environmental land management schemes
This month, Natural England published its annual report summarising projects of the Agri-Environment Scheme Monitoring & Evaluation Programme. In this guest post, Natural England’s Usha Waygood, Senior Officer in the Evidence Directorate, highlights some of the team’s findings from the report.
It's been a while since our last post. We’re glad to be back! Over the past month, we've been welcoming Defra's new ministerial team, who are fully committed to environmental land management schemes. We've been working with them to optimise our schemes and grants for farmers, food security and nature recovery. In this post, we’ll update you on the SFI rollout, provide links to new supplementary scheme guidance and share details on endorsed actions and capital items.
We’re committed to ensuring that the policies underpinning our environmental land management schemes are based on the very latest and best possible evidence. One evidence source is the recently published qualitative environmental impact assessment (QEIA). In this post I’ll give an overview.
Farmers and land managers participating in Weald to Waves share their experiences of taking part in tests and trials. The test is part of a wider project, led by Knepp Estate, which aims to build a wildlife corridor stretching from Ashdown Forest to the Sussex coast. Along the way, they share with us how they brought together farmers on the route to develop group agreements, management plans and funding mechanisms for the corridor.
Over the past few weeks, we've summarised the updates to our environmental land management offer by farm type. These posts follow last month's Agricultural Transition Plan update. In this post, we’ll focus on the updated offer for livestock and grassland farmers.
The horticulture industry in England is diverse. As such, we and have a range of different offers available for farmers and growers. Whether you grow carrots or strawberries, daffodils or apples there is support you can access to help increase your productivity, improve the environment and innovate. In this post, we’ll summarise the schemes and grants horticultural famers and growers can access now. We'll also include links for you to join 2 upcoming webinars.
On Friday 26 January, we held a webinar for farmers. During the session, we went through the actions and payments available through our environmental land management schemes in 2024. This post includes a link to the recording.
We're pleased to announce a fourth call for tests and trials to help us test and further develop our environmental land management schemes. In this post, I'll share what we plan to explore, how you can apply and details of an upcoming webinar.
In this film, farmers from the Aqualate Mere catchment share their experiences of taking part in Tests and Trials. This test created a land management plan and worked to set priorities for the catchment, incorporating biodiversity, water quality and carbon sequestration.
Hedgerows store carbon, support crop pollinators, create habitats for animals, slow water flow and create shade and fodder for animals. We want to protect the hedges we have, invest in their maintenance and support further planting. We also want to make sure that hedgerow regulations work for wildlife, the environment and farmers. Today we launched a consultation on hedgerow protections in England and we want your views.