With increasing attention on farming’s role in addressing climate change, there’s a growing demand for farmers to demonstrate how they are reducing farm emissions while increasing carbon storage on their land.
But amidst a breadth of conflicting advice and often confusing data collection, getting started on the process can be daunting. What is clear, however, is the need for farmers to urgently begin integrating climate mitigation and adaptation into their businesses.
This session brings together members of the Nature Friendly Farming Network to discuss how farmers can deliver ambitious actions for climate change, bringing numerous benefits to both their businesses and nature.
This session will demonstrate how farms can:
– Begin to understand their carbon footprint
– Take action while avoiding trade-offs for biodiversity and profitability
– Use climate adaptation to become more resilient to the impacts of a warming climate
The discussion will provide an opportunity to hear first-hand from farmers who have already integrated climate change into their businesses and to hear the wealth of benefits from doing so.
Panellists:
David Lord, arable farmer
Debbie Wilkins, mixed farmer
Sam Beaumont, livestock farmer
Phil Carson, Nature Friendly Farming Network
This webinar is produced in collaboration between the Nature Friendly Farming Network and the National Trust.
So the science is clear we are facing a climate and ecological crisis over 40% of UK species are declining and our soils and Landscapes have been degraded by previous agricultural policies that incentivized intensive food production in 2019 the UK government committed to reaching Net Zero by 2050 under the
Climate change act this target is necessary to reduce the emissions which are causing climate change with agriculture as the fourth largest contribut contributor to UK emissions it is no surprise that it has come under the Spotlight when it comes to climate change mitigation due to previous management of the land the resulting
Degradation of our natural environment has left Landscapes less able to sequester and store carbon and ecosystems less resilient to global warming with increasing attention on the role of farmers in addressing climate change there’s a growing demand for Farmers to demonstrate how they are reducing Farm emissions while increasing
Carbon storage on their land but amidst the breadth of conflicting advice and often confusing data collection getting started on the process of monitoring farmer missions can be daunting what is clear however is the need for Farmers to urgently begin integrating climate mitigation and AD and and adaptation into their
Businesses this session brings together members of the nature friendly farming Network to discuss how farmers can deliver ambitious actions for climate change bringing numerous benefits to both their businesses and nature this session will demonstrate how Farms can begin to understand their carbon footprint take action while avoiding trade-offs for biodiversity and
Profitability use climate adaptation to become more resilient to the impacts of warming of a warming climate and then we’ll finish with a discussion which will provide an opportunity to hear firsthand from farmers who have already integrated climate change into their businesses and to hear the wealth of
Benefits from doing so so I’d now like to introduce you to our first Speaker which is Phil Carson Phil is the U nfn UK policy lead supporting Farm members to have their voices heard in key policy decisions prior to joining the NN Phil was a senior policy off officer at rspb
And before this he worked as an environmental adviser to farms in County Down Northern Ireland Phil also co-hosts the podcast week from the chat so I’ll hand over to you now Phil for your presentation perfect thank you very much l i will have a go at sharing my screen and start my
Presentation can you see that okay yep we can see that perfect okay so thank you very much for the introduction L I’m Phil I’m the policy lead for the nfn and I’m just going to very quickly go through a presentation um on a piece of work that we delivered
A couple of years ago which was supporting Farmers to Baseline their own um carbon Footprints but also marrying that up with um biodiversity assessments on their Farm as well to try and identify areas where you can deliver deler um benefits for nature and climate together but also to identify potential
Risks in um in terms of tradeoffs in both those areas as well so I’m going to go through that and I’m going to um yeah give a bit of an overview I suppose of the the benefits and the risks of trying to undertake carbon aiting so L’s
Already covered this um in yeah in in really good detail but I’m just going to go through the context in terms of of what we’re operating in and we have I suppose imperatives to address climate change on a range of different levels so we’ve obviously got the the climate act
Which is setting um a legal imperative to deliver Net Zero by 2050 but we also have um a moral obligation to to address global warming not just for ourselves present day but other people around the world who are more affected and also for future Generations as well the other
Thing we also have to look at is the economic harm of not addressing climate change and the costs of an action are are grave and we really really need to get a handle on this but within that too we also need to look at biodiversity and nature loss um and the potential risks
That um will will result if we don’t get a handle on that in terms of food production in terms of profitability in terms of our resilience to climate change because both of these are are really linked there’s a lot of focus on mitigation but we also need to look at
Adaptation as well and quite often we focus on addressing climate change but we know that a level of global warming is already baked in and we need to develop um I suppose ways of coping with that and that comes down to to everything but especially in terms of
How we farm and manage our land and we’ve got projections in terms of certain areas of the country really struggling to to kind of continue on in terms of businesses usual based on current global warming scenarios as L mentioned agriculture has a really crucial role to play in addressing some
Of these problems and doing so in ways which um yeah try and capitalize on co- benefits and avoid tradeoffs and in terms of our ability to produce food in the future and to to continue with profitable businesses we we really need to get a handle on both of these issues
Um the picture is on the right so this is just I thought was quite interesting it’s um a Met Office piece of work which looks at what the weather forecast could be in 2050 and as you can see yeah there’s there’s pretty severe consequences in terms of um yeah how we
How we adapt to that and then as we know this winter we’ve had had really significant flooding as well which um is is a direct result of climate change but also points to the need to adapt to it as well so with that and that focus on agriculture there has been growing
Attention to how individual Farms can reduce their own emissions and can assess where they are and one of the key things within this space has been the development of a range of different carbon calculators that all try and provide a baseline of your ghg emissions at the farm level some even go to
Looking at sequestration as well and these are a really important and useful tool in terms of yeah I suppose putting your foot into the the kind of climate sphere and really trying to understand what you can do and what’s in what’s in your control as well obviously we have
Emerging markets for for um for carbon which um yeah are are going to be requiring um upto-date data collection and and forecasts in terms of reduction carbon sequestration and storage as well so that data collection and building robust ways of doing that is going to be really important too but one of the
Things I really wanted to to kind of hone hone in on in this is that we have um an imperative to address climate change but we’ve also got an imperative to address nature loss and to do so in ways which um don’t conflict with each other and in this space forming is
Really really key and we have a number of on-farm nature-based solutions that can help Farms both mitigate against the the climate crisis but also adapt to it as well and I think this this image on the right hand side kind of demonstrates how we can manage landscapes in ways that
Make them more resilient and and and help deliver both of those those objectives um but we can also look at things in a very isolated way and if we focus too much on one rather than the other or focus on certain strategies which don’t take into account the potential trade-offs within that space
Then we we can incur I suppose disc benefits or negatives as a result of that so it’s that need to look at the whole picture within that too so that kind of points to the project that that we delivered and yeah the aims within that so this was a
Project that worked with a number of farmers across Northern Ireland um to try and understand what their their Baseline carbon footprint was but also the value of the business in terms of its its B University provision to and we wanted to assess as suppose the strengths and weaknesses of undertaking
Carbon auditing and some of the the I suppose the potential risks but also the opportunities in terms of rolling that out on a wider basis and also to look at some of those um yeah I suppose recommendations to try and address some of those trade-offs as well so we worked with 35 different
