Blogs

Alastair Leake, GWCT Head of Policy, explains more about a project to establish a Hedgerow Carbon Code that benefits carbon storage and biodiversity.

Compared with their colourful companions, moths often escape the attention and certainly the affection of all but those with a passion for insect life. 

Thirty years ago today, I drove from my then home in Hampshire to Loddington in Leicestershire to conduct a night-time spotlight count of brown hares. That was the start of thirty years of data collection on what was to become the Allerton Project research and demonstration farm.

On 19th & 20th January the team at GWCT’s Allerton Project was delighted to welcome BBC Countryfile for two days of intensive filming, with the 320ha Loddington estate acting as the ‘hub’ for an episode that was broadcast on Sunday 6th February 2022. You can watch it on iPlayer here >

As farmers across the country focus their attention on the Big Farmland Bird Count it’s time to reflect on how songbird numbers on our own farm have changed since the Allerton Project started thirty years ago.

At our demonstration farm, the Allerton project, we have undertaken research to understand what constitutes a healthy soil and how to measure constituents such as soil moisture as well as research considering the role of soil in crop production “in the round” i.e. from both a sustainable and profitable perspective.

In the wake of COP26, climate change is something many of us are thinking about – and rightly so. Following COP21 in 2015, 195 nations committed to try to keep the global average temperature no more than 2°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, aiming for less than 1.5°C of warming. You might then be asking, why 1.5°C?

The crop drill has been busy here at Loddington, with farmers across the country relieved to experience a ‘normal’ autumn drilling season for the first time since 2018 – or at least a ten day window into which frenzied work has been committed!

It is a time of change at the GWCT’s Allerton Project, as summer gives way to autumn and the focus of research shifts again for the upcoming winter of both data collection and ongoing analysis.