A YORKSHIRE farmer has been named the first Grass Weed Manager of the Year.

Richard Hinchliffe, of Bank House Farm, Rawcliffe Bridge, near Goole, impressed judges with his long-term strategy to eradicate black-grass from 160 hectares which the family acquired 11 years ago.

The approach included fallowing most of that land in the first year to help deplete weed numbers.

Spring linseed and spring beans were then grown for seven years to break the autumn black-grass germination cycle. Only shallow cultivations were carried out, to avoid ploughing buried blackgrass seed back to the soil surface, coupled with spraying off black-grass in stale seedbeds before sowing.

Winter break crops of oilseed rape and beans were only introduced into the rotation three years ago when 99 per cent black-grass control had been achieved.

Mr Hinchliffe said: “We’re in a very fortunate position in that we can do everything ourselves so the attention to detail we can put in is amazing.

“Although it wasn’t economic, we introduced linseed and spring beans because we took the longterm view.

“A few years of pain is a blink of an eye in terms of a lifetime of gain.

“We haven’t ploughed anything in ten years. We’re completely minimum tillage. The thing with noninversion tillage is the soil has got to adjust to not inverting. Now the worm numbers are back up and the soil is healthier.”

The competition was organised and judged by Syngenta and co-judged by Dr Stephen Moss, of Rothamsted Research.