GWCT News Blog

It is important that, in addition to rewarding farmers and estate managers for planting new hedgerows, any policy should support them to look after what we already have and improve and enhance existing hedgerows.

Joe Stanley reports from his new home in our great countryside – the Allerton Project on the Leicestershire/Rutland border at the delightful village of Loddington.

Defra has launched a consultation and we would love to hear your views before we respond.

The GWCT welcomes the scale and scope of Henry Dimbleby’s National Food Strategy – there can be no doubt that our diets, the way in which we produce our food and its impact on the environment are all inextricably linked.

Whilst farming policy has looked to embrace a more sustainable, practical future, the approach to wildlife conservation, as demonstrated by the latest pronouncements from Defra, seems to be ‘stuck in the mud’.

Seems a simple enough question, but when it comes to public policy it is more difficult. The current focus on climate change centres predominantly around carbon, with biodiversity rendered a supporting role through nature-based solutions. This raises the question: is biodiversity a good in its own right, or is it a supporting service that underpins delivery of a broad range of ecosystem services?

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.

On the face of it, we should welcome the research published in Science that improved crop performance can be achieved in hard soils through gene modification. Whilst soil compaction does restrict crop yields, the solution is more complex than to just adapt plant genetics. Soil health is in decline generally and compacted soils cause a number of environmental problems too.

Farmer Time is an ongoing connection, where the farmer and their class link up for fortnightly video calls looking at what is happening on the farm and how it relates to the school curriculum.