Farms from across Northern Ireland and these were representative of a range of different sectors so we had um Lan beef and sheep we also had opland systems we also had jry systems and then we had some arable systems and mixed ones within that as well the carbon
Calculator that we used was Agri cilk and that was based um on the fact that it is widely used in a Scottish context and we were advised that it would be the most applicable and most suitable to use in in our study within that we also undertook basic soil testing um to
Understand Asos the nutrient levels of soils but also to get an understanding of soil organ carbon um and then on top of that we delivered phase one habitat survey so that was um a walkover survey undertaken by a trained ecologists to try to identify priority habitats on the
Farm um which would provide nature value there was no species surveys within that as well um following that we put together quite a basic I suppose overview report which demonstrated or or outlined the the carbon footprint um and then also the results of the phase one habit survey with some basic
Recommendations in terms of what could be delivered to improve the biodiversity value of the land we also delivered um a follow-up meeting with all the farmers involved in the project with advisers from agricul as well to give an overview of what their carbon footprint data would show them and then also alongside
That potential strategies to um lower Emissions on that front as well so I’m just going to go through some of the suppose the interesting things that we found with within the study itself and then some of the the overarching kind of results within that too and the first
One that I think really struck out to us was um yeah decisions that are used within the carbon calculators can paint very very different pictures depending what you’re what you’re measuring and one of the key points within that was this relationship or difference between carbon um yeah I suppose carbon output
Per hectare so the tons of the kilograms of carbon um or carbon equivalent per Hector on the farm versus the number or the level of um carbon output per kilogram of um output so say for example per kilogram of beef you would have um an equivalent outage in terms of
Emissions within that as well and what we find within this is that this tool very much focused on the data on the right hand side so it was the primary focus which I suppose um looked very much at maximizing efficiencies in terms of production and what we find was that
Farms that were generally um more intensive in nature and probably it would be fair to say had less nature value in many cases did quite well in this score so I suppose the more efficient they were in terms of production um the better that they did this didn’t look at total carbon or
Total um I suppose greenhut gas output of the farm so the total carbon footprint it was just a metrix of a metric of efficiency the one on the left hand side so it tended to put um more extensive systems in a more favorable light so those systems that were
Generally associated with um grazing and Upland environments for example and they did better in this one but tended to do very poorly on the other and in some cases these Farms had a very very low carbon footprint at on its total but would perform very very badly in terms
Of the level of output so it just really pointed to us in terms of the the choices that are made within um within the carbon accounting and I think we can touch on this a little bit more later some of the other bits and pieces that were were interesting from our
Perspective were the levels of I suppose nature value or average nature value on the farm and this was I suppose not a conventional way of trying to um demonstrate this but habitats were generally class ified into high value and that was generally um semi natural habitats such as acid grassland um yeah
Mary grassland Petland things like that there was medium value which is was generally um put forward as semi- improved grassland dense scrub things like that as well and then low value was generally associated with um yeah I suppose improved improved pasture that was um yeah I suppose receded and was
Rece receiving nutrients and things like that as well as supp artificial nutrients and then we also looked at the kind of average level of habitat provision on a on a farm scale and you can see the block up between between those what I would say was this was an
Average and there was quite a variation between different different Farm types and then also geographically as well so I suppose the western part of of Northern Ireland um tended to do better in terms of that level of biodiversity provision too but it just pointed out some some interesting Trends within that
As well so this here is just a bit of an overview of soil organic carbon um and you can see again there’s quite a large variance in terms of those levels so you’re looking at some very very pity soils and then some um some soils which have I suppose yeah pretty pretty low
Levels of um organic carbon within them as well and this was really interesting because a lot of the farm businesses that we were working with had never actually received soil testing like this before and it provided quite a useful insight as well um also just the variant
In terms of pH level so you’re seeing some some very very acidic soils not so much in the I suppose on um yeah the kind of calcaria side of things or the alkaline soils um which which we generally expect where where we are on the western side of things as well with
A lot of RF and then so um I’m just going that gives a bit of an overview of the results and now I’m just going to talk a little bit about the experience itself um for any anyone yeah thinking of undertaking similar projects or who’ve been involved
In them anyway um so from our perspective this was a really really useful project but it was quite a Time intensive intensive project in terms of data collection and also in terms of delivering the surveys and things like that so it might be something that proves challenging in terms of rolling
Out on a on a large scale um I suppose one of the key takeaway messages from us is an audit really really provides a snapshot but it’s generally based on averages and algorithms it doesn’t provide the very detailed overview of what your carbon footprint actually is and we’ve heard stories of different
Carbon calculators all being used on the same farm and coming out with with very very different results but that principle of I suppose looking and providing a Baseline and using that to measure progress and inform action is is crucially important and how you do that
And and what you do next is is more important I suppose than the Baseline baselining itself um as I mentioned before we saw really big variation between different regions but also different systems too which I think points to the need to to not have a one-sized fits-all approach to to trying
Trying to address um climate change through changes in a in land use and changes in agriculture as well in terms of habitats assessments so they were they were timec consuming as well but they provided really use ful information to the farmer and from our perspective we’re really really key in identifying
Some of the risks and tradeoffs um which could result from a very very narrow focus on greenhouse gases and one of the things that I just wanted to to point out in that respect is yeah the potential risk to Nature if you focus on a very yeah what would we say kind of
Carbon tunnel vision point of view and that idea that um the Holy Grail is just to maximize efficiency and and really di down the level of emissions per per unit of output for some systems that is going to be be really appropriate and it’s going to work really well but for others
It’s not going to be the case and this is an example of a farm that’s um operating within an Upland environment so it’s a it’s a beef and sheep system um it’s got a range of different habitats on it so it’s got um yeah kind of acid and neutral grasslands it’s got
A range of semi-improved grasslands but it’s also got a lot of priority habitats within that too large parts of the farm are actually designated as a as a protected site so um yeah the equivalent of a trip si in this in this space and are managed through an Agri environment
Scheme but what we found was whenever this went through the calculator it performed very purly in a in a in in a carbon context and then whenever we went through kind suppos the soil testing and things like that from it to the recommendations from nutrient management
And I suppose from from the audit would really be pushing for for um yeah Improvement and maximizing efficiency in that space which doesn’t necessarily impact the priority habitats here because they’re all mapped and some of them are designated but from our perspective could undermine the opportunity to actually move towards I
Suppose more extensive grass and management and potentially making some of those semi-improved areas and species Rich over time so there’s a missed opportunity in the best case in the worst case if those protected habitats aren’t properly mapped then there’s a real risk to their integrity too the
Other thing within this is like grazing is really really important in in this landscape and and for these systems and the risk is that a focus on a very narrow Focus just on greenhouse gas emissions will disadvantage these systems and you may see a focus more on
