The importance of nature-friendly farming for nature recovery – Alexa Murray Mujtaba

Alexa Murray Mujtaba explains why farmers and landowners are so vital to nature recovery…

The county of Kent is known as the Garden of England for good reason. 62% of the land in Kent and Medway is used for agriculture. In total, there are over 13,000 farmers, growers and farm workers across 2,825 farms in the county, covering 222,540ha of land.

Look across the landscapes of Kent and you will see crops and livestock in the fields providing us all with food. Farmers, growers and producers in Kent and Medway contribute significantly to the UK’s food security. Over 50% of land farmed in the county is under arable production; 40% of agricultural grassland is used for grazing livestock and 16% serves a horticultural purpose. Kent provides 40% of horticultural goods (vegetables, leafy greens, salad products) consumed domestically in the UK, and 80% of the top fruit (apples and pears).

A central ambition of the Local Nature Recovery Strategy is that land management and land use throughout Kent and Medway not only meets the economic and social needs of the county, but also delivers nature recovery gains.

Nature Friendly Farming Practices

Kent has many innovative farmers who are leading the way, producing high quality food while boosting biodiversity below and above ground with their nature friendly and regenerative farming practices. On arable land they are minimising soil disturbance with no till practices, protecting the soil with cover crops which also fix nitrogen, integrating livestock and reducing the use of herbicides, pesticides and artificial fertilizers, all of which protect the soil which is fundamental to a healthy environment for people, plants and wildlife. Regenerative livestock farmers are adopting practices such as mob grazing which is essential in the management of key habitats such as grasslands and the historic field patterns of livestock farms in the High Weald are testament that these species rich fields have never been ploughed.

Alongside arable crops you may also see ribbons of wildflowers and plants with seeds, such as sorghum. Planted around the edges of the field and along water courses, these areas provide food and habitat for bees, butterflies, other pollinators and farmland birds while also protecting hedgerows, woodlands and water courses. These buffers and margins enable farmers to reduce or stop the use of pesticides, instead relying on insects such as ladybirds to eat pests like aphids.

Kent is at the forefront of climate change. The impacts of more extreme weather events, drought or intensive rainfall have significant consequences for farmland: excessive nutrient run off and erosion, reducing soil health, water logged fields and failed crops. Land management practices provide the opportunity for nature based solutions to the problems arising from climate change while still producing food.  Innovative ideas such as agroforestry, can increase the diversity of crops within an arable field and provide shade for livestock, while also reducing flooding and erosion, increasing the resilience of the land to drought and helping wildlife and people to cope with increased heat.

Working together at landscape scale

The impact of nature-friendly, regenerative practices is boosted when farmers work together, turning individual efforts into action on a landscape scale. Within Kent and Medway, we are fortunate to have a number of farmer clusters working together at landscape scale. These farmer-led groups are working with local communities, water companies, wildlife charities, and town, parish and local councils.

Collectively, farmer clusters and groups working at landscape scale cover over 52,606ha of farmed land across the county (about a quarter of the agricultural land). Together, some 315 members are collaboratively working across a variety of landscapes, soil and habitat types to support vital species recovery and habitat management, restoration and creation. All whilst growing food and managing livestock.

Action already taken by farmers has been key to increasing the numbers of many of the priority species identified in the Strategy by increasing the extent of farmland habitats upon which they rely.

For example, to support shrill carder bee populations farmers have increased the diversity of flowers they plant in the field margins alongside their arable crops, cut the margins later to extend the forage season, and allowed the grass sward to develop in areas for nesting and hibernation. Farmers are able to provide a mosaic of habitats so that in addition to these actions on their arable land, those with lowland meadows or coastal and flood plain grazing marsh manage them to increase the floristic diversity, seasonal flowering length and availability of hibernation sites.

Farmers in Kent have changed their land management practices to increase the extent of habitat for one of the most threatened farmland bird species in the UK and globally, the turtle dove.  They have increased the area of scrub and hedgerows, provided suitable watering points and planted more wildflowers in arable fields and margins which are critical to providing the turtle doves with food to rear their young successfully.

By working together to extend hedgerows, scrub and woodland they are linking fragmented habitats and creating wildlife corridors across farmland. Increasing this connectivity is critical to enabling the ambition of the LNRS to join up more habitats across Kent and Medway.

Farming and wildlife have coexisted for centuries, farmers know the wildlife and the habitats found on their land better than anyone else. Their decisions about land use and land management are key to enabling food production and nature recovery to go hand in hand.