A farm near Dereham has become Norfolk's first Monitor Farm – joining a national knowledge-sharing network aiming to increase the profitability of businesses growing cereals and oilseeds.

In a competitive world, sharing information may not always seem the best business strategy.

But to meet the complex demands of modern agriculture, co-operation is seen as a way of improving yields, cutting costs and boosting profits – both for individual farmers and the industry as a whole.

And now the cereal-growing heartlands of Mid Norfolk finally have a representative in a knowledge-sharing network which aims to improve farming practice by focusing on a working case study: the Monitor Farm.

Swanton Morley Farms, based at Hoe Hall, near Dereham, is one of nine new Monitor Farms announced by AHDB Cereals and Oilseeds, a branch of the levy-funded Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

The expanding network bring together groups of like-minded farmers, asking them to share critical performance details to be discussed and evaluated by the group, encouraging business improvement through the adoption of new technology and practices.

The Dereham Monitor Farm is the first Norfolk business in the network – its closest equivalent being the Stowmarket Monitor Farm in Suffolk, run by Brian Barker and his cousin Patrick.

It is close to the geographic centre of the county, and typifies the food production in the area, with a long rotation on sandy clay soils which includes wheat, barley, oilseed rape, beans and sugar beet.

But it also typifies the area's perennial problems of blackgrass weeds, how to ensure effective drainage, and a continual need to cut costs.

Swanton Morley Farms manager Simon Brock said: 'We can be a bit insular doing our farming. With the AHDB Monitor Farm, we get an appraisal of the farm and it will help us to look at what we are doing, where our strengths and weaknesses are, and hopefully get critical ideas from other farmers and look at our benchmarking. I liked the idea of that, so I went for the interview.

'We ticked a lot of their boxes – we have the crops they like, the wheat, barley, rape, and we also grow beans and a bit of forage rye. The soil type is not particularly heavy, but it is not particularly free-draining either. And we have got the usual problems with blackgrass.

'The farm is very typical of this part of Norfolk, so a lot of our problems will be relevant. We are not in the Fens where they have all those lovely peat soils to grow brassicas, and we are not out in the east where there is all the livestock. This is a typical combinable area.

'I am hoping it will stimulate some useful discussions. I want to use it to analyse my business and see what I could be doing more efficiently by benchmarking, and people can all come up with ideas. If the ideas are good, people can take them away and use them on their own farms. Hopefully it will make all our businesses more profitable.'

Mr Brock said the AHDB would carry out a professional appraisal of the operation before the Monitor Farm's launch day on July 6, followed by a series of meetings during the winter – with specific, locally-relevant topics to be decided by a farmer-led steering group.

'A lot of it is about getting farmers to come along and talk about these ideas so they can all mutually benefit,' he said. 'From my point of view, it is getting other people to see what I am doing and what we could do better, whether it is different cultivations and weed control methods, or whether I am spending too much on chemicals.'

Mr Brock, 53, was born in Swaffham, and studied for an agriculture degree at Nottingham University before working with farm business management and advisory services company Velcourt from 1984 until 1998, when he took up his role at Swanton Morley Farms.

Including its contracting operations, the mixed farm, owned by James Keith, is responsible for almost 1,000 hectares of arable cropping.

It employs a policy of minimal cultivation with rotational ploughing, with grain storage and marketing mostly done on farm. In addition to the arable land, the farm includes areas of environmental stewardship, woodland and grassland, which is used for a small suckler herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle.

Mr Brock acts as the farm manager, agronomist, and stockman. He said: 'I do my own crop walking, which is quite unusual. The fact that I do my own agronomy helps, because I am fairly in tune with what I am spending and how I am spending it.

'I am hoping the Monitor Farm will build up a loyal following of people who are generally interested and want to co-operate together. I would like to have people who are really focused on it and interested in it to make it work. It will be nice to have people regularly contributing, and to monitor how it grows.'

In the first 12 months of the AHDB's Monitor Farm project in England and Wales, more than 2,400 people took part, with topics covered including fixed cost analysis, crop establishment, cover crops, grain storage, marketing, weed control, soil health, nutrition, precision farming and benchmarking.

Tim Isaac, regional manager for AHDB Cereals and Oilseeds in East Anglia and interim head of regional development, said: 'These new Monitor Farms will fill the gaps in our geographical coverage, making it easier for more growers to get to meetings near them.

'Businesses across the country have already benefited from the existing farms, but growing the network to 24 will allow the programme to better reflect a range of localised conditions and help a wider cross-section of growers.

'The whole idea is that it provides an opportunity for like-minded farmers to come together in a facilitated environment where expert speakers might be provided with a subject of their choice. That is the key thing, that it is farmer-driven, and it has to be what that farm group wants to talk about. We have a series of meetings with the Monitor Farm as a case study.

'The underlying objective is to find areas where costs can be saved. We use the Monitor Farm's costs to illustrate where improvements might be made, under the principle that other farmers might be able to carry out similar improvements to their own farm.'

Although the Monitor Farm programme focuses on cereal and oilseed crops, the diversity of the businesses involved – including the mixed arable and livestock enterprise at Swanton Morley Farms – might allow it to be extended into other sectors.

Mr Isaac said: 'The nine new farms are mixed farms, so that gives us the potential as we go forward to bring in colleagues from other sectors.'

Each of the new Monitor Farms will hold an open launch day this summer before harvest. The new Dereham Monitor Farm will host its event on July 6, and is keen for as many interested farmers as possible to join the group. Anyone interested in attending should contact AHDB Cereals and Oilseeds regional manager Tim Isaac on tim.isaac@ahdb.org.uk.