Massive land use change as opposed to continuation of of that kind of sensitive grazing for these habitats as well so it’s it’s just drawing attention to to the RK of being um very focused on one thing and not the whole so to sum up our perspective on this would be that um
Yeah if you’re focusing just on one thing you’re probably going to incur significant negative impacts on other priorities that you you have to deliver as well carbon auditing is really really useful tool but it has its limitations so some of those that I mentioned before
But there was others that we find in too but it’s it’s a really really useful en camp be useful baselining tool but it needs to be linked up in our opinion with other things as well so that includes nature value but also other values as well within that um one of the
Key things within this is just adaptation and not just focusing on mitigation but how can you create a landscape that is resilient to change and and and is adaptable to Future circumstances and then finally one of our main findings was just that need for support and advice so for many carbon
Auditing is something that is new it is something that is potentially um difficult to navigate and there are a lot of trade-offs within that if it’s if if it’s if your actions aren’t aren’t well informed and um yeah there’s risks within that too so advice and expertise
In that space is is really key as well so that’s a bit of an overview of the project and really ke to hear about some of the Farms that have been um implementing some of the things that we’ve been talking about in in action thank you
Thanks very much for that Phil that was a really excellent kind of overview of some of the pitfalls of um potentially using um carbon auditing systems on their own out of context of of kind of The Wider um situation on farms so um we’re now going to move on to our second
Speaker of the night which is our first farmer David Lord who will share us his experiences um with kind of mitigating and adaptating adapting to climate change on his farm so David Farms 750 hectares of combinable crops in a Family Partnership on diverse oil Types on the
North on the Essex Coast his farming system revolves around soil conservation and regeneration using cover cropping diverse rotations minimal tillage and direct drilling to reduce inputs lower costs and improved biodiversity on the land half the farm area is owned the rest um tenanted or contract farmed the farming business has Diversified to wind
Farm fishing lakes holiday lodges and building LS David supports dependent science and farmer Le decision making co-founded tendering Farm cluster is an Essex nfu combinable crop sheen on our England Steering group so I will now share um David’s presentation for him so let me just check I think it’s this
One hopefully you can um see that now David thanks you that’s actually the last slide oh is it right okay let me go back I don’t know why it’s gone straight to that one many there we go right thanks lty hi everyone um thanks to Phil for that
Overview of of carbon auditing um bl’s just done a very good introduction so um most of this first slide is done but um we have actually done a carbon audit um on our farm here um and unsurprisingly as an arble Farm it’s pointed to fertilizer as being uh the largest of
Our uh of of the cause of our emissions um since we did that audit which was about eight years ago we’ve managed to reduce fertilizer use by about 30% um so I’m sure if I did one now um it would it would show us as as being
Better off but uh they are um they are timec consuming they’re worth doing um to give you an overview but um as Phils said it’s it’s really uh an indication of what you need to do um on the farm to reduce emissions and and what practical
Steps you can take so as lty said we’re um uh we’re we’re an arable Farm here on the Essex Coast um our rainfall per year is 605 mil um so we’re one of the driest areas in England um which has its challenges uh we do grow um some
Potatoes uh and some onions on some of our lighter land which uses irrigation um so that in itself I suppose is is one W to gating climate change storing the water um L if you could do the next slide please so um with carbon auditing being one
Thing I think how we respond to climate change on our own Farms is probably uh a more pressing matter individually um and this rather complicated table on the right is I I just put together all of our rainfall figures since um 1987 um and just highlighted the the
Wetter the wetter months um and the dry month so the wetter ones are the darker colors and the drier are the lighter colors um and what I actually found was that Winters for us are getting wetter uh and the growing months of the year so April
To um June it’s getting drier um so that for us is a challenge because we we generally water is our limiting resource um when it comes to the summer months um and how we uh deal with that really is um is what I’m going to talk about in a minute um
The temperature extremes um we’re actually quite lucky here on the coast because uh when we’ve been having these really high extremes of temperature um certainly last year we were seeing a sort of five or six degree um difference between ourselves here and even just 10
12 miles in land so being near the coast was was beneficial then um uh in terms of sea level rise we do actually farm right down to the sea level uh to the Sea we’ve actually got land below sea level um sea level rise is an interesting one I I was trying to
Find some figures on on how it’s changed and the mo the only figures I could really find was that it isn’t really changing which I’m was surprised at but um it is rising ever so slightly but not not to a great degree yet but with in
Terms of our sea defenses um what we are seeing is an increased frequency of storms um and that’s where the threat comes to our um to our land is uh if we get a a storm surge um and and high winds um when all the things align with
The Moon being in the right place and the wind being from the right direction we can see a storm surge which can drive water um it up the creeks and and top over the the sea defenses um luckily that hasn’t happened to us yet but I’ve
Had um friends further up the coast who have been topped um and and that risk is there um there really isn’t much we can do about that we’re relying on the environment agency to maintain the the seaw wall um uh so yeah that’s that slide next one please
Ly so the solution as I see it for uh for mitigating climate change for for Farms really it it centers around carbon unsurprisingly um getting carbon back into our soils and a great little stat I came across uh last year is that one hour of sunlight produces 1.4 kilowatt
Hours uh of energy per meter which is 14,000 kilowatt hours a hectare um which is a huge amount of energy and if we can Harbor that energy um that’s a issue good sunlight if we can Harbor that and um use plants uh to use that energy and
Convert that into carbon and sink it into our soils then that um that can only be a good thing um if the if we’re doing that with feeding our soil microbiome um that in itself is freeing up nutrients that would otherwise be unavailable um and at the same time
We’re improving our our soil structure um maintaining our soil structure as well um and residue plays a huge part in our in our system here um we try and leave as much residue on on the surface as we can um it in in hot periods it cools the soil it’s amazing sometimes if
You on a really hot day you go and put your hand on a bare bit of soil and it’s really hot but underneath a bit of residue it’s amazingly cool and things are still running around and doing stuff underneath that residue despite the Heat and it’s also conserving moisture um
Which for us is important in the summer months when we’re trying to sew our cover crops um it can quite often be very dry uh so that little bit of moisture that that protects can help get help get them going conversely when it’s really wet um as it has been for us as
It has been for everyone this Autumn uh when we get heavy rain it um it reduces rain splash so we don’t get the uh the the surface run off the The Muddy Waters um which can um drain some of the best bits of the the soil uh and um it
Reduces the the impact of um of runoff uh and then the residue itself slowly gets Incorporated by by worms it’s amazing actually within about six eight months um they pulled most of it most of it in um in terms of cover crop mixtures we’re using um a pretty diverse mixtures
With radish mustard buckwheat fetch um vicilia Clover what else we use sorghum all sorts of things really um a bit of a serial element with with volunteers that are there and we fit them in between our our growing crops as as as as often as we can basically our
Our shortest cover crop would be eight weeks between Harvest and an Autumn sewn crop um our longest one can be six months um and in terms of cropping uh we also try and have a really diverse crop rotation um just to reduce risk really because if you get a a wet Autumn like
We’ve just had that’s going to put um make it challenging for your winter crops uh and then we we live and hope that we’re going to have a kind spring um which means you know the spring crops might help us out a bit more than than
They normally do um and then the other uh side of this which which Phil touched on and um our latest speakers are going to talk more about is is the impact livestock um on soil and it’s something that we we are um it’s a work in progress for us to get livestock onto
Our land um we were Dairy Farmers until the late 90s so it’s not Beyond uh beyond our skill set but uh um it’s something that we have tried with sheep um and uh we use some straw for muck situations but um uh getting the cattle back in the land whether it be grazing
