https://defrafarming.blog.gov.uk/transcript-getting-the-balance-right-between-farming-and-nature-in-the-lake-district/
Transcript: Getting the balance right between farming and nature in the Lake District
Danny Teasdale, CEO, Ullswater Catchment Management Community Interest Company
My name is Danny Teasdale. I run a community interest company called Ullswater Catchment Management. What we do is show that we can have farming and we can have natural flood management, we can have conservation, they can all work in harmony with each other, if you deliver them in the right way. I'm with Adam Day from Farmer Network. So I’ll let Adam introduce himself.
Adam Day, Land Agent and Auctioneer, Managing Director, Cumbria Farmer Network
Yes, I’m Adam Day, the Managing Director of the Cumbria Farmer Network, and we also run a network in the Yorkshire Dales, as well. I am very fortunate to have spent my entire career working in the farming community in Cumbria as a land agent and an auctioneer, and for the last six years or so I've been the Managing Director of the Farmer Network. We're a not for profit organisation, a farmer support organisation with about 1,200 farmer members now, and our only aim in life is to help farmers run viable and sustainable businesses, reacting to every challenge and also every opportunity.
Building environmental solutions that work for farmers
Danny
So this area that we're at is Matterdale. I think it's a good mix of what is possible, what you can do. There’s sheep farming, beef…
Adam
…and dairy.
Danny
…There’s dairy as well. I think we've got a pretty good mix of farming, ecological conservation things, natural flood management. It's all locally suitable. Most of these projects are driven by the farmers.
Adam
To me I see a fairly hard, challenging landscape as befitting the northern Lake District. It’s what you'd expect to see in an upland valley. To me it's a patchwork quilt of farming ground and nature, a range of hedges and woodland and planting, from the lower valley bottom up to the high ground. I think it's just a patchwork of really good rural land use that we'd want to see in Cumbria.
Danny
And I think this could be rolled out, couldn't it? You know, this could be rolled out throughout the Lakes. Everything that's been done on here, it's appropriate for the area. I mean, you can look around, these are grown out hedgerows. These are hedgerows that my great granddad would have seen in his day and laid and managed.
So it's working with those and just and putting those back in. Well, I've said this before that we could put in trees through this landscape. We could restore all the hedgerows, we could lock in the rough, scrubby bits of land and it wouldn't look any different. We've planted loads of trees, loads for wildlife, but it wouldn't have any impact on farming, in my opinion.
Adam
Edges, hedges, worst bits of land. It's about getting that balance between farming and nature.
Danny
I think you need someone that's going to see it from both sides, don't you? This is the thing, as opposed to looking at just an ecological solution to something. You've got to see it from the farming perspective as well. You've got to understand the farm model. Talk to the farmer, if you're working with them, and find out what works for them. And then you build a solution that works for them, and then it'll all be different because it's all different for all farms.
What environmental land management can achieve
Adam
We have to remember that since the end of the First World War, farmers have done for generations what they have been asked to do to produce food. And now, all of a sudden, in a very short space of time, they're being asked to look at their farms, their way of life and their business in a totally different way.
I work with 16 to 17 year olds now who are leaving college with the same ethos as their parents and their parents before them. And somehow, through ELM (environmental land management) you'd like to think we could get to the place where we can encourage our young people entering the industry that not only will they be great farmers, great shepherds, great dairy people, but they'll also be great conservationists and environmentalists as well.
Danny
And I think that's possible, though, isn't it? I think we can get there, can't we? It's just going to be a case of this kind of thing. What I would like to see is somewhere that we've got, that we're working with food production and wildlife, as opposed to having this 2-tier system where we don't have any food production, and then as a result of that, the land that is left, and is in food production, has to be massively, intensively farmed. I would much rather find, as Adam calls it, the sweet spot.
Adam
Yes.
Danny
But it is there. We have to find this area whereby we can do both.
Adam
And there’s another issue, as well, particularly in these parts, when you think that there are 20 million visitors to Cumbria making 40 million visits a year. People come to this county to see this landscape and all of these rural communities, the bedrock of which many of us would say is the farming community. But having this living, working landscape is so integral to the future of Cumbria.
Danny
Our families have been here forever.
Adam
Generations.
Danny
My granddad was born down there, literally 200 metres down that hill there, you know, before that they have all just farmed. I want to see that continue. Yeah, I like my conservation and I like my natural flood management. I like working with all the wetlands. But, you know, I farm as well, and my family always have done. So you can have both, can't you? I don't I don't want to see farming driven out of this.
Adam
It's part of our heritage without a shadow of a doubt, and something that we're really, really proud of. But I also want to be proud of our future farmers and knowing that, despite these changing times, but also knowing that the world pressures that you alluded to before, climate change is very real, there's no denying that. By 2050, World Health Organisation figures tell us that we could be approaching 10 billion people worldwide, 76 million people in the UK by 2050 is the prediction, whereas it's something like 67 or 8 million now. How do we feed those people? Bearing in mind the pressures in the world for fresh water, which is going to be the biggest pressure of all through climate change. And yet here we are in this temperate climate where we can grow grass, and we can grow trees, and we can feed sheep, and we can grow cattle, you know, in the right balance.
What we've got to do, I think, is try and work with our farmers to get them through this difficult period of transition and out the other side so that they know in future they will be feeding the nation, but they'll also be looking after the countryside to the best level that it’s had for generations, as we've discussed.
The right thing in the right place.
