid, we were loose housed, covered yards, but it wouldn't work for us because we used to clean and bed out everything every day. Yeah. So that it's not going to work in that situation.
Andrew Sincock:So where was it being taken out and put?
Andrew Jones:Uh in the muck heap. In the muck heap. So if it's stored in the muck store for for I mean, the something like the calves might be, but all the others, whether it was heifers, dry cows, uh milking cows, were scraped and bedded up every day completely fresh.
Andrew Sincock:So if you were to take it and put it into a midden, for example, dung midden, yeah, there's no reason why that couldn't be your Bakashi heap. So every day every day you're taking it out, you're putting it into the corner of a shed, into a midden, that becomes your Bakachi. So you can add it to that material rather than making it in situ. So you can, it doesn't have to be made in situ, it can be done. Like I said, in situ is the easiest, cheapest, best way of doing it. Yep. Less hassle, less work. But there are other ways of doing it. So you could do it, it works in a straw for muck deal. If you're sending your straw away and you're getting the muck back, every trailer load that comes in, you can treat that. So yeah, it's flexible then in terms of how it's I've not found a farm yet where the system doesn't work. Or where it can't fit into. And it might just take a little bit of jiggery pokery to make that happen, but ultimately you can get it in the wrong way.
Andrew Jones:But it's not like it has to be um uh what's the word? Yeah, it has to be cleaned out and then you deal with it. You can literally do it in the shed as the cattle are in there, it doesn't have any effect or livestock are in there, it doesn't have any effect on them. It just starts doing its thing. Thank you very much, and gets on with it.
Andrew Sincock:There are some papers, uh, predominantly from Asia, which is where the microbes and the process sort of originated from, that suggest the inclusion of EM in this instance, which is effective microorganisms, but let's call it beneficial biology as a more general, wider term, yeah. Other products are available, obviously. Um adding beneficial biology into an environment actually reduces disease pressure. So this is the balance between good and bad microorganisms. And if we can populate an environment, so say it's a lambing pen, for example, an E. coli and watery mouth. If instead of disinfecting, where we think killing 99.9% of bacteria is a good thing, and instead what we do is we just promote that whole environment full of good bacteria, you don't give things like E. coli chance to establish.
Sarah Bolt:It's the same as in the other, isn't it, with mastitis that we have those, I can never say the word commenstruct. Can't say it. Commenstruate bacteria. Is that the right thing?
Andrew Jones:I'm thinking about our podcast with Eric, who basically said this is happening. Why don't you have the bacteria you want in there rather than just leaving it to chance? You're making sure you have the good bacteria. And you're effectively saying the same, there's fermentation, it's happening. Let's have the good bacteria, the beneficial bacteria, dominate rather than leaving it to chance as to which ones we have. It's competitive exclusion is the technical name.
Andrew Sincock:So you're out competing the bad guys by populating the area with good guys. We've done some work with our the microbes as a teat dip, and we compared it to iodine, and we saw that it was as effective at preventing mastitis as iodine. No better, no worse, as effective.
Andrew Jones:I'm guessing what you're saying is iodine is killing everything, good or bad, whereas this is promoting good.
Andrew Sincock:But the thing, and this is how I had explained to me, is you think about um this tabletop. If you clean it with your bleach, 99.9% of bacteria killed. Once that bleach is worn off, if the next microbe that lands there is, for example, E. coli, it effectively has an open breeding ground, has no competition, and can spread really quickly. So cleaning works well. And when I say cleaning, I mean traditional cleaning, disinfecting works well when you kill everything. If with your lambing Pens, you clean the pen, you clean the drinker, you clean the troughs, but forget to clean your wellies, and you walk into that environment and the on your welly is some E. coli, it's then got an open breeding ground. So that's the pre and I think for farmers that's a far easier ask to spray, to apply biology to ensure that there isn't room for things like mastitis causing bacteria, or even worse.
Andrew Jones:What about oocytes?
Andrew Sincock:Yeah, so I was thinking obviously crypto and ecoxy because they're very difficult to kill. Viral or parasites, no. Okay. Um, we looked at so one of the questions we always get asked with with Bakashi is weed seeds and worm burden. Yep. Weeds, no issue. We have good kill rate with weeds, that's very different. Worms depend on the life cycle. If the egg comes out the back of the animal and sits in the manure, the microbes will eat the I call it chitin, but chitosern within the egg shell, some of the microbes will attack and eat that, so it will kill the egg. But if it comes out the back of the animal living, won't touch it because microbes won't attack and kill other living things.
