Guest blog by Steph Morren, Senior Policy Officer
Take the survey here
Increasingly, farmers and other land managers are looking for ways to reduce their reliance on pesticides. This is due to a number of reasons including concern for the environment, concern for their health, concern about their soil health and concern about cost. As we move towards new land management schemes that will pay farmers for delivering public goods, it is a good time to make whole-farm changes that will lead to pesticides not being relied upon in the way they often are currently.
Learning and knowledge transfer
The RSPB, in partnership with the Soil Association, Nature Friendly Farming Network, Pesticide Action Network UK and CoFarm Foundation, are running a project designed to help with some of the peer to peer learning and knowledge transfer that will be absolutely vital for farmers to make these changes and have the confidence that another way is possible.
Later in 2021, we will be running a series of webinars, and producing a number of case studies, that will showcase different stories and nature-friendly techniques across a variety of farm sizes and types. We will share details of these as they become available.
Wildflower image by Colin Wilkinson (c) RSPB
Share your thoughts
In the meantime, we would really like to hear from farmers about your current experiences with crop protection and integrated pest management (IPM). We have developed a simple survey, that will tell us what IPM measures farmers currently take, what the challenges are, and what else would be important for farmers to have access to in order to go further in their pesticide reduction journey.
Whether you are an organic, conventional, long-time regenerative farmer, just starting off on this journey, or not sure where to begin, we’d love to hear from you.
The short survey can be found here and we would like it to be filled in by 30th June please. It is anonymous, so no need to leave any personal details.
Many thanks in advance for your time, and if you have any questions on this project, please feel free to get in touch with Steph at stephanie.morren@rspb.org.uk