It is probably more, but I haven’t counted field boundaries against woodland and I only measured quickly using a mapping app.
Some of those hedgerows are pretty wide, some are recently planted, so I’m going to take an average width of 3m. 11.5km x 3m gives us 34, 500 square metres, or almost 3.5 hectares. 1 hectare is 10,000 square metres. So, our hedgerows are 3.5% of our farm, by land area. We also have around 6 hectares of woodland, most of which isn’t grazed, or only grazed once or twice a year for a short period of time. 6 hectares of woodland and 3.5 hectares of hedges is 9.5 hectares, which I think I can say is available for nature. We rarely trim hedges, preferring to lay them on a 20 year cycle. Hedges are a man made structure or boundary, so they have to be laid, or they turn into lines of trees. Great if you’re a bigger bird or a squirrel. Not so great if you are a small farmland bird.
We also have about 2 kilometres of brook line. Our brook line is almost all fenced off and is quite wide in places. Much of it would be 10 metres wide, from fence line to fence line across the brook. That would be another 2 hectares, bringing our total of unfarmed land over the 10% figure and I suspect, if I actually did detailed measuring of all the unfarmed bits, we’d be close to or in excess of 15%.
The question is, is that enough? The catch is that existing habitats don’t count, so do we need any more? What about farms that don’t have the hedges and woods that we do in this part of the world? Some farms have fields that are many times larger than our average size. Introducing 10% of unfarmed bits into a farm that doesn’t have that habitat would be quite easy.
We are planting trees too. Tree planting does account towards the land use framework targets. Willow and poplar in wetter areas. Fruit and nut trees in drier places. Some of our older permanent pasture resembles parkland, with sporadic oak trees. I want it to stay like that and planting more oaks, or protecting saplings planted by jays and squirrels is a part of that.
We are all grass here now and over half of that is older, ‘permanent pasture’. We are following a rotational grazing plan that is somewhere between ‘adaptive multi-paddock’ grazing and holistic planned grazing, which means we are planning where stock go and when and adjusting that plan depending on the conditions. The rain, or lack of it, the grass growth, the time of year, the animals we are managing, even extreme conditions like storms all have a bearing on our grazing plan. And the grazing plan isn’t just for the animals.
We are building in long rest periods so ground nesting birds have a chance to hatch and fledge their chicks and so grasses, herbs, legumes and flowers have a chance to flower and set seed. We don’t use fertiliser or agrochemicals to manage weeds. We want deep roots, more worms and a functional soil, because we have seen what that can do for our land, wildlife, our farm ecosystem and our animals. We are trying to build roots to hold on to more water, to help us in drier times. I know I’ve written about this before, so apologies if I’m boring you, but will all that count towards our 30 by 30? I hope it does and I think it should.
I want to highlight that many farmers are doing the same things that I am. Managing land for nature, within their farming systems. It is important we communicate this good work to the public and you can help by buying British, the best you can afford, direct from the farm gate if you can. Looking after nature is vital, we all need to do our bit. Perhaps it is as much about the measuring, recording and monitoring as the doing, but either way, we all get to benefit. It is taking that holistic view, looking at and managing our land and farms with nature in mind that will enable us to hit the targets being proposed. There is another (global) target to protect and conserve 30% of land and sea by 2030. We are all going to have to work together to achieve that and the bit that worries me most of all is who is going to pay for it? We have the landscape we have because of the post war cheap food policy and changing that is sure to have a knock on effect.
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BUS INE S S ON THE FARM
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