The cover crops or actually with a a two or three years lay um would be really useful and I think that would really supercharge getting carbon back into the soil um and as I say carbon is you know it’s it’s it’s the Hub around which we’re trying
To farm because it’s uh it’s providing that resilience to the to our system um which will help mitigate the the effects of of climate change uh next slide loty please um but underpinning the success of of this operation is is drainage and water management and I think Debbie’s going to
Talk a bit about this as well but from our point of view we’re we’re fairly flat um where we are in in essic and we’ve got mostly heavy soils so we use a mo a mold drain system which for those that don’t know it’s uh uh you put a
Drain with stones on top um about uh 28 inches in the soil with about six seven inches of stone on top and you pull a machine which is that one in the middle there a mold drainer through that at 90 degrees and it makes a channel in the
Clay um for the water to run along and then it trickles down into that into that drain and it’s a really efficient way of of draining um draining our our heavy land um that’s the image on the right which is the the uh perville backfill uh and then on the left you’ve
Got the the system um where you where the water table comes up and then you’re draining that away to stop that uh from affecting the affecting the crop um drainage is is something that is absolutely essential for making our systems work making our farming resilient um it’s often been overlooked
And it’s something that we are trying to go around um we’ve got drainage systems on our farm which date back to the 1940s 1950s um and they are breaking down so we are going around investing in drainage to try and improve um uh try to improve our our resilience on our farm
Um and the combination of drainage and uh um the cover crops and all the other things that we’re doing the SS are healthier uh so they they hold more water you know that there’s more air in them a healthy soil has a lot of air in
It and so we get when we get these heavy rainfall events uh they’re like a sponge they can absorb the water um and hold it and uh and reduce the uh the flooding um flooding events Downstream um and if we if we don’t have these systems play if if they’re left to
Degrade what happens is the so profile fills up the water and as soon as you get heavy rain it’s already saturated and it runs straight off uh so there’s um you know it’s it’s quite quite an important thing that’s not talked about as much by feel
Um that I think is all for me I think there is one more slide um is a lot of yeah no it’s just yeah so yeah look forward to some questions I hope that sparked a bit of bit of interest um it’s uh yeah it’s a a good subject and I
Think that the only thing I’d say in parting is that I’ve found that talking about carbon um quite often carbon is a proxy for biodiversity for nature the things we do for carbon are also good for nature so it’s a two-way thing thanks ly thanks David that was really
Interesting um always really good to hear kind of different Farm perspectives and especially from an arable farmer and kind of especially the area that you are which is um very affected by drought um and also um the recent wet weather as well as it’s really interesting um to
Hear what you’re up to on your farm so we’ll now move on to our second farmer of the night and that’s Debbie Wilkins um Debbie Wilkins has had um a very varied career um where she has worked for a corporate Food Giant uni lever as a research SCI specializing in proteins
And ice creams and spreads um before moving back and helping to run her family farm which is in guire and and she has a passion for regenerative farming um and I’ll let Debbie unlike David where I introduce his whole Farm I’ll let Debbie explain a bit more about her Farm
Sorry I was having problems with it can everyone hear me it wasn’t the didn’t like me trying to screen I’m just going to try to screen share so hopefully so hello thank you for the introduction Lotty and I think I’m going to cover some of the things that David’s
Already said but a lot of them are pretty important so I’m quite happy to to go back through them again um so um a little bit about me um as ly said I farm in gler Shire we Farm about 950 Acres it’s a mixed Dairy beef and arable
Farm um and we’re in the seven Veil between Gloucester andsbury we milk about 180 cows carving all year round we keep all the carves um for beef or replacement taking the beef through to finishing um we have a lot of permanent pasture most of which is in the flood
Plane um last month at the height of the um floods we had about third of the farm underwater um one of the top left picture is some of our Fields um yeah about three weeks ago um we um try to graze as much as possible using rotational and MOB
Grazing and focus on soil health and nature friendly farming um I’m a pilot farm for ARA regender um and I’m trying to do things to improve the farm as much as possible but it’s very much a journey and we’re not there
Yet um so as I said um I am to farm in a regenerative way but it’s very important that I’m producing food and also making a profit um you can’t do the former without the latter um the focus is on soil Health um and I think we’re trying
To you know we are I think we are reducing greenhouse gas emission and requesting carbon but um for me that’s a byproduct of how I farm rather than what I’m trying to do when I’m farming um so we very much try to use the five principles of regenerative farming to
Improve the soil Health um and for me these will improve the soil organic matter I see soil organic matter is a dynamic thing rather than just a um thing that you store in the soil um and it improves the soil function and improves the ecosystem surfaces such as
Your water infil infiltration and your Dr resilience as well as um improving plant growth with reduced inputs so I see it it’s a positive Circle if we get it right we reduce the inputs improve the soil allow more organic matter which means less inputs needed for the plants
To grow well they put more organic matter into the soil and so we can reduce the inputs further and hopefully it’s the um win-win situation so things I try to do is reduce the disturbance on the soil so whether that’s um using less fertilizer um trying to I’m trying to
Use folop feeds rather than bagged fertilizer um making use of the manure I produce on farm and composting that um or whether it’s reducing sprays particularly eliminating fungicides and insecticides or whether it’s reducing wormers to help the worms in soil and also the um dung beetles and also
Reducing tillage so um if you get carbon in there you don’t want to burn it off by too much tillage although I’ve got heavy clay soils and I haven’t been able to reduce tillage completely because otherwise I can’t get seed in the ground um the other thing I’ve tried to do is
Diversity so whether it’s diversity and rotation um multispecies cover crops like David was talking about or um herbal lays with mixtures or even my um species Rich Meadows which have a huge mixture of different things growing in them um again livestock is very much part of the farm being a mixed Farm um
We graze cover crops um put manure compost onto Fields so livestock very much integrated into everything and living Roots I’ve tried to have something growing in the fields at all time I see the plants as these solar solar panels collecting sun’s energy and they’re converting a lot of that sugar
Into ex states that they’re putting down into the soil and increasing the organic matter down there um and keeping the soil covered so whether that’s um using um crop residue like David was talking about but I see in kind of the livestock sense is not gracing everything down to
The max leaving um longer covers and um even if I’m Gra in cover crops only taking kind of 50% of it and leaving um something there to protect the soil so um I have been doing carbon footprinting um with ARA about the last five years now it’s part of my milk
Contract and I have to do it but they only look at greenhouse gas emissions um and not sequestration and I feel this is kind of excuse it um but it has to be um a simple system to fit all different types of farms but um it does Drive um towards more
Intensive systems especially as it’s kind of done on a liter of milk so higher yielding herds will have a lower carbon footprint um and I think this misses the um the biodiversity and ecosystem services that less int intensive systems bring um I had a ara audit on Monday this week
And the inspector challenged me about um the age of first carving of some of my heers um suggesting that I should reduce it and that I would reduce my carbon footprint um he suggested that I didn’t graze the heers pre- bullying and kept them housed to increase the growth rate
Um and I do um I have been wearing some of these animals and I do a rotational grade I found that I get a about .9 kilos daily life weight gain over the last couple of Summers um and I know I could probably get a higher growth rate if I
House them but um that was going to be a higher cost um and I feel that they’re going to be animals that I want to graze and I want to um yeah I want them to start off grazing and not be a high system and so it’s very much um
Yeah the system can push you in a direction that might not fit everything you want to do on farm and I think um there is a lot of things depending on what system you use and I went to talk recently about um GDP and GDP star difference kind how you account for
