I just had the pleasure of an afternoon’s stroll through Hope Farm, the RSPB’s working arable farm in Cambridgeshire. Hope Farm is a model of how farmers can reap rich dividends for biodiversity – by including many wildlife-friendly features on their farms – while turning a profitable business.
As one measure of just what can be achieved: in the past ten years of RSPB management at Hope Farm, skylark figures have more than quadrupled, from 10 to 44 breeding pairs.
I enjoyed tramping across Hope Farm on a crisp , late winter afternoon. The fields, with their short oilseed rape and wheat plants, were alive with bounding brown hares – mad March hares, indeed.
My guide was farm manager Chris Bailey, who as well as waxing lyrical about his crop yields, was keen to tell us about his efforts to reduce the carbon footprint of the farm. The RSPB has a goal of reducing Hope Farm’s emissions by 15 percent in the next five years. This is in line with future overall UK targets for the agriculture sector.
A recent study to determine the Farm’s baseline carbon footprint produced interesting findings. Cropping decisions made for both economic and biodiversity reasons in the past decade have had the unintended, positive effect of reducing the farm’s emissions. For instance, adding spring beans to the crop rotation reduced emissions by 20 percent, a consequence of not applying nitrogen fertiliser to the crop. Fertiliser use was highlighted as the farm’s greatest source of emissions (as nitrogen oxide is released both during manufacture and application).
Other measures taken for economic and biodiversity reasons also helped control emissions: such as establishing the oilseed rape crop by broadcasting seed rather than tilling.
Our challenge, now, will be to reduce emissions further in line with our goals. We will be seeking expert opinion on how to reduce emissions from fertiliser use even more. We’ll weigh up how using less fertiliser could affect our costs, incomes, crop yields and biodiversity. We’ll look at how effective current agri-environment options are at storing carbon, and how farming practices could be adapted to increase carbon storage.
These feel like sensible, achievable goals for the next five years or so. Farther out on the horizon, future managers of Hope Farm and similar arable farms in England will have an eye on how changes in the climate affect the growing season, yields and the opportunity to grow new crops – and how these changes will affect the wildlife habitat provided.