RESEARCH AND DEMONSTRATION FARMS - THE ALLERTON PROJECT FARMING YEAR |


About 11% of the land is now actively managed for game and wildlife. © Phil Jarvis/GWCT


drilling are direct-sown with winter cover crops, thereby retaining the stubbles, which help protect the soil from erosion, take up nitrate that might otherwise be leached and add organic matter to the soil when they are destroyed. Our fields are divided up with beetle banks and wildlife strips, while the riparian zones and ditches are all buffered with grass strips. In all about 11% of the land is now actively managed for the benefit of game and wildlife. All these measures are known to benefit wildlife and reduce our reliance on a dwindling number of effective herbicides. Our cultivation strategy consists of a single- or two-pass crop establishment system with slug damage reduced through deeper drilling, good soil consolidation post-drilling and the use of environmentally benign ferric phosphate pellets. Yet despite these huge advances our own crop yields, as have the rest of


the industry’s, have plateaued in the last 25 years and crop prices remain low (see Figure 2). It is estimated that more than half the UK’s farming enterprises will be loss-making in 2016 and that before we start the inevitable dismantling of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) support mechanisms. If we are to keep farmers on the land, stewarding our wildlife and countryside, then we will need to find ways to reward environmental goods and services that only land managers can provide.


TABLE 2


Farm conservation costs at the Allerton Project 2016 (£ total)


Higher Level Stewardship costs (including crop income forgone)


-18,507


Higher Level Stewardship income


Woodland costs Woodland income


Farm Shoot expenses Farm Shoot income


Grass strips


Total profit forgone - conservation


- research and education 29,316


-6,115 2,706


5,612 5,612


-425 6,975


-15,461 -8,486


Further information on how these costs are calculated is available from the Game & Wildlife Conservation Trust.


We need to find ways to reward environmental goods and services that only land managers can provide. © Amelia Woolford/GWCT


www.gwct.org.uk GAME & WILDLIFE REVIEW 2016 | 67


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