Methane which has a big effect for ruminants um because the main greenhouse gas from my carbon footprinting is methane from the ruminants so um the less cars I’ve got the better my greenhouse gas um um levels are um so the other thing I wanted to say was about um
Grants um and so things like ffi I I tend to look to see what I’m doing on Farm um and then see what grants fit for that rather than the grants pushing me to do something for example I’ve not used insecticide quite a few years now
So it’s quite easy to have the SFI option of no insecticide I have some herbal lays um and I’d like to put in more so the SFI on herbal lays is definitely the way I want to kind of go and so yeah this slide is just to
Remind me to talk a little bit about kind of the nature on the farm and how that I feel is quite important so I feel like the trees we have on farm and the hedges they are a great way of requesting carbon um but also um improving the environment of the cattle
Whether that’s shade or browzing um improving the soil um I’m told about the micro oal networks standing quite a few meters from the Hedge and improving the um the soil and the plants around Hedges um and things like um I have quite a lot of species Rich Med
Um and they’re very diverse and the you know when I’ve had s tests I’ve had up to 22% carbon organic matter in some of those fields um but also they for me they’re very resilient with my flooding I can’t really stop the river 7 coming over and filling my Fields with water
But these Meadows have done that for many years um and they’re resilient and they come back um so they have you know for me they have great nature they also produce food and hopefully with um the new Countryside steart options with payments for them um I’ll get paid for
Them as well so that be a win-win um and just generally um having nature on Farm brings me joy and is great for mental health and for me it shouldn’t all be about figures um I think that’s all for me thanks very much deby that was really
Inspiring it’s it’s lovely to hear about you kind of fighting back against the power of uh carving um age and things as well so it’s it’s just it’s really interesting to hear kind of how you see the benefits of nature as well kind of as a positive just for mental health as
Well as kind of sorting out your carbon and everything as well so we’re moving on to our final speaker of the night um so we’re it’s Stam from galb farms in Cumbria he Farms with his wife CLA on her family farm near sasher in the Lake District and as before with Debbie I
Will let Sam introduce himself and his farm hi there thank you yeah thanks very much I’ll just share my screen go is that working all right yeah that’s looking good cool yeah so um this is where we uh where we’re lucky enough to live and farm it’s my wife’s family farm um and
We’ve been here for uh seven years now um so her grandfather bought it in 1970s um he farmed there till the late 90s and then after he died it went over to being um grassl um when we first started we were kind of emulating what cla’s Granddad
Did really and we had a flock of swelled LS we were breeding mu gimmer LS and we were using lots of fertilizer I have to say we were spreading fertilizer about three times a year um and we were cutting a lot of grass to make um
Silage um using quite a lot of like insecticides wormers um pons to stop the sheep getting um Fly strike um and none of this was really um working out for us actually to be honest economically we were really struggling but we were also conscious of um climate
Change we’re conscious of this kind of poly crisis of not only carbon problems but you know biodiversity crisis uh soil degradation um and yeah we we just wanted to to feel like we were um doing something to help rather than kind of contribute to to the problems we were also we felt quite
Keenly the sort of need to to perhaps restore and um to help biodiversity particularly on a kind of marginal Farm um and you look back at the history of the farm this map goes back to 1695 and it shows our farm in a more of a kind of
Um well it shows that it was a wood pasture essentially uh and we’ve even got kind of evidence of of you know from 1695 to you know three 3 400 years later um a lot of the trees were cut down or were kind of overg grazed um perhaps um and so we
Felt like partly what we needed to do was to restore this but at the same time we wanted to make sure we were producing food because we’re you know acutely aware that we need to feed ourselves and we need to yeah we need to make sure we’re eating really healthy food at the
Same time um and a really important part of our kind of context is um where we’ve got a young family um so we’ve got two children um and yeah we wanted to make sure that our farming was fitting in with with our children make we had time for them and
Time for each other sorry to cut across you um really sorry the slides aren’t on presenter mode so I don’t think they’re advancing as you’re going through oh right oh there um how do I do that um let me see if you go up to see slideshow on the top
Bar yeah and then do from current slide current does that work that should do um should show the family I think it might just be a way bit slow yeah currently we’re on a a a slide with some soil on it um okay I mean I can talk about that
Because that’s uh it wasn’t the one that I was on but as part of um our kind of Investigations we did some soil soil sort of pits digging holes looking at soil structure um and a lot of our lower fields in particular were were very compacted um with kind of short
Yellowing unhealthy plants um in some of our Woodland areas and areas that had hadn’t been cut or grazed you know the the soil was just completely different although like the underlying conditions were the same so we wanted to we wanted to move our farm and and our soils
Towards you know to be much more healthy than they were um I don’t know if this is is that moved on now it hasn’t do you want if you stopped sharing perhaps I could try and share your because I’ve got your presentation as well should I try sharing it would that be yeah
Yeah so I I’ll stop sharing yeah let me try and share Now now I’m trying to find your presentation sorry everyone where were we up to Sam um if you go yeah that one this one well yeah so I was talking about the soil and I was talking about how sort of unhealthy um it was looking and you know
We think this this is because of all the fertilizer and the cutting and compaction that we were causing um and if you go to the next one it’ll explain what we do now so yeah this is what we so after we sort of r Ally um radically change what we’re
Doing um we decided to actually sell all the Sheep um and instead focus on on cattle and allowing the grasses to grow long and to keep the cows outside and essentially what we do now is we we use adaptive multipad of grazing so with electric fencing to to
Keep our cattle in one group and try to move them um every day um from kind of a mid April through to December and this means that we get lovely long rest periods uh and and the root you know root depth of our grasses is getting better and better and it also
Means that the that the sort of upper part of the farm is uh rested uh and gets a chance to kind of fully recover so when we come around into December we put the the whole herd goes up into into the wood pasture uh and they stay up
There until kind of February March um when we start bringing them down and um getting ready to start sort of mob grazing again as it were and another really important thing is in that wood pasture it means we get uh we get lots of natural regeneration of trees so
We’re getting lots of alers um popping up um particularly in the in the water courses um so which is really important because not only is it pulling down carbon um but it’s also help to stabilize the water courses and reduce uh kind of runoff um because obviously
We’re you know right next to the lake so if you go to the next slide Lotty so yeah this is a typical kind of Summer um summer sort of move so we try to leave the grass quite long quite a long residual um and we go try to yeah
Just keep everything in one group and focus on contentment making sure they’ve got access to shade and shelter and we use a mobile water trough to make sure they um they’ve always got that and and we try a key thing to reduce carbon emissions was that we decided to try not
To make much hay and instead of cutting about 100 acres we cut uh on average every year about 15 Acres of hay um and uh that is you know having a massive impact not only is it saving fossil fuel in the summertime but it’s saving fossil fuels in the winter because we’re not
Having to feed it um so it just it works really well so if you go to the next one LTE and we started just seeing really exciting kind of um improvements in biodiversity so we’ve got things like the um Pearl bed fillery butterfly top
Left um which we saw on a ftle plant um dong beetles just generally we’ve seen last year really started to see an improvement in dong Beatles it’s taken about three or four years for them to actually come back from all of the insecticide iin and sort of other
Wormers we were using um and we’ve seen things like these mites that that are carried on the on the legs of the dung beetles that actually those mites will eat the the larae of the face flies that cause um cattle health issues and it’s so it’s really good that we’ve seen
These these mites coming back it just shows the ecosystem is starting to recover and then another thing is it’s just loads of spiders we’ve seen tons and tons of tons of spiders coming back um which you know they’re like they’re s of predator of the insect Kingdom they
