Across many regions of the world, Conservation Agriculture (CA) techniques (or Conservation Tillage), which incorporate less intensive soil cultivation, have be

Across many regions of the world, Conservation Agriculture (CA) techniques (or Conservation Tillage), which incorporate less intensive soil cultivation, have been adopted to reduce production costs and to improve sustainability. Irish farmers have been reluctant to adopt CA techniques because of concerns about grass weeds and crop establishment in a mild, wetter climate. CA practices can enable rapid spread of grass weeds such as sterile brome or blackgrass, particularly in a mild climate, and herbicide resistance is now reducing options for control and will force an increased use of non-chemical control options. While an integrated approach to weed control, combining cultural (stale seedbeds, crop rotation, sowing date manipulation etc.) and conventional control methods, offers scope to reduce the grass weed problem, farmers are uncertain about the effectiveness and implementation of these methods. This project addresses this problem by setting up a network of farms to co-design, validate and demonstrate the best grass weed control measures and consequently, will remove a key barrier to the adoption of conservation agriculture techniques. The structure of the project maximises farmer to farmer knowledge exchange.