Sarah Bolt:And it's all to do with that niche within nature, isn't it? That though those microbes and bacteria are sharing that same ecological niche, and therefore they can't then jump into another ecological niche.
Andrew Sincock:No, no, it's nature's awesome. It didn't nothing in nature is done by accident, and I think that's what we forget. Nature's got a problem for everything is there for a reason, you know, there isn't an issue as such, it's just an imbalance.
Andrew Jones:It sounds very much to me, as I say, with a slightly single head, we're at the start of biological farming, really, aren't we? In terms of rather than using chemicals that we were told this is the answer, we're now going, right, we need to use the natural biology that maybe we would have used in the past, but didn't understand the science. But now we're starting to understand the science. We're then using that to benefit us in a way that we wouldn't have before.
Andrew Sincock:The one thing I want to say on that is I completely agree, 100% agree. The issue, and this is what I'm finding with grounds well, is the only people that make money from regen organic biological farming, using your term, which is a good one, are the farmers because they don't need products. Farmers are used to turning to a product, traditionally a chemical, whether that's a wormer or a fertilizer, they turn to a product to solve a problem. Whereas now we're talking about biology. Now we can supply biology in a bottle at a cost, of course, but what farmers need to be aware of is the fact that they can actually go and produce and capture their own biology from their own farm, which doesn't have to cost them a penny to do these things, whether it's Bakachi, whether it's to put it into the slurry, whether it's to you can create and capture beneficial biology really simply, really easily on your own farm at zero cost. So why aren't more people promoting it? Because nobody makes money from it.
Sarah Bolt:And that's the really big thing, isn't it? I I belong to a few sort of regen groups on Facebook and somebody put something on there about a product. And what's the barrier as to why farmers regenerative farmers don't use this product? And I'm like, because it's an amendment. If we're talking proper regen, we shouldn't need to kick start or add amendments.
Andrew Sincock:Nope. And that's why you don't see regenerative love it or hate it, the term not a big fan personally, but anyway, regenerative farming probably isn't more widely adopted because it carries some stigma, but also because it's not in the front page of the Farmers Weekly or the Farmer's Guardian. Because who's going to advertise in the Farmer's Weekly if nobody's buying a you know a chemical or a fertilizer? You open the Farmers Weekly, the only person that'd be advertising would be Clayden Drills, probably.
Andrew Jones:You know, how fertilizer how are you making money out of this then?
Andrew Sincock:We don't make money from Bakachi. Right. It it doesn't provide us enough of an income. We have other products that we sell. So we do rumen buffers, we do mycotoxin binders, we do bedding powders, we do silage additives. Um, we've obviously got the second company that does folio fertilizers and placement fertilizers. We've got a number in isolation, Pakashi as a as a product, as a microbe that we sell for making Pikachi wouldn't sustain our business for more than a week.
Sarah Bolt:So, in answer to your question as to why don't farmers harness it themselves, is there a risk in in um trying to harness these things? I'm thinking back to say, um thinking of farmers that um in the past I've worked with that maybe yogurtize milk to then feed to their calves over a period of time. When it works well, it works really, really well. When the wheels fall off, we've got bacterial soup growing the wrong bacteria and everything else. So is it a similar issue with trying to get the right bugs to make sure it does the right thing?
Andrew Sincock:Farmers are busy. And I some of them are busy fools, and some of them are genuinely busy. Um it it takes a bit of time, is the is the truth. It takes a bit of time. Now, farmers.
Andrew Jones:That's what I was saying. When you said, Oh, there's no cost, I'm sat there going, there's time.
Andrew Sincock:Time, farmers' time, which let's be honest, farmers don't value. They should, but they don't actually put a monetary value on an hour's time. Um, but that's what it takes. So if you were to Google um IMO, which is uh indigenous microorganisms, so that's IMO, where you can go and you can capture your own microbes from your own environment. It would take you probably two weeks to create a brew of your own microorganisms. Um, you can have uh you can wash rice. So rice contains an awful lot of lactic acid. You can make a lactic acid mix really quickly with some some rice.
Andrew Jones:What is it a bit like is it sourdough? People keep the starter just going and going. And there's stories of people have had it for decades or whatever it is, isn't there?
