RSPB at the Oxford Farming Conference

Blog post by: Richard Winspear, Senior Agriculture Advisor RSPB

I had a great couple of days at the Oxford Farming Conference. We hosted a breakfast fringe meeting to celebrate the winners of the Nature of Farming Awards 2011 and launched the first Farmland Bird Friendly Zone. Martin Harper, our new Conservation Director, also spoke about the RSPB’s vision of sustainable agriculture, and we held a whisky-tasting session, with Black Grouse Whisky, which was open to all delegates. This really gave us the chance to talk to a good percentage of the attendees.

The breakfast meeting was a great success, with over 100 attendees hearing Mike Clarke, our Chief Executive celebrate the best ever Nature of Farming Awards, with over 300 farmers entering and over 22,000 members of the public voting for their favourite farmer. Two of the 2011 winners, Rob Law and Robert Kynaston explained why they had entered and what they had got out of it with infectious enthusiasm. Everyone who heard them would have left with an increased interest in wildlife-friendly farming. We also showed a video with more of the winners talking about what they had done to help wildlife on their farms, which will be available on our website soon.

Rob Law speaking at the RSPB breakfast

Mike announced the start of the first ‘Farmland Bird Friendly Zone’ around Thorney, in the Cambridgeshire Fens. 14 neighbouring farmers have all undertaken the farmland bird package, through agri-environment schemes, to create the largest landscape-scale farmland bird habitat since agri-environment schemes began. It covers an area of almost 4,000 ha!

Martin’s talk to the conference focused on two case studies of sustainable agriculture from the RSPB. The first being Hope Farm, a conventional arable farm in Cambridgeshire, where farmland birds have increased dramatically, whilst yields and profits have reflected national averages. The last being Tarnhouse farm, an organic beef and sheep farm in Cumbria, where changes to the grazing regime have resulted in a better balance between food production and other functions of the land like providing biodiversity, building soil carbon and protecting water quality. Martin recognised the challenges facing farmers today and called for the continued support from government for wildlife-friendly farming through the reform of the Common Agricultural Policy. Despite the huge body of scientific evidence for the cause of farmland bird declines, there was still many who believe these declines are purely due to predation, and this came out in the questioning. It is clear that the RSPB must communicate the evidence more effectively to ensure that farmers can use agri-environment schemes to best effect, with the confidence that this will make a difference.

There were some interesting talks, notably one from Bob Watson, the government’s Chief Scientific Adviser (now Sir Bob Watson), whose assessment of the food crisis was that, although we need to double the availability of food over the next 50 years, much of what is needed can be achieved by cutting down on food waste. He said “We produce enough food to feed the world, but it does not get to the people who need it”. He argued that we consistently undervalue the importance of ecosystem services in supporting agriculture at our peril, and that future developments in agriculture have to address the environmental concerns of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution.