One of the joys of starting a new job is to be able to inherit the success of others.
Hope Farm is perhaps one of my predecessors' great legacies. Bought in 2001, thanks to the generosity of RSPB members, we have managed to demonstrate that it is possible to run a profitable arable farm and restore farmland wildlife. I was there on Friday filming for Countryfile. John Craven was putting together a package on farmland birds to be shown on telly on 29 May. It was great to meet John and even better to be able to celebrate the fact that over the past decade we have tripled the number of farmland birds on our farm.
Populations of skylarks, yellowhammer, linnets, reed bunting and starlings have all increased, while grey partridge, yellow wagtail, lapwing, turtle dove have all returned to the farm. And this year, greeted with much excitement, we also have a pair of corn bunting.
We've done all this while still returning great wheat yields.
So what's the secret of our success? Well lots of praise should go to the farm managers we have had over the years - especially Chris Bailey who moves on to a new job within the RSPB in Scotland later this summer. But it is simple really, we have put 3% of our farm into Entry Level Stewardship Scheme (ELS) - a government grant scheme available to all farmers. This subsidy allows us to get paid to get the basics right for farmland birds: habitat which provides somewhere to nest, food in spring/summer as well as food in the winter.
If it is that simple, why aren't farmland birds doing much better across the whole country?
Unfortunately, not all the options in the the schemes are effective. This is why the UK Government is currently reviewing the scheme. We are encouraging them to concentrate on scheme quality, ensuring all agreements contain a minimum of the best options for wildlife, while ensuring that farmers get better advice about what's appropriate for their their farm.
My predecessor was convinced that if you could get ELS working more efficiently, you could see farmland bird numbers rise again - offering more people a chance to enjoy the sountrack to spring and summer.
Have a great Sunday.
P.S. This blog will be silent for three days until Thursday 19 May. The RSPB computer people have some maintenance/upgrade work to do. After a couple of weeks in the new job, I might ask them to reboot me as well.
Sooty - I am not sure I can make you eat your hat but... I'll have a go and if you read to the end, there is an invitation.
First, you are right, of course our farm is a bit different - but it is worth noting that, at the time, this was the second biggest donation for a land purchase in the RSPB's history. This was a good indication of the strength of feeling and concern over the plight of farmland wildlife from our membership and their desire for the RSPB to help find solutions. This is what we've been trying to do.
The fact we are an owner occupier without a mortgage reflects the position of some in the farming community - but all farms are different in their individual circumstances, some will have mortgages, some will be tenants, some will have diversification businesses which support farming operations etc. Therefore we cannot, and do not, look to say 'pick up the entire model of Hope Farm and farm this way'. We say, you can operate profitably and be environmentaly friendly with the major increases in farmland wildlife we have delivered. We have been very open with this - having our accounts independently audited by Smiths Gore - one of the UK's leading land agency firms, and by being contract farmed we pay a commercial cost of all the operations we undertake.
This latter point is particularly important. In-hand farms can fail to account for time/labour costs - we don't - and we reflect this in the costings we make when helping to devise the AES options - options in which we are investing our member's contributions in the research to help farmers help wildlife. So, rather than saying we made £X thousands this year at Hope Farm so you should do this and get the same return, instead we talk to farmers about the gross margins of the options which have delivered our bird results and our crops, importantly the right mix of those options, demonstrate they are profitable and how smart deployment can make both the farm profitable for the farmer and the wildlife which depend on it.
For example, we showed that it would cost an arable farmer somewhere between 50p-£2 (depending on the proce of wheat) to create a skylark plot simply by flicking the drill switch on and off. We advocated for its inclusion in the entry-level scheme - and this now attracts in effect a payment of £5...making it one of the most profitable gross margins in the scheme. But very few farmers have taken them up. When cross compliance rules were being devised and the industry were saying it would cost thousands for farmers to comply with the 2m hedgerow rule - we calculated that the real cost to farmers like us who were farming to what was considered industry best practice would be minute. For us it was just £59 across the whole 181 hectare to comply with a rule which protected our hedgerows and protected our Single Payment.
Farming as the RSPB does mean we don't have the financial risk of getting things wrong. BUT IT IS EXACTLY for this reason why we are able to try new and novel techniques to help farmers be environmentally friendly.
Finally, am not sure if this has been offered before, but I would like to offer you an open invitation to visit Hope Farm. We would be delighted to show you around and show you our books!