Sarah Bolt:What's the one with the Scoobies that you the fermented drink that you put? Is it are they called Scooby? What's that called?
Andrew Jones:There is like a like kefir or kombucha? No, I was thinking yeah, kombucha. Is the one I'm thinking of.
Sarah Bolt:I it's probably the the the the other one, the kombucha. Kombucha.
Andrew Sincock:So it all we'd say is is, and this is a common misconception, so I'm talking about soil biology and people turning to products. Now we supply microbes. Um, I'm not hiding that fact, others are available. The microbes that we supply, the microbes that others supply, aren't necessarily going to survive in your soil for very long. So if you take those microbes and apply them onto your soil, what's going to sustain those extra microbes that you've just applied? They're already microfluids. The food's not there, yeah, yeah. So applying them to the soil is almost a waste of time. But applying them to organic manures to inoculate that organic manure, and then applying those organic manures which are inoculated with the beneficial biology onto the soils means they survive and hang around and have a greater impact for longer in the soils. But it comes back to indigenous microorganisms. Microbes are multiplying every 20 minutes, bacteria roughly every 20 minutes, they multiply. So, how quickly can they mutate and evolve compared to humans, which take generations, obviously? So if we were to go and capture generations, it's just a lot quicker generations, isn't it? But it's it's if you capture microbes today from a soil, you put it into a lab and you brew it up and you make it into a product, you go back 12 months later, the microbes that you took have now evolved beyond the microbes that you have in the lab, despite the fact that they came from the same place. And that's because microbes are always they are microbes are as adaptive as farmers are. I think farmers are probably the most adaptive sort of individuals I know. They're so responsive and yet they're always told they don't like change. Well, they nobody likes change, but when they have to, farmers do exceptionally well. You know, they will always do what needs to be done and they'll find a way of doing farmers are very resourceful. I've always said that and find that cool.
Sarah Bolt:It's that genetics arms race, isn't it? That if you think about you know any any form of genetics and keeping up with predators or it's it was the survival of the most adaptive, not fittest.
Andrew Jones:So it just is adaptive. Do you want to step back? You said it's what two months was it for the um process to fermentation to take full effect, is it?
Andrew Sincock:Yep, yeah.
Andrew Jones:So let's say we've cleaned out after, let's say it's three months. We're cleaning out after three months, where do you go from there? What happens then?
Andrew Sincock:So if generally speaking, winter's six months long, the first three months of the winter you clean out, you put into a midden or onto a concrete pad in the corner of the farm or even in the corner of a field, do so, but then cover it with a silage sheet.
Andrew Jones:Okay.
Andrew Sincock:So you're continuing that fermentation process. Now, obviously, if it's been in there for three months. But you're changing it then from an aerobic to an anaerobic, aren't you? If it's so in the bedding, think about it, as the straw builds up, it's already the bottom of that deep bedded is anaerobic. So you're taking it out of an anaerobic environment, you're putting it into an aerobic environment temporarily before going back into an anaerobic environment. So that continues the fermentation process. I'll ask a question: would an oxygen barrier sheet be a better sheet? Yeah, probably. So we've we've looked at it and they approached us and they wanted to do some trials with us, and we said, well, I don't know that there's enough of a benefit for farmers to be spending the money on it. So what I would generally say is because it's an organic manure, farmers don't like spending money on silage, they're not going to spend much money on organic manures, is the general the sort of answer I think, really. But I think I always say last year's silage sheet to use on this year's Pikachu heap is perfect. If there's the odd hole in it, it's fine. It's not the end of the as long as it's predominantly if there's long as there's more sheet than holes, um, you're absolutely fine. So use last year's silage sheet. Don't go spending stupid money on it, because unless you get a really good seal on that sheet, you're still going to get a bit of wind blow up. I opened up one recently um with the Bristol and Avon Rivers Trust. We did a little demo on um Dutchy farm. And there was spiders, mushrooms, earthworms growing in underneath. So he'd put it onto a field, he'd covered it, he'd stopped the rain falling on it, so he'd reduce leaching, um, reduces losses, but had the interaction from earthworms, creepy crawlies from the soil that had actually come up into the heat, which was a really nice mix and created a really nice end product. So that's what I would do with the first three months worth of your organic manure. Yeah, the second three months of the winter period, just before the cows go out, um, that period of time, if you don't need to take it out of the shed, leave it in the shed. Right. Because again, deep bedded, the bottom of it is anaerobic. You could push it all up into one big heap and cover it in the shed, that's absolutely fine. If you don't want to touch it at all, and you just want to put a sheet over it in the shed as it is untouched, also fine, works really well. Um, and then spread it straight from there. If you can, if you can take it out of the sheds, into the dung spreader, onto the fields.
