Last Saturday I was glad to see two letters published in the Independent newspaper. Both were replying to an original letter by Guy Smith, a well-known and vocal farmer from Essex.
Mr Smith's letter was basically saying that although some species of birds have declined on farmland (I think he does accept that they have) others have increased significantly - particularly crows, magpies and raptors.
One of the replies was from another farmer, a Mr Harrison from Northumberland. Mr Smith's letter didn't please Mr Harrison at all and he wrote as follows: 'I cringe with embarrassment at the terrifyingly crass response to this vital issue by my "fellow" farmer, Guy Smith...' and his letter ends thus : 'It is sad that some farmers are defensive of their tragic modern role as a downtrodden link in a chain of huge chemical corporations, ruthless "food" manufacturers, and giant retailers.'.
The second letter was from a Mr Palmer from Nottinghamshire who may or may not be a farmer but is clearly a land owner who knows his birds. Mr Palmer suggests that better care of hedgerows should be required of farmers and that this would replace some of the invertebrate life that has all too often been lost from farmland.
Now you must make your own mind up about the rights and wrongs of the issues discussed. In fact, although I have had many a good-humoured difference of opinion with Guy Smith the point he makes in his letter is not completely off the mark even if it isn't completely on target either. But what I did enjoy was seeing a farmer speaking out so strongly and clearly for nature as Mr Harrison did. If the RSPB had written his letter then we would have been called anti-farmer whereas that is not a criticism that can be levelled at 'fellow' farmers.
Guy Smith is an NFU Communication Spokesman, and I see he was talking at the Suffolk NFU Annual meeting last week on 'Better communication for the NFU and farming.'. I wonder how much Guy Smith had to do with the NFU's response to the consultation on the Natural Environment White Paper.
The NFU's line, unless I have misinterpreted it (so do read it yourself), is that the environment is fine and that the big issue now is food production. I don't expect much environmental sense from the NFU and I don't find much compassion or understanding of wildlife issues in this response. I wonder what Mr Palmer and Mr Harrison would think of it. I wonder what Sooty thinks of it? I wonder what other readers of this blog think of it. I wonder what the average NFU member thinks of it. And I wonder what the public - who pays for the Single Farm Payment and agri-environment payments - might think of it.
The NFU line certainly flies against the Defra line of biodiversity being a top priority and 'getting more from less' so I also wonder what Defra Ministers might make of it.
When the NFU starts from the position that there isn't a problem then there is little common ground with conservationists. Little wonder that our best moments with farmers are working with those farmers who realise that there is a problem and are keen to put biodiversity back into our countryside. They are the farmers who are true farming leaders.
A love of the natural world demonstrates that a person is a cultured inhabitant of planet Earth.
Carduus- do not know your particular knowledgeable subject but would suggest you consider that on farming matters the professionals i e farmers probably know best about hedges and where your assumption that flail hedge trimming is quick and easy falls down is that lots of farmers in fact almost all in this county pay a contractor considerable sums of money to trim the hedges.
Always what the general public fail to grasp with hedge trimming,pesticides,animal medicines etc etc is that they are all expensive and farmers would not use unless necessary but as usual all and sundry know more about hedge trimming than the professional.
Wonder what the reaction would be if farmers went around telling everyone how to do their job.
I agree completely with Mirlo's comments about over-frequent hedge cutting - an enormous number of the hedges in this area (Herefordshire) are flailed at least annually with the result that they are very short, gappy and devoid of berries. Their value for birds is minimal, either in terms of cover or food, whereas tall, bushy hedges generally support quite a variety of small bird species. This is not to do with stockproofing, because in many cases these are hedges separating arable fields which could easily be left for a few years between trimmings.
In answer to Sooty's comments, if 200 yards of hedge only contains as many berries as 1 hawthorn tree then I think that only serves to highlight the poor quality of the hedge management rather than anything else. I'm all in favour of trees/bushes being allowed to grow as well, but that's no excuse for the rest of the hedges being flailed excessively. Regarding garden hedges, while there are clearly lots of people who place too high a regard on tidyness, it's not really reasonable to justify the practices of large-scale countryside management on this basis. Quite apart from anything else, on an area-for-area basis gardens are much more biodiverse than typical intensive farmland, whether arable or pasture.
I'm willing to be corrected on this, but my belief is that one of the main reasons many farmers trim back their hedges so heavily and so often is because, with modern machinery, it's very quick and easy to do. i.e. if they had to do it all by hand then it wouldn't be done nearly so often. Obviously hedges would require labour-intensive laying every few years, but in other years they'd be left to grow unmolested and so become of much more value for wildlife.
There is also the question of hedgerow trees - flailing destroys many young saplings which might otherwise be left to grow. Obviously not too many or they'd take over, but a certain number of hedgerow trees is definitely desirable. I'm not advocating a return to large-scale manual maintenance of hedges, since the amount of labour required would be enormous, but I do think there has to be a better way than annual flailing.
With roadside hedges, while it's important that these are maintained to keep the road clear and to allow sight lines at critical points, I also think there is scope for better management here as well. For instance, on a long straight road, there's no reason why hedges need to be kept trimmed very short so long as they're not actually overhanging - they could easily be allowed to grow up and out (away from the road) with trimming used to maintain the road side face of the hedge.
Mirlo when farming the cost of hedge trimming each year came to perhaps £300 so if it could have been saved obviously a advantage,in this part of the country we would prefer to cut each year to make the hedge thick in the bottom but those in schemes cut every two years but is done primarily to benefit birds with more berries not really much financial gain,in fact farmers could make a case that they do not gain financially on smaller farms by having to pay experts for the complicated paperwork mostly,always seems strange that lots of people think farmers get rich from these schemes.They can always quote someone who got say £20,000 but neglect to say how much per acre and compared to what that person had invested in that farm the scheme payments would be more or less peanuts and on that large farm if done correctly the benefits to wildlife should be considerable.
Sparrow
I have looked at The English Nature's Nature on the map website for this area and it shows that more than 80% of the land area is incuded in the Entry Level Scheme. If each of the included hedges were cut every 2 years then at least around 30% of hedges would be fruiting or berrying in any year but they certainlt are not. I do not know the regulations of the ELS but I thought that roadside hedges were supposed to be faced annually for road safety but only topped every 3 or 4 years.
It is good to hear from someone like you who puts wildlife welfare high in their farm management plan. Please tell me is it any more difficult or time consuming to cut hedges on a 3 or 4 year rotation rather than annually. I would guess that most of the reason for annual hedge cutting would be purely the tidy syndrome
Good link Mirlo but comes up page not available,you have to go to fwag main page to find it under sub headline or at least i had to.All farmers on scheme cannot cut more often than 2 year intervals and several decide to cut half of hedges one year and other half following year.In my opinion wildlife and farmers would be better off doing what fwag suggests in one of their quotes leaving a few very large bushes uncut in the corner of fields.The berries on such a large hawthorn is unbelievable.