Farming beyond the average year: why resilience must shape crop nutrition

For generations, farming has worked around seasonal variability. But recent years have brought something much more difficult to manage: increasingly pronounced swings between prolonged heat, dry periods, intense rainfall, waterlogged ground and narrowing windows for fieldwork.

The challenge is no longer simply producing the best crop in a favourable year. It is creating farming systems capable of maintaining performance when conditions are anything but favourable.

That places resilience at the heart of modern crop production.

Resilience can be difficult to quantify. It may mean preserving yield during drought, maintaining soil structure after heavy rainfall or helping plants continue to access nutrients when conditions restrict biological activity. Increasingly, it also means reducing exposure to volatile input costs without compromising crop health.

Whatever form it takes, resilience begins below ground.

Soil cannot be treated as an inert growing medium

Much of the agricultural conversation around resilience understandably focuses on machinery, crop genetics and chemistry. All have an important role. But the biological condition of the soil ultimately influences how effectively crops use water and nutrients, and how well they tolerate stress.

Biologically active soils support nutrient cycling, root development, moisture retention and soil structure. Beneficial bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, earthworms and arthropods form an interconnected system. When that system functions well, nutrients become more accessible to plants and soils are better equipped to cope with environmental pressures.

Without the right soil biology, even a well-managed crop may struggle to fulfil its potential. The implication is significant. Crop nutrition cannot be considered solely in terms of what is applied to the plant. It must also account for the biological system responsible for nutrient availability.

Resilience must be built before it is needed

It is tempting to view resilience as a response to a difficult season. In reality, it must be developed over time.

Once soils are waterlogged, crops are suffering from drought or roots are poorly established, the opportunity for corrective action is limited. The stronger strategy is to establish the biological and physical conditions that help soil and plants withstand those pressures before they arise.

This is where soil improvers such as Sea2Soil can contribute. Produced from responsibly sourced fish by-products, Sea2Soil contains naturally balanced amino acids, fatty acids, macronutrients and micronutrients in a bioavailable formulation. Rather than operating simply as another source of nutrition, it feeds soil biology and supports the processes through which nutrients are cycled and made available to crops.

The objective is not to prescribe one rigid system. It is to help create healthier, better-functioning soils across conventional, regenerative and organic farms.

Evidence must come from real farming conditions

Resilience is too important to become another loosely defined agricultural claim. Solutions need to demonstrate their value across different soils, cropping systems and management approaches.

Pelagia’s research programme has therefore tested Sea2Soil under farm and independent research conditions for more than five years. Participating growers have reported greater biological activity, maintained or improved yields and, in some cases, reduced requirements for synthetic nitrogen fertiliser. Farmers have also observed benefits during periods of drought stress, including improved canopy cover, crop growth and plant verdancy.

Independent research is helping to examine the mechanisms behind those observations.

Work at the University of Nottingham recorded increases in earthworm abundance, organic matter, soil moisture and porosity in non-replicated trials conducted during 2024 and 2025. The treated soil showed an additional 1.85 million earthworms per hectare—five times the control—alongside a 35.8% increase in soil organic matter and a 1.2% increase in soil carbon compared with untreated soil.

Research with NIAB has also explored resilience to biotic pressure. Greenhouse trials found reductions in cabbage stem flea beetle feeding damage of 32% on cotyledons, 90% on leaves and 59% on stems following Sea2Soil treatment.

These findings reinforce an important point: soil resilience is not a single outcome. It encompasses physical structure, biological activity, nutrient availability, water dynamics and a crop’s ability to tolerate environmental and pest pressure.

Paul Davey, Lincolnshire farmer and Arable Innovator of the Year 2021, said: “Sea2Soil is now the base for all my crop nutrition. I use it on all my combinable crops, herbal leys and cover crops. I’ve seen the positive effects of the product. Under dry conditions, which caused many challenges in maintaining plant nutrition and managing crop stress, after applying Sea2Soil in late spring I saw visible benefits. It stimulated increased canopy cover, allowing optimal growth through this period of drought stress, leading to higher yields that season. Two 10 L/ha applications on spring beans in a dry spell improved growth and removed chlorotic symptoms of stress, significantly improving the verdancy of the plants.”

Farmer James Walgate initially used Sea2Soil to feed soil biology rather than the plant itself, applying it at drilling at a rate of 5 L/ha, with a carbon source, seaweed and humic acid. Having had good results as a soil-applied seed drench, he now uses foliar applications as well in the early spring, also at 5 L/ha. He said: “We are building up the soil biology so it can play a role in feeding the plant and keeping crops healthy.”

Applied at a rate of 6 L/ha with humic acid as crops are drilled, Jonathan Hodgson in East Yorkshire has aimed to improve soil biology. In addition to using the product for early foliar applications in certain crops: “I put some onto the oilseed rape in the autumn to see if it could help with flea beetle control and as an effective deterrent.”

The future will reward adaptable systems

No product can remove the uncertainty from farming. Nor can soil health prevent every consequence of extreme weather. But uncertainty makes it more important to build systems with a greater capacity to absorb pressure and recover from it.

That means moving beyond the pursuit of maximum output under ideal conditions. It means considering how soils perform when rainfall is scarce, when fields become saturated or when crops face simultaneous environmental and biological stresses.

“We see Sea2Soil as far more than a natural source of nitrogen, but as a soil prebiotic that leads to a healthier soil environment, an increase in microbial activity, and more resilient crop health. This research gives us vital understanding of how Sea2Soil delivers on yield responses and helps refine our processes to produce a product which reduces reliance on chemical inputs, is environmentally sustainable and is easy to use by farmers,” added Dr Geraldine Fox, Technical Director, Pelagia.

In this context, resilience is not an environmental extra. It is a practical business consideration.

Healthier soils can help growers use nutrients more effectively, establish stronger root systems and maintain crop performance through difficult conditions. They may also support lower reliance on synthetic inputs and create soils that are easier and less costly to work.

The farms best prepared for the coming years will not necessarily be those built around one particular label or farming philosophy. They will be those that understand their soils, measure changes over time and invest in biological function alongside conventional crop management.

The average season may be becoming harder to define. Farming’s response must be to build soils and cropping systems ready for a wider range of possibilities.