Andrew Jones:No, no different in how it's handled once you're spreading it.
Andrew Sincock:Once you've once it's been stored either in the shed under a sheet or in the corner of a field under a sheet, treat it just like any other organic.
Andrew Jones:But it's not leave it. You said leave it. Let's say it's cows go out, it sits there for a month, you haven't sheeted it in the shed. You'll be amazed how much it's dried out in that time period.
Andrew Sincock:I was gonna say, but the anaerobics already happen, it's still happening. The anaerobics happened at the bottom, you'll have a crust that obviously hasn't fermented on the top, yeah, not the end of the world. If you're gonna apply that onto grazing ground or silage ground, that will be an issue because that crust hasn't broken down. Yeah. But if you can apply it onto maize ground that's gonna be ploughed in for maize, a bit of a crust isn't an issue. So this is farmers say, Oh, do I have to sheet it? Do I have to sheet it? I'm like, ideally, yes, but there are some that refuse to sheet it and they just know that they're gonna get a crust, they're gonna have some leaching, they're gonna have some losses, but the center of that heap is gonna be great, and they're gonna put it onto arable ground where it doesn't matter if there's a few lumps that they have to go and kick around afterwards.
Andrew Jones:Yeah, exactly. It's being plowed in or whatever it is, whereas on grazed grass, you don't want that set on top because it just yeah.
Andrew Sincock:So somebody like uh Bill Harper, Harper's Feeds, would apply eight tonnes per hectare between cuts of silage from his Pikachie that's made with a sheet on it and won't have any contamination of that organic manure six weeks later when he cuts his next cut of silage because it's been broken down enough and taken into the soil quite quickly when it's managed properly. But if it's going onto arable ground and there's a crust, you could argue it doesn't matter quite so much.
Sarah Bolt:I'm I'm eight tons with six weeks, that is amazing, isn't it?
Andrew Sincock:Eight tons of organic manure applied after silage and then six disappeared by the time the next and that's and what we've seen is because it's pre-digested, the because the microbes that we're adding are pre-digesting that organic manure. Once it's applied onto the soil, those nutrients are readily available to the next sort of rung up that soil food web, that ecosystem that's going on. Microbes will always be the first thing in. Then you're talking about your protozoa, arthropods, then you've got earthworms all coming in. But if that first process is already done, as soon as it hits the soil, it's available to far bigger animals.
Sarah Bolt:So they're up there and they're grabbing it down and absolutely that.
Andrew Jones:So really, there isn't apart from maybe spreading those bacteria weekly, there isn't a huge extra workload to doing this, is there? It's not like you see some of these compost piles that are turned weekly or whatever, with huge great machines, etc. etc. I do believe there's an organic farmer was doing it as well. But in terms of that, I'm looking at it from the workload, it's not a huge amount. It is really apply it weekly, sheet it, and that's it. Yep.
Andrew Sincock:No additional equipment needed, other than maybe a knapsack spray that hasn't got Roundup in.
Sarah Bolt:That's probably a very good comment.
Andrew Sincock:If you put it into a canister that was used yesterday for spraying Roundup, it's probably not the best thing. But otherwise, you know, it and that's the thing. So when I saw the process when I first started, it was quite labor intensive. So you had to use the microbes, you had to apply seashell grit, which was a pH buffer, then you had to apply a clay mineral, which works as a nutrient binder to further stop leaching. Those things are all great, and there's a place for them, but that cost about 18 pounds a ton to treat. Plus, it was labor intensive. Nobody's doing that. Nobody's spending 18 pounds a ton on their organic manures, which RB10 RB209 tells them is worth maybe 10, 15 pounds a ton. Not happening. Whereas applying the microbes at a cost of less than a pound a ton, um, and that's all that's needed to be done other than cheating. Yeah, time and sheeting. Is not unaffordable. And the returns, so the the last work we did with Agri, looking at one of their i farms, we had a treated and untreated. The treated farm, the treated manure, which came out of the same shed, contained 15 pounds more NPK than the untreated.