Danny
What we’ve got to do is bring conservation and farming further together, They've ultimately always worked together for generations. We just need to get that pulled back a bit together. We need to be working more together on these things.
Adam
And it really can work together because there are perfect examples. And your model here and further down the Ullswater catchment is absolutely brilliant, Danny, and they're easy examples. With respect, you're not doing anything really difficult here. What you're doing is finding the right solution in the right place and getting that balance, and it's tremendous, and we just need more of that.
Danny
And folk don't have a problem with it. If you suggest the right thing in the right place, people haven't got a problem with it, have they? If I suggested I was going to go and plant trees on your hay meadow, then I would expect to walk away with your foot up my backside. It's just common sense, isn't it? The right thing in the right place and people don't have a problem.
It all starts with the farm business
Adam
I think one of the key issues over the next few years is about farmer engagement to build trust. I mean, for example, when you're dealing with farmers, what's your approach if there's a farmer in these parts who hasn't worked with you before?
Danny
I just want people to know that the help’s there. And I think word of mouth is the best thing for that. Anyone can get in touch. I'm not going to go around and try and impress something on someone. Generally, if someone’ll say, I've got some ideas for my farm, come and have a look at my farm, see what you think, I'll have a walk around with them. They've already got ideas themselves. I can then say, well, what do you think of that? What do you think of that? There's a payment for that. That might be suitable over there. And we bounce off each other. I don't go with this preconceived idea of what I want to see on there.
You go, you work on the move with people, and then you work together. And that's not the end of it. It may start off small. Someone might just want a bit of soil analysis, look at some soil structure, you might want to just look at that. But once you're working with people and then they trust you, it might be, oh I could fancy a hedge through there. You know, and it grows up. But people need that trust, and they also need to know, they know I'm here, they know I'm local, I'm not going anywhere. So if I advise something, I’ve got to stand by that. So I'm not going to suggest anything that's ridiculous, because they'll tell me that it's ridiculous. I think that's important. It's driven from them. But they need advice that they trust.
Adam
I think what you've just highlighted there is that there isn’t one size fits all in this delivery of ELM (environmental land management) at all. You know, we look down that valley there, every farm is different. There are different challenges, different opportunities. And as the valley cuts round to the left and down into Ullswater, it's a different vista again, isn't it?
Danny
Yeah, that’s right.
Adam
So it's about having the knowledge about, you know, how the land lies, literally how the land lies on the farm. And it's then being able to work that back to the opportunities that ELM (environmental land management) might bring. And farmers, I think, need people like you as a trusted adviser because you're not telling them what to do, you're not saying you must do this. What you're doing is getting them to open their eyes a little bit, look up a little bit and saying there are opportunities here. If you're prepared to give that little bit of land over to re-wetting or something like that, or tree planting as you've done in that pasture down there, there's money available and it's working around your farm business.
Danny
That’s it though, it's working all of those solutions into the farm business. That's where I start off with first. I start off with the farm business, because ultimately it's a business and it's that farmer's business. So if you start there and then you can add the bits on, then you're onto something.
Adam
It really starts around the kitchen table, doesn't it? Are you looking at environment and conservation opportunities because there is funding and support available?
Danny
It's like you say, all the farms are different. Everyone's right across the whole spectrum of where they're at. And that's here. That's in this valley…
Adam
One valley.
Danny
…let alone the difference from here to the other end of the country. They’re chalk and cheese. This is why I'd like to see a flexible option. If you had a trusted adviser and you had a series of flexible options that were applicable to that farm, you build something great. I mean, if ELMs (environmental land management) is right, I think it could be great, if it's got that flexibility to it.
Adam
I absolutely agree. If government really wants farmers to embrace this challenge, it says, your farm business is important, but your natural environment is equally, equally as important, and we're going to pay you for that. So I think that's the approach. And I understand that Defra says it's working in a methodical way and they'll learn from mistakes. But you can't turn a farm business around on a sixpence, and I think a lot of farmers at the minute are very wary about making investments or business decisions right now because of this step by step trickle down approach.
Danny
That's what I'm getting as well, because it is like that, You can't just turn that business around overnight. You need to be looking well down that line. Where am I going with farming? What am I going to be farming? Which bits am I going to be farming? But unless you've got those figures there, how can you, you can't plan that, you can't work off that if you don't know what you're dealing with. You need those figures and those amounts in advance, years in advance that you can plan around them.
A managed natural environment that works alongside farming
Adam
And you know, you're slightly younger than me, but I've spent 35 years working in this farming community. Things have changed a lot since then. I’d love to think in future, if you and I are sat here in our dotage, that we look down there and we see a farmed man-managed landscape, and there are sheep and there are cattle, but there are also far more hedges and trees, a patchwork of natural environment that complements, and I’m like you, I think we can find that, I think we can get there, I do.
Danny
That's what we need to be working on, don’t we? I'd love to get this whole area as an exemplar for farming and say, this is what we've got. It's achievable, if it's done right, and we’re still farming and we’re still producing food, it's just that we've got loads of wildlife, as well. I don't think anyone's going to really have an issue with that, are they?
Adam
Farmers are proud of their farm and I think there's a feeling that they want to leave the farm in a better state than when they took it on, and that's an aspiration for the future as well. It's about the balance, isn't it? It's a man-managed patchwork and man-managed natural environment, and a farming environment that the local community loves to be part of, and 20 million visitors as well.
Danny
Mm. Absolutely.