Catch flies and they help us to basically not need you know we’re not finding that we need to use any um Fly treatments anymore which is really important if you go to the next one and then this is some of the so the trees that we’re seeing um up in the
Wood pasture so this was uh Last Summer so this is that you know these are two or three year old saplings that we haven’t planted and they’re just popping up now um which is really great and we’ve also um put this area into stewardship so we we’re doing some um
Tree planting um alongside it to try and get some like Willows and oak trees as well back into this area could you go to next one yeah so this is cattle up in the in the park in the winter um so we find they’re very very content up here um and
Yeah just giving them access to just lots of grass and the shelter that they get from the trees um works really well if you go to the next I’m going to probably keep saying next slide so yeah that sort of works really well until about March um when we find the
Nutrients in the grasses D back and so we start feeding hay um in March and we’ve started doing something called bail grazing where we rest a particular field and um place the Bales out in September while the ground is still dry and then unroll um two Bales a day it’s going to
Be this winter for the herd and then um yeah just focus on moving them so it doesn’t get too poached up um and yeah you go to the next slide these are trees that we’re planting um so that is probably that’s going to be about five oak trees in the
Middle surrounded by Thorns to to protect it from browsing we didn’t want to use any plastic so we went down this this style of planting I think um I’m a bit conscious of time so maybe we should yeah that’s it yeah um just keep going through we
We’re plug planting um wild flowers into instead of going down herbal lays route we we decided to do a species Rich grassland restoration because we feel like it’s more resilient and the plants that we get in the species Rich Meadows are more suited to our to our
Environment we think and if you go for the next one and then we’ve had some really good um progress with our soil so this this um slide shows a a segment of soil that we looked at in 20 9 and then the same place two years later at the same time of
Year um and the infiltration rate has improved greatly you can see just from the from the photograph that it’s getting more aggregated um and in the same time we’ve managed to increase the the species from about three or four species per square meter to about eight species per square
Meter on average in our Meadows and that is without that’s before we did any plug planting so it’s it’s definitely going in the right direction towards more diverse sword with deeper rooting um vegetation if you go to the next one yeah so this is slide I thought i’ put
Up because I think it’s really important to remember that digging up fossil fuels that been buried millions of years ago is not the same as having a cow um outside eating grass the carbon cyer for a cow is is obviously quite complex there’s a lot going on in that in that
Slide and but essentially you know it’s just beling out methane that it’s ingested from from what it’s eating so if it’s eating grass and it’s outside um then it’s really not adding a lot to to uh to the atmosphere um and I think that is quite often perhaps not considered in
Some of these carbon calculators and some of the tools that are being used um and then for if you go to the next one Lotty the I wanted to put up this which is a farm called White Oak pastures um in the US so they are managing their
Cattle a similar way to us adaptive multipad Grazy they’ve been doing quite a lot of life cycle studies on the carbon emissions and they’re proving that they you know they’re sequestering lots and lots um into the ground and actually they’ve they’ve kind of compared it to all of the Alternatives
Including kind of plant-based foods and I just think it’s really really quite interesting interesting this type of work and I did if we go to the next one I actually haven’t done this up until just a few days ago so I decided to use Farm carbon toolkit to do a very
Quick Baseline on what we were doing in 2018 so this is going through and quickly I I was very impressed actually by how how quick it is to use um to just get a quick sort of snapshot of what you what your farm is doing if you can you
Know you know your your liters of fuel that you’re that you’re using every year um and you’ve put in your fertilizer so we using 20 tons of fertilizer a year and that meant that we we were emitting quite a lot but then you put in your
Offset so we’ve got Woodland on the farm and actually that seems to offset you know a lot a lot of the emissions which I think it’s kind of like a slightly dangerous thing um in that you know it could just lead people to think right we’ll just plant trees everywhere um but
I’m not sure that’s the right approach at all um but this shows that in in 2018 we had a carbon balance of approximately eight tons per year and I would say with a bit of a health warning on this that I did it quite quickly and I don’t think
That it’s the most robust um thing that I’ve ever done in my life and but I just wanted to give a quick example of what what could be done and if you go to the next one I did a similar thing um for what we did uh last year so our
Obviously our fertilizer has gone to zero we don’t spread any anymore fossil fuels has come down drastically um and our offsetting has gone has gone up because we are now in Countryside stewardship and we you know we planted 10,000 trees we’re converting an area to Wood pasture where we’ve got all of that
All the natural regen that you could see and this so this is telling us that actually now where sequestering 200 tons a year which is which is pretty cool and again I would say I’m not going to I’m not about to go and put this on on my
Packaging and say look at us look at us look at our beef isn’t it you know it’s all carbon negative because I don’t think it’s that robust this calculation but it definitely gives you an idea of what what’s possible and so yeah if you go to the I
Think this is the last slide now so I just want to finish up with saying that um yeah we’re pasture for Life certified so we sell all of our beef d off the farm and we’re in organic conversion now um we also sell things like our leather products to try and
Sort of maximize the income um and yeah but I would say I guess don’t just focus on carbon I think it’s far more than just that we need to look at the biodiversity we need to look at Family Life you’ve got to look at Social side of of what you’re doing um
But it’s interesting the approach we take we took seems to have definitely helped with carbon um along with kind of profitability and everything really yeah thank you thanks very much Sam that was really really interesting and it’s um although you say you haven’t done an official
Kind of carbon not it’s nice to see um the kind of impact that you’re having without actually doing that so we’ll move on to the kind of Q&A section now and we’ll get to the audience questions in a minute I’ve just got a few um questions from the chair which are
Possibly a bit more broad ranging so um now that you’re all um kind of or you maybe haven’t done carbon audits but you’ve kind of thought about climate change and adaptations and things what would be your kind of key pieces of advice for someone who is quite new to the carbon auditing or
Nature-based kind of climate mitigations and adaptations so what would be your your advice and maybe if we go to you first um David and then we’ll kind of move around the screen so um oh thanks for that ly uh I would actually say um farmer to Farmer knowledge exchange actually is the most
Important thing so I I’m involved with a few local groups um of sort of like-minded farmers but then there’s also NN as a national thing um there’s also Bas UK who are really good um and actually that uh the knowledge is out there there’ll be a farmer somewhere
Who’s tried what you’re thinking about doing um and everyone’s happy to in this sort of environment everyone’s happy to share their experiences and and gain from that so Jo join something and uh yeah speak and and share your experiences because that it it’s you know that I found it really rewarding
Sam you got anything to add to that yeah I’m similar I’m I’m going to plug pasture for life I think because um I just think um you know that it’s really great organization and along with nature friendly farming network of course and um that you know they
Organize lots of visits and things to different farms and talks um but I’d say you know it’s it’s it’s kind of obvious where to start I think the fertilizer has such a huge um impact that anything you can do to reduce that um has got to
Be you know the place to start really um and then and that then fossil fuels obviously now that’s great and and Debbie um what would be your kind of key piece of advice I’d say you can do little things you don’t have to do everything you know
Look for like the easy wins of what you can do and everything if one small change everything if it’s going the right direction is is a good thing so you don’t have to do everything have to be changed whether it’s just you just par cover crops or you just look at
Grazing slightly differently or um yeah so there’s lots of lots of little things you can do and you don’t have to do everything straight away Bill do you have anything that you would add to that from your experiences on the Northern Island project um just from the auditing process don’t take it