Andrew Jones:And how much did it cost them for? Pound a ton. Pound a ton. So you're saying 15 to 10 return.
Andrew Sincock:Return. In that situation, that was an untreated pile which was taken out of the shed, put into the corner of a field in a heap and left, versus Bakachi'd made, microbes added, corn of a field, sheeted. Go back four months later, in this instance it was four months. The longer you leave it, the greater the difference is, obviously. Um, but after four months, it was £15 more in NP and K value in the Bakashi versus the non-treated.
Sarah Bolt:And that's a per £15 a ton.
Andrew Sincock:A ton. Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Bolt:So and a little bit of labor time within that.
Andrew Sincock:There would be, of course, some costs in that, but like I said, it works out at a pound a ton in cost if you're using Lashio's silage sheet. Um, you're mucking out a shed anyway. So that's a cost that's already there. The only difference is you've then got to put the sheet on it, um, which will take a bit of time and is a bit of a faff. I'm not gonna lie. People don't like sheeting a silage clamp, let alone a muck heap in the corner of a field in the middle of winter.
Andrew Jones:The way you've explained this to me, it kind of answers the questions I have. But why does it feel it's one of those products that sounds to me, before we've had this conversation, it's the whole point where we're having this conversation, it's a bit muck and magic. And pun intended. Well, it wasn't actually, but but you know what I mean? It's a bit, oh, it's a bit muck and magic, it's all you know, a bit of fairy dust. Whereas when you explain it in the way you've just done it, it seems like there's a lot of evidence there to say that it's not fairy dust, it's not muck and magic. There is real science behind this. Maybe you've already answered the question for your comment about you know not being a farmer's weekly, but why is there not more understanding, more acceptance, more knowledge out there in the general industry about this? There are obviously people that are, and I say I keep hearing it more in front of me, but it feels still feels like it's a lot of people don't know this. I think you're right.
Andrew Sincock:I think that's okay. And I'm up until Lisa joined Agriton January time, I think it was, I was the only one talking about Bakashi in the UK. I'm one person, I've got a few other things going on. Um, got a an eight-month-old baby, uh, eight months this weekend. Um, so there's a lot going on, and I I've not possibly been the best at at standing on top of platforms and and talking about it.
Andrew Jones:And I and advocating.
Andrew Sincock:Yeah, I I hate being thought of as a salesman. I hate-say, don't take this the wrong way, but you obviously have other people working for you as well. So that's yeah, so we've we're a small company, a really small company.
Andrew Jones:Uh, when I joined, there was uh because I know somebody that was trying to tell me about it, that was doing a little bit for you guys.
Andrew Sincock:There are now a growing number. There are now a growing number, and that's so we've got I think the approach I took when I first started was right, I'm gonna go, how can I have the most impact? How can one person have? So I went to the likes of Arla, I went to Defra, I went to the people that actually influenced what was going on on farm. They weren't interested. No, it's just a flat no, we're not interested at this point. Um, so okay, the next approach was to go to the bottom and create a bit of a groundswell of interest. Um, and that has grown to the point where when I first started with Bakashi, I knew everybody that made a Bakashi. In fact, I went on farm to help make every Bakashi heap in the first two or three years. Yep. Because I knew that if I didn't do it, and if farmers didn't do it properly, because farmers love to cut a corner, they'd go, hang on a minute, that didn't work. We tried it, it didn't work. Whereas I made sure it did work and then, oh, okay, we'll do it again next year because it worked. They saw it work. Now there are people that come up to me and say, Oh, we make Bakashi. Um I say, Oh, okay, uh, what's your name? Trying to figure out who are you? And I must admit, I don't know. So I I've gone from knowing everybody to knowing only a fraction of them. And we we can see whether Bakashi heaps are made across the country by the people that are buying the microbes, but we've also got people now that I know that are brewing their own microbes that are making Bakashi. Oh, we've made Bakashi, it works really well. Oh, brilliant, you know. What did you yeah, we go and capture a microbes? So there's a growing number of people that are doing that without me knowing as well. So that's another reason. Um, but also, again, farmers don't like change, and it is a waste product. And this I think is is this was sort of what I wanted to get to with my Nuffield scholarship was how do you value something that is considered a waste product? You know, we we call it shit and we treat it like it, you know, ultimately, it's a waste product, it's a headache, something we have to deal with to get rid of. The number of farmers that say, I leave it in the corner of my field to rot down over the winter months, knowing that they're reducing the volume, so I've got less to spread in the spring. It's an incredibly valuable product. Yeah. So how do you get them to change that mindset? The only thing that's really had any influence was in 2022 when the fertilizer price jumped 300%. All of a sudden, organic manures, instead of being worth £15 a ton, according to RB209 on NPK values, were worth nearly 50 quid. Well, hang on a minute. I've got a thousand tons at 50 quid a ton. I'd go and build a shed to put my fertilizer in. Maybe I should be building a shed to put my organic manures in. Plus, then you've got government schemes that are pin providing money for dung middens. Poultry manure now that has to be covered because of avian flu issues. So there's a growing number of things that are helping drive people towards Bakashi, but ultimately it's somebody selling some magic microbes, um, snake oil, and that's the skepticism. And I suppose because you can't see the bacteria, you could be selling fresh air as well as it goes. This is the one thing that still blows my mind that I cannot get my head around. Each milliliter of bacter uh microbes that we sell contains ten to the power of seven, which is ten with seven zeros on the end of it, microbes.
