Blogs

Research shows that allocating just 2.2% of a farm to flower-rich habitat more than doubled the density of bumblebee colonies, which in turn boosts productivity.

This summer is the first season of fieldwork for the Framework project. The project has helped support the setup of 11 Farmer Clusters across various European countries and is looking at the impact of landscape-scale management on farmland wildlife over a five-year period.

Help us better understand farmer and grower attitudes and issues regarding pollinator management by taking our short survey.

This Thursday (20 May) marks the fourth annual World Bee Day. Given that more than 75% of the world’s food crops depend on pollination, it’s remarkable that this has been so long in the making.

The use of pesticides is hotly debated, but arguments around it are often absolute and lack nuance. The government derogation for farmers to use the neonicotinoid thiamethoxam on sugar beet this year (dependent on evidence of potentially yield threatening levels of pests) created lots of headlines, plenty of outrage and, at the time of writing, 50,597 signatures to reverse the decision.

The original blog we wrote has, not surprisingly, generated some comment, particularly with respect to the suggestion of a derogation on its use on kale in wild bird cover.

A new paper from the GWCT’s Head of Farmland Ecology, Professor John Holland, has been published in the journal Insects, discussing Conservation Biological Control – a component of integrated pest management that allows more sustainable farming, using insects as natural predator control to reduce the reliance on expensive and potentially damaging pesticides.