As route always like it’s a good indicator but it’s not the possible and I think some of the examples that people have shown here is that there are um if you if you took everything completely literally and followed every single um example within it it might take your system in a completely different
Direction than what you’d want it to yeah very very good points um second question from me would be um and I think Debbie you touched on it a bit the kind of new schemes that come out and kind of the Financial um points from that but
How do each of you see the new Elm scheme helping you adapt your business to climate change and do you see it helping you adapt at all David um yeah yeah I mean it’s it’s come at a really important time for us arable Farmers because um we’re seeing
Commodity prices dropping off a cliff um so supporting the changes that we’re doing um it you know that it’s it’s good it’s a positive move um I think some people are finding that a challenge because uh you know they we’ve been having quite good commodity crises the
Last 18 months so and I think suddenly a lot of people are now um sort of staring off the top of the cliff if you like and um but I think if you Embrace a lot of these small things these incremental Gams like Debbie was saying just the
Little thing things um they can make quite a big difference uh and and the options which are out there now I think it’s it’s a really positive environment for change at the moment that’s great Sam what about you yeah I think they you know they have increased payment rates on quite a lot
Of um you know good options for people um but I Think It’s Tricky you know I Think It’s tricky to get into some of the schemes is the is the first thing I would say having we we’ve just managed to get into one and it was quite you
Know it’s a lot of work and not everyone is going to qualify for some of these on the habitats um so yeah it’s going to help but I think ultimately it’s down to each kind of business to just sort of make an assessment of where they’re at and then
Try to try to make changes Debbie yeah I think I re reiterate what I said in the talk that you looking for what you’re already doing and getting paid for what you’re already doing is definitely the way I I go for things but also yeah just looking for those
Unproductive areas that can you know can be put into different schemes you the corners of fields or you know where you can put wildflowers or different things you can just lots of little bits again add up so it may only be that you get50 pound for putting whatever in that small
Corner but if you’ve got lots of them then um it all adds up so yeah so I think I think they’re great I’m hoping I haven’t seen all the details of some of the new things they announced um at the beginning of January but hopefully those details come out they’re going to really
Support um some of the nature friendly things we’re doing on farm and Phil do you have anything to add to that from a kind of policy um standpoint on how you see them supporting farmers um and their climate adaptations yeah so I suppose everything that most of the people speaking today
Have done is more or less or can be supported through through schemes so even like the real basic stuff like soil testing and nutrient management plan and all of those sorts of things which can yeah inform what you do to increase soil organic manner soil Health reduce fertilizer use effectively all that sort
Of stuff to then moving far beyond that to some of the stuff that Sam was doing in terms of wood pasture creation and all of that so it’s it’s all all good but I think one of the key points is yeah as particularly for that more ambitious stuff providing enough access
For people who want to go and and are able to do that sort of stuff is really key and then one final one from me before we move on to audience questions was um aside from the benefits to carbon and VI biodiversity were there any kind of unexpected benefits that you’ve seen
From actually modifying what you’re doing on Farm as a result of either carbon audits or just um trying to adapt to a changing climate David oh Debbie made the point earlier actually it’s just um it’s a lot more of a positive experience um and I mean you’ve only got to compare the
Difference if you go to a show like grall where everyone’s really positive and you know Finding Solutions and then you go to something like cereals where it’s you know it can be a lot more negative um and uh yeah I think that sort of uh positive experience that
Comes from doing these things is hugely underrated Sam anything to add to that or do you you agree yeah I completely agree I mean it’s just um you know it’s much more positive feeling around the farm now um you know uh it’s just really exciting you know you change your
Mindset about what about what you’re doing and then everything sort of yeah everything gets better really and it’s it’s better for our family as well so yeah de be anything to add to that or would you agree with the all of you above I think I agree with what they’re
Saying there like I was saying it yes nice nicer environment to be in and also meeting like-minded people you know it’s really nice to be with similar people who think similarly to you so that’s quite for me I think that’s what I’ve enjoyed about changing things is connecting with other people who feel
Similar to me and that kind of um networking has been really good that’s really good to know um so we’ll move on to some audience questions now looking like the most popular question was actually um one for you Phil from your presentation which was was there any relationship between the
Proportion of each Farm occupied by land of high nature value and their carbon footprint when you were doing that project yes in general those Farms which had a higher proportion of the so-called kind of high nature value habitats didn’t perform very well on the pilgram per unit of
Output measure and generally did better on um like carbon emissions or greenhouse gas emissions per Hector um so those systems were generally more extensive and so-called less efficient um but there’s lots of things in there and I think this is one of the things that like a lot of the conversation
Around this has been around sequestration and and and drawing carbon in some of the things that have been in the chat and one of that isn’t really acknowledged is um kind of carbon that you’re already storing so if you’ve got well-managed kind of permanent grasslands there’s carbon that’s been
Stored in there for a long period of time and Bill in the chat mentioned around the per perverse consequences of kind of focusing on herbal a and resids whenever you’ve got permanent pasture and that release releases carbon all sorts of things so the carbon calculators aren’t nuanced enough to
Kind of figure a lot of that out um so yes there were Trends but there was a lot of stuff that was was probably missed within it as well I would say and um have the farmers since the project finish so if they um change any
Of their practices as a result of the kind of biodiversity and um carbon audit results um what outcomes have they taken forward yes there’s been some that have um yeah done done relatively small things after as a result this study took place just before the roll out of another scheme which is
Government supported which is supporting kind of Baseline soil testing and things like that which again is going to contribute towards um I suppose unformed decision making as well so we’ll see we’re we’re that goes but yeah there was some uptake of things but I think it was
The fact that there was a report there was some recommendations and then there was maybe a bit of um kind of enthusiasm after that but you really need I think it really yeah you kind of need that longterm kind of continuation and the knowledge exchange afterwards that that
Both David and Sam were talking about as well yeah that’s great um we’ve got one for I guess David and Debbie because I think you both mentioned a little bit on um crop residues so um somebody has asked are crop reses much of a disease risk despite their
Other positives so do you see any kind of negatives from leaving kind of cover on your land to kind of holding moisture and anything like that so in terms of our crop rotation we don’t actually I mean the only thing that that might throw up is if you going
To follow um wheat with wheat and we don’t we used to we used to grow second Wheats um but we don’t now so um we grow a spring cereal instead so there isn’t that kind of disease issue um you know potential issue from from the residue um
But the other thing is that the soils are a lot the biology in the soil is a lot more active um and there’s a huge amount we don’t know about what goes on into soils but sort of anecdotally we’re seeing that um by having that that sort of biologically active soil it actually
Performs a huge amount of um of a gometric husbandry for us um in terms of you know beneficial insects you know we’ve got carabid beetles that are controlling slugs um we’ve got fungi which are you know breaking up stuff for us which otherwise would have used to cultivate before that there’s an awful
Lot of things going on which you know we we we actually see a lot of our black grass seeds get predated now so by leaving them on the surface they’re getting they’re getting eaten um or they just or they’re just perish die so um yeah there’s there’s a lot more benefit