Andrew Jones:Yeah.
Sarah Bolt:So that's a hundred billion.
Andrew Sincock:No, uh I think that's ten billion. Ten billion per ten billion per millilitre of microbes. And you're putting on two liters per ton, which is just enormous. Like the the total number, I still can't get my head around how you can get so many things into something so small as a milliliter of liquid. And and you've got it's just and that I think is the issue is chemistry. We can see, you know, you apply um lime onto your soils, you can see the pH change, or you can analyze it, it's really easy to do. You don't get that with biology, not yet. We we're not science hasn't got to that point.
Andrew Jones:So it can be used on any livestock, so chicken, pig.
Andrew Sincock:Yeah.
Andrew Jones:I mean, we're obviously more promptly dairy beef, we're talking here, but it can be used on anything. Horses, dairy.
Andrew Sincock:It does, it does. So the the principles are carbon to nitrogen ratio and then moisture. So it doesn't work in lambing pens, for example, or um horse stables, because they're very generous with their straw, and understandably so, horses are very precious. Uh whereas whereas poultry manure, high nitrogen, that's really wet, high nitrogen materials. So you've got to take into account carbon to nitrogen ratio and moisture content. So if you've got stable manure and you've got next-door neighbours got some slurry, mix the two together because you've got some nitrogen, you've got some moisture, you can make a and you say it's not just straw, it's sawdust, wood chips, paper, any any organic matter.
Andrew Jones:Yeah.
Sarah Bolt:So that was going to be my next question. We've talked a lot about FYM, and we did mention slurry sort of somewhere in the middle of our conversation. What is there anything we can do with Bakashi and Surry?
Andrew Sincock:Slurry is a shitty product that we can make slightly less shitty, but it's still not a it's not a natural product, it's a toxic product by nature. We approached Arla about microbes. Kingshay have done a trial on slurry bugs and a number of different products, and they all showed some benefit. So there was a 20%-ish reduction in ammonia emissions, for example. So you're retaining nitrogen. Brilliant. There was a 20%-ish reduction in um crust, so you're reducing the amount of stirring needed. So there were benefits, but they're not as big as a 40% reduction through the use of sulfuric acid, for example.
Sarah Bolt:Yes, but sulfuric acid kills off all our soil barn.
Andrew Sincock:Is that I still can't get my head around. They did this in the Netherlands. They applied it onto a dairy farm that had slats, and they applied the sulfuric acid onto the concrete slats, and sulfuric acid eats the calcium in the concrete, and all the cows ended up in the slurry store. So it only works if you've got a earth-bunded or a metal tank, the slurry store.
Sarah Bolt:And what did the government give funding for? Acidification. I know, it's there's no joined up thing.
Andrew Sincock:But 40% reduction is a bigger number than 20%. And that's the quick win, the short-term.
Andrew Jones:I know somebody else that is incredibly anti that's whole using sulfuric acid that's coming out of Europe, and he's just it will kill all our soil biology. Absolutely.
Sarah Bolt:Well, that's the same as TSP and fertilizer use, you know, triple phosphate will kill our soil biology.
