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Campaign for the Farmed Environment
The RSPB bought Hope Farm in 2000 with the aim of exploring whether it is possible to maintain production on a conventional arable farm whilst reversing the declines in biodiversity that have been recorded since the 1960s.
The biodiversity gains on Hope Farm since then have been huge – much greater than anyone had imagined possible - and yields per cropped hectare have increased.
We have seen our Farmland Bird Indicator - the combined population trend of 19 key farmland bird species - increase threefold since the baseline of 2000. This means that there are likely to be more farmland birds on Hope Farm now than there were when national population records began in the 1960s.
This has purely been achieved through positive land management. We have not undertaken any predator control on the farm. We currently have about 8.5 per cent of our arable area out of production, a mixture of research trials and habitat creation. This land delivers benefits not just for farmland birds but also farmland wildlife and helps protect our watercourses.
These are the three themes of the Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE): the voluntary approach to replace the environmental benefits of set-aside. Here, we describe how we have used measures promoted by the CFE.
Hope Farm simply demonstrates what can be achieved if you put the right measures in the right place and manage them in the right way
The conservation management at Hope Farm has been a combination of researching new ideas and putting in the habitats that have already been tried and tested. Much of this fits into the measures promoted by the CFE.
We joined Entry Level Stewardship in 2007. Our agreement includes 1 hectare of wild bird seed mix, 0.9 hectares of nectar flower mix, 0.05 hectares of beetle bank and 100 skylark plots. In addition, this year we have 2.5 hectares of wild bird seed mix, 2 hectares of nectar flower mix, 4.1 hectares of sown wild flower headlands, 0.05 hectares of beetle bank and an extra 20 skylark plots managed as CFE voluntary measures.
Critically, we have met the CFE Farmland Bird Package by having at least 2 hectares of wild bird seed mix, 1 ha of flower-rich habitat and 20 skylark plots per 100 hectares of the arable land.
Although we have spring beans in our rotation, we cannot retain our stubbles until mid-February and get a decent crop established on our heavy clay soils, so we use wild bird seed mixes instead of stubbles to provide seed food for birds. We use nectar flower mixtures and sown wild flower headlands to provide flower-rich habitats for insects because the alternatives, such as low-input crops would give us problem grass weeds rather than a diverse array of flowering plants.
We have attempted to establish a winter cover crop of mustard preceding our beans over the last two years, but our contractor has not been able to seed it early enough to maximise its benefit. We are currently reviewing whether the contractor can establish the crop earlier this autumn.
The CFE measures are an excellent toolkit for arable farmers wanting to benefit wildlife and protect soils and water. The RSPB fully supports the CFE aim of asking farmers to manage 3-4 per cent of their arable land for wildlife and the environment using these measures.
Hope Farm simply demonstrates what can be achieved if you put the right measures in the right place and manage them in the right way.
Last modified: 30 March 2011