To it than um than negative that’s great to know um and I think we had a question as well a little bit on um putting in drainage and whether you see any extra soil loss from that but I think from what you said about um the biological activity in the
Soil I’m assuming you’re going to say that that’s that’s also help any kind of soil loss I mean dra if we if we didn’t put drainage in the soil would be huge because it would all just run off um you know it’s that that sort of engineered
System and unless you’re I think there’d be unless you’re going to have some sort of uh perennial crop or um or or a forest uh you know if you are actually trying to farm the land and put annual crops on it then you need you need drainage for sure
Yeah no very good points um speaking of draining and um flooding Debbie I was wondering if you could um because what we know uh as a network you’ve been in the Press twice a lot recently about the types of flood management you’re doing so I just wondered if you could give um
The audience a bit of extra information on your kind of flood plane management and and kind of the impacts that that’s had on your farm and how you’re managing that uh yeah basically we can’t really stop the water coming because there’s a lot of water that comes um so it’s just
Managing the fields so they’re resilient to that flooding and you know we can’t have um arable crops really there or even kind of um kind of Ry grass and things like that because they’ll be killed by the flood so that’s where we go for the permanent pasture and the
Species Rich Meadows that can cope with being flooded um and can come back they’re kind of lower um productivity from them overall but they can cope and so you don’t have to you know REO or um if you’re doing spring crops you know leaving you know
Kind of neighbors who you know have maze in fields that get flooded and they leave it there over winter and when it gets flooded I feel yeah how much soil and things it’s taking away so it’s the idea of and actually if you look at my fields that were flooded
Um now the water’s gone down they’re all brown they were green before they got flooded and they’re not brown because the grass has died they’re brown because I’ve been catching all the silt that’s been in that water so Fields up stream that have lost soil i’ now got a bit of
It a lot of it would have gone down the river and out but you I’ve got some of it um and so yeah it’s more of just being that resilient to coping with with the floods and being able to bounce back um it doesn’t mean I can’t really outwin
To cattle or anything down there because um they’d have to learn to swim but um it does mean that I can carry on farming them yeah that’s it’s it’s really good to hear kind of how you’re managing that and Sam we’ve got quite a few questions
For you as well um and looking at that we’ve got some on have you been monitoring the water quality and biodiversity as well with the changer and land you just start typing I was just typing I was typing away there and yeah no I saw that one um so yes some so
We did we did a baseline biodiversity survey um which was quite high level because we couldn’t really afford anything more than that um so we got the Cambria biodiversity data center to come with a team of sort of 15 ecologists but it was just one day so you know they
Were just here on it was like the 4th of August 2019 so it’s like you know it’s just a snapshot really of what the of what what it was like um we’d love to do more of that type of thing um and then on water quality we haven’t we haven’t
Really had the the sort of funding or the time to sort of um to do that but would absolutely love to do that and actually we had the environment agency here yesterday on a on a sort of um Farm visit so I was trying to I’m trying to
Get them to to help with that David or Debbie have you had um any water quality type work done on your Farms or noticed that from any of the work you’ve been doing so I had a um sorry go on David so uh I was um on the steering
Group for the hdv Strategic Farm which was um at Patrick and Brian barers Farm in suffk and one of the trials they did there was um to monitor the drainage outflows from a field um uh and some of the field was plowed and some of the
Field had a cover crop in over the winter they measured all the the outfalls and and what was coming out with the comparing the two different systems and the um the one with the cover crop in the water that was coming out was actually cleaner than drinking
Water it was like pristine um whereas the plowed one they were losing nitrate um out of the drains so we haven’t actually done any these sort of uh tests from our own outfalls here but um there there’s quite a lot of evidence showing the benefits in in terms of uh sort
Nutrient loss and obviously that that nitrate we need for growing crops Debbie um I don’t think we’ve done anything on kind of actual kind of streams and kind of outfalls from drains or anything like that um but we have had some stuff with um wwt doing some Pond
Monitoring and stuff and seeing what the you know what the water quality in the ponds were um and that that was pretty pretty good but haven’t got historic to things see how things have changed so yeah haven’t kind of got a a kind of set of information to see what what’s
Improved as we’ve done things but I think problem with the farm is we’ things have changed very slowly over time so it’s not like picked a day and we decided to change everything it’s some of things have historic been like that forever and slowly other things have been introduced so it’s hard to
Know what what things have changed what can I can I be really cheeky and ask a question yeah go for it Phil there’s there’s a question in the chat to Sam about profitability from um yeah removing kind of grein Bas feed and reducing fertilizer and stuff and Debbie when you were talking you
Mentioned about the recommendation to reduce um first age of cing and you said about having to move to like animals indoors earlier potentially and things like that do you think in certain circumstances if you were to follow the carbon advice it could be more costly to your
System I think it’s going to be dependent on a lot of things so um what facilities you’ve got so if you’ve already got a shed there that animals could come into as opposed to if you haven’t got that facility um what what land you got available to graze so whether you’ve you
Know if you have to rent in land or if you’ve already so I think there’s a lot of a lot of variables but I personally feel that um it could add cost to the system if you’re driven to more intensification which is okay if you’ve
Got enough you know um you know if you got enough output you know the cost what your inputs and outputs go the right way and you’ve got enough if you got high milk price or whatever then that will support that whereas if you know prices are dropping
And then you’ve you know you haven’t got the the money to support that high input cost so sorry not very not very good answer but I think it depends on lot of things but I think you can I think for me it is a lower um you can do things in
A lower um cost way by having say stock outside um and you might have a lower growth rates and things but I think it balances out but it is more profitable to to do things slowly but when you’re looking at um methane emissions from ruminants that’s you know it’s that’s
Very much the lifetime of the animal and every animal is assumed to produce so much methane um I don’t know that much about it but I think my feeling is that um if they’re out grazing and I’ve heard of but I don’t know much about kind of neogenic
Bacteria that live in the soil that will kind of eat the methane if they’re out grazing whereas if they’re in a concrete yard then you haven’t got any hope for that methane’s going to and also what they’re eating is going to affect it so there’s so many variables that um yeah
I’m sure somebody will do a study on it at some point tell us what we should be doing but I’ll probably carry on doing it the way I want to do it that was a really good answer I think because it is a very complex issue as
Well um we will take um a note of all of the q&as that have been in the question box as well as the answers that Sam might have typed some of the questions there as well so that we can make those available for people after the webinar
Um but I’m afraid duee to time I think we’re already running one minute over so we’ll um wrap up the webinar here I just want to say a really big thank you to all of our um speakers um some really really interesting presentations and it’s amazing to see the kind of
Different strategies you’re all using to kind of improve the resilience of your farms in in different ways and some very similar ways and just also it’s really um heartwarming to hear that actually changing to this type of system has kind of positively improved how you feel
About farming and and being on your farm and you’ve made some really good connections that way so I think it’s it’s been a really positive webinar and I hope everyone else has enjoyed it as well so um yeah if you want to watch this again to later day to take more
More in um it will be available on our YouTube and our website but thank you very much everyone for joining and and again um keep checking our website and our newsletters for um the next webinars that will be coming up thank you very much everyone
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There are lots of great farmers and ranchers that are moving to regenerative grazing. Check out "Roots So Deep" and others. Problem is, those healthy and natural systems won't make the agri chemical companies any money….