Andrew Jones:It's the government's next government's problem. It's all ours. What about a product that's um it's more a cubicle product that is paper but it has like lime and that added with it? How does that affect so lime I'm not a fan of?
Andrew Sincock:Yep. Um, especially not in cubicles, because the way in which lime is constructed, uh generally thinking about it, any product that if you're using it in a cubicle, most people put a bedding powder or something on there.
Andrew Jones:How do these sorts of things affect it?
Andrew Sincock:Lime, for example, uh you can look at it's been a while since I've done the calculation. I think for a ton of lime, you bog standard calcium carbonate lime that you put into slurry, you lose 440 kilograms of CO2. No, 440 kilograms of carbon, not CO2, carbon, and 220 kilograms of nitrogen. Because of the reaction that takes place, the carbon, the carbonate, sorry, calcium carbonate, the carbonate pinches a hydrogen from ammonium, NH4, to turn it into ammonia, NH3. Ammonia, obviously gas, goes into the atmosphere. So lime used on farm, not great for cow's teats, okay as a bedding product in preventing mastitis, but has a huge carbon footprint and will reduce an awful lot of nitrogen. We also then apply a load of lime onto our fields to adjust pH. We use it in the farm to kill biology, prevent mastitis. We put it onto the fields to address pH. It's also having an effect on biology in the fields as well. So I'm not a fan of lime, as you can probably tell. Um other bedding products, there's some better than others, is the ultimate truth of it. Um I grew up, my granddad told me the best there's three things you can do to prevent mastitis. Keep your cupels dry, keep your cubicles dry, keep your cubicles dry. So then applying something like a liquid biology to it just goes against what I was taught as a kid, and of course, you believe what your granddad says because he's the god. Um the first mentor you have, and you believe everything he says. So I I would question why we need a bedding powder on things like um cubicles and mattresses, for example. Do you need to put sawdust on mattresses? Does that make any difference to the comfort of the animal?
Sarah Bolt:I would question you're actually providing a food source for the bacteria and actually making potentially making the cis the making it worse, potentially. That's one of the issues. If there's bad bacteria there, you're giving them something to eat.
Andrew Sincock:I mean, I was I can say to answer your question, I've always been told that on mattresses having that medium does make it more comfortable because the meat uh the mattress is relatively uh unlike sand, they can't manipulate a mattress, whereas if they've got sawdust or something on top, then they they've got that medium to and that that I would from a human perspective, and of course I'm not a not a cow, um, you know, you do the the knee test where you you go down on your knees onto a cubicle, and whether you put a bit of sawdust on there or not, to me, it doesn't make any difference. But I appreciate that, like you say, there's that settling you can sort of move a little bit easier with a layer of sawdust on the mattress. Um, but I I would argue that yes, if you're not careful, how many cows, how many farms have you gone to where the breastboard is too far forward or too far back, and not all of the cows are uniformed, and then some of them are got milk leaking onto the onto the cubicles, then others that are pooing onto the cubicles, next one comes along, lies down, and others are you know, there's I think there's a lot of things that farmers can do from a management point of view better without needing to turn to a product. I think the products are probably used to to sort of try and cover some of the management failures on farm, which is probably a little bit controversial. Just about to say that's a bit of a controversial uh comment there. Not not to mention any farmers at all, just generally speaking, and I appreciate some won't be. I I work for the Wheels Brothers.
Andrew Jones:Um did you ever visit Yeah? I did go down for is it the first was it the first two sales or something? I remember in 2010, was it the first one?
Andrew Sincock:I think I've I go on a lot of dairy farms. They're up there.
Sarah Bolt:It's an amazing cow palace.
Andrew Sincock:Like I uh for animal the attention to detail that's why I get so I have a very critical eye when I go onto dairy farms because I've come from the Wills Brothers, where you could literally walk around the sheds in the cubicles or outside the cubicles with your shoes on and still be able to jump in your car at the end of the day and not have to worry about wiping your feet. Um, there are not many farms that can say that, and then you've got the uniformity of the cattle that they've got, everyone is just right size for the cubicles. It's it's the next level. Um, so I am highly critical. Um, but I it's possibly because I've seen what can be done, not necessarily saying that they're making any more money or they might be making less than they're having to sell. There's things going on, but who knows what the sort of ins and outs of it are. But I think there's there's a lot more farmers could do from a management's perspective before they start worrying about the products that they're using.
