Green Councillor Kevin Pressland is a passionate campaigner for nature and the natural environment. His understanding of the threats faced by the natural world is based on expertise gained from a 40-year career in horticulture, garden design and sustainable land management:
I am sure the wider public would like to understand more about farming/horticulture, where their food comes from and the multiplicity of management considerations that could be made pending on topography, markets, ethicality etc.
I believe the public are interested to know more if the opportunity is given to them. Countryfile, Rare Earth and Farming Today are great programmes but there are many more ways to accrue understanding on these issues.
As Minnette Batters, the retiring National Farmers’ Union (NFU) President has expressed with exasperation, food producers are not being valued (or words to that effect). This government seem to be intent on watering down the food standards of production by enacting trade deals that could damage farming and the standards of food production in the UK.
Our lowest UK standards are designated under Red Tractor logo, we need to do better than that and I know many farmers do, and I for one applaud them.
Farming could flourish more with the right support mechanisms, but with all farmers/landowners participating as they have the privilege of this land. Sadly bureaucracy, I suspect, is deterring many and some land tenancy agreements can be constraining.
Projections are that only 50% of farmers are likely to take up the new Sustainable Farm Incentive and/or Environment Land Management Scheme and Landscape Recovery Schemes. Yes, farmers have often been pulled in negative ways by bureaucrats/politicians and that’s caused bad policies that have been forced sometimes on farming/horticulture.
Stephen Briggs, a farmer and Nuffield scholar, who enacted agroforestry in the form of alley cropping on his farm in the Cambridge Fens shows there are ways forward that have a multiplicity of positive benefits. He says: “Nature doesn’t ‘do’ monoculture – it stacks different elements in time and space.”
He introduced agroforestry on his farm two decades ago, utilising the “up and down space” and reaping the rewards of improved diversity and soil health.
In this video ‘Next Steps with Regenerative Agriculture’ – Stephen Briggs – Agricology (just published), he shares some of the benefits it has brought his business, along with steps he believes need to be taken to convince more farmers to give it a go. In the video he shows how farming can be more financially remunerative.
The following resources provide practical tools and information to help boost the three ‘bs’ on farms – biodiversity, the soil microbiome and your business; from establishing perennial wildflower areas ( How to Successfully Establish Perennial Wildflower Areas – Agricology )
Green manures( Perennial green manures – an Innovative Farmers webinar – Agricology ),
Putting IPM into practice A Practical Guide to Integrated Pest Management – Agricology and
Applying soil health principles on a larger scale Soil health at scale – Agricology .
Coventry University is carrying out some research investigating if small-scale, diverse polycultures (meaning two or more crops grown on the same plot at the same time) can contribute to biodiversity and nature conservation in the wider landscape.
Three reports Cranfield University and UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology have produced for Defra on ‘Evaluating the Productivity, Environmental Sustainability and Wider Impacts of Agroecological compared to Conventional Farming Systems’ are now available and make for some interesting reading. Check them out here Science Search (defra.gov.uk).
Food production in the UK matters and we need to encourage the direction of travel to regenerative farming that includes organic, permaculture, agroforestry, minimum tilth systems away from glyphosate use to undersowing and oversowing systems.
Farmers/horticulture need support to achieve this whole transition. We need more initiatives like Innovative Farmers www.innovativefarmers.org a collaboration with farmers practically on the ground with scientists collecting the data to determine efficacy.
Heres hoping more Kent and Thanet farmers will consider the above. I know many people would be supportive of their courage to make these changes, it’s in all our interests after all.
