Spring and summer bring warm evenings and hopefully a few farm walks. Whether it’s with your NFU branch, gate crashing the kids YFC meetings, a local farming group, or a trot out to see some crop trials, this is a great time of year for getting out, meeting up with friends and enjoying a look round someone else’s farm. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a great time to get out and meet new people in the industry.
In our area we have a relatively new Farmer Cluster. By working together, farmers can work more cohesively to deliver benefits for soil, water and wildlife at a landscape level. Across the Weald of Kent, individual holdings have largely specialised into arable, top fruit, pasture or perhaps vines. As farmers in different sectors we don’t often get together, even though we are farmer neighbours. In fact, quite a lot of us didn’t know each other at all before our cluster started.
Our cluster is concentrated around the village of Marden. It started two years ago, just before lockdown. Now there are 18 of us getting together to look at examples of how to deliver habitat for local wildlife, with some support from Kent Wildlife Trust and others. Various parts of ELMs are being discussed, and blended finance is a hot topic – where some other agency may offer some funding on top of ELMs. Clusters are often strung along a river and ours is the in the vicinity of the Teise, where is splits into the Lesser and Greater. Both eventually flow into the Medway at that notoriously flood prone area, Yalding.
Some clusters are much further ahead than ours, so they may be formally constituted, applying for grants, or measuring carbon already. Some are much bigger than ours too. If there’s a cluster in your area, I recommend joining. If there isn’t, I recommend starting one!
It can be easy to stay close to home, or just meet up with farmers in the same sector, but by going somewhere new, we hear new ideas and points of view. An open and curious mind set may well be crucial in getting businesses through the next few years. Our cluster visited Elmley National Nature Reserve recently, a remarkable landscape in the wet bits on the Isle of Sheppey just off the North Kent coast. Philip Merricks has farmed the land for decades, growing arable crops initially, but now cattle at a low stocking rate roam the marshes with a great deal of wildlife. It was interesting to hear how the business had changed, but he was also interested in our cluster.
Recently, I visited the UK’s largest agroforestry farm, Whitehall Farm, near Peterborough. Stephen and Lynn Briggs are new entrants, and installed 52ha of agroforestry in 2007 when they took on the tenancy. Avenues of heritage and modern apple trees are surrounded by oats. We heard about soil erosion on this very flat landscape and how the trees were slowing wind speed to protect the soil, and even providing extra spray days. Biodiversity has increased ten-fold, and pollinators are up 200%. The Briggs’ are also selling direct to the public, with a farm shop selling the apples and oats produced on the farm.
We’re arable farmers, and therefore clueless when it comes to growing trees! But thanks to our cluster, we know plenty of top fruit growers in our area who might help us get the best out of an agroforestry system should we decide to pursue it. Some aspects of our regenerative system have caused raised eyebrows amongst our arable neighbours, so this could be a chance for our top fruit neighbours to also wonder what’s going on!
A trip to a show you’ve never been to is always a great day out. Groundswell is firmly on our calendar, along with the Oxford Real Farming Conference. Whereas we describe ourselves as regenerative farmers, we keep on learning from other management systems – be they conventional, biodynamic, organic, and even “rewilded”. YouTube, Twitter and various podcasts are mines of information, and sometimes you get to meet these people who may share their mistakes, or just share the successes.
Time away from the farm is never a bad thing for our mental health, so go somewhere new, you never know who you might meet and what you might learn.
Claire Eckley is a partner in her husband Guy’s family farm, operating across 500ha of regenerative arable land in the Weald of Kent. As well as selling commodity crops, the Eckleys process on-farm to add value and market oil and flour under their Pure Kent brand. @PureKent