Andrew Jones:Well, I'm looking at the time because we have been here and I could really keep chatting for quite a while, but um I have learnt a lot from this. But uh Andrew, any last words of wisdom?
Andrew Sincock:Keep it simple. Everybody, myself included, wants to make things complicated, and generally it's because they're trying to sell something. And I think if if you as a farmer are talking to somebody and you're a bit confused, you generally tend well, they sound like they know what they're talking about, it must be right. I'd probably question it. If it doesn't make sense, if it isn't simple, if somebody can't explain something to you in a sentence or two, it's probably not right for you. And don't turn to products first. Look at yourself, look at your management practices. What can you as a farmer do for free to improve things first before you turn to a product? And if you do turn to a product, make sure it's bucashy. Which of course you can make without buying any products, Sarah.
Sarah Bolt:I was gonna say, other than Andrew, you'll never make a salesman speaking like that. However, I think you know, there's a lot of wisdom in what you've just said, and I think, you know, from a regenerative point of view and just putting my you know, that re-regen hat on, that work when when farming and nature work in in unison, that's when we've got this cracked.
Andrew Jones:Yeah, definitely. Yeah, I just like to say thank you because I've learned a lot, and that was the whole point of this. I say the whole point of this podcast really is to is to learn, and other people just get the happen to have the chance to listen in on the conversation that I probably otherwise wouldn't get the time of day with some people, but you know, um, it's been a fantastic uh hour or more than an hour now talking to you and learning a lot about Bakashi and actually taking away some of that, I suppose, muck and magic idea I had about it in terms of it's actually quite easy to do. There's not the in my head, I suppose I was thinking about the turning and that people do with composting, and you're not doing that, it is literally apply it, put it in the corner, put a sheet over it, sit and wait, and that's it. And and when it's that simple, it's like oh okay. As I say, it's why isn't there more being done about this out there when if it's making the benefits that you've said, like you know, the 15 to 1 on a recent trial, then it's like well, that automatically just says, Why aren't we doing this? Um, you know, that kind of return on investment is huge. Um so no, I'd like to say thank you. It's been an eye-opener, as I say. I I do find the whole regen, and I'm I know some people might find this a bit controversial, a little bit wild west, and there are people pushing things that to me don't maybe have the science yet behind it. And I suppose I want to see the the hard facts. Um, but it's definitely open my eyes a lot more to this, as you say. And I think I thought myself back along, I'd sort of forgotten it, that I think yeah, we're at the beginning of maybe biological farming. Um uh and as you say, we're we're only sort of going back to some of the old ways that were, but maybe we have the better understanding of why they were now than what we did in the past. There's nothing new under the sun. Not really, no, exactly, exactly.
Andrew Sincock:And I do I and on that point, you're absolutely right. And I think livestock farmers are regen farmers, they don't have to be labelled it. You talk about regen is focused predominantly on arable farmers, because if you take Gabe's principles, integration of livestock, well, that's a big tick for livestock farmers. You know, diversity, well, they've always got a grass lay in there. So again, diversity is there. They're doing a lot of the things that makes regen farmers, but they're just called farmers. Why can't we all be called farmers again? Dairy farmer, arable farmer, mixed farmer. Yeah. Thanks very much.
Sarah Bolt:And just use it, using what nature intended us to use.
Andrew Jones:100%. So, really, uh, other than that, I'd just like to say thank you very much for your time. So, but otherwise, it's a goodbye from me.
Sarah Bolt:Cheery bye from me.
Andrew Jones:Thank you very much. Cheers, thank you. Thank you for listening to the Tune the Cut Podcast, podcast for the UK dai industry, brought to you from the southwest of England and listened to around the world. Now for the really boring bit, I'm afraid, the legal disclaimer. The information provided during this podcast has been prepared for general information purposes only and does not constitute advice. The information must not be relied upon for any purpose, and no representation or warranty is given to its accuracy, completeness, or otherwise. Any reference to other organizations, businesses, or products during this podcast are not endorsements or recommendations of Tune the Cud Limited. The views of Andrew Jones are personal and may not be the views of Tune the Cud Limited, and the views of Sarah Bolt are personal and may not be the views of Kingshay Farming and Conservation Limited and any affiliated companies. For more information on the podcast and details of services offered by TuneTheCud Limited, visit www.tuneTheCud.com. Thank you and goodbye.