Last week Richard returned to Andrew Mahon's Glebe Farm in Podington, together with Martin Lines, Chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN).
After the visit, Richard Fuller MP said:
Andrew is a great proponent of nature friendly farming which focuses on farming policies that support biodiversity recovery, tackle climate change and encourage sustainable agriculture.
Fertile and resilient soil is essential to sustaining successful crop yields, and nature friendly farming achieves this through direct drilling of crops rather than ploughing, planting cover crops to avoid bare soil, and the associated lost nitrogen, over winter, reduced or elimination of pesticides and a focus on organic fertiliser use. A high concentration of earthworms is a sign of healthy soil and there was an abundance of these at Glebe Farm.
Andrew also heavily supports biodiversity through the cultivation of hedgerows (Andrew has planted around 3km of hedgerows this year taking the total at Glebe Farm to 15km), wide field margins and wildlife corridors populated with wild flowers to encourage pollinators and allow wildlife to safely traverse the farmland, and also the planting and management of diverse woodland. Andrew has planted 50,000 trees in the past 8 years and trees that die and fall are left to rot in place to further improve biodiversity.
The critical point to note is that none of this focus on biodiversity and the environment comes at the expense of crop yields. A managed transition to this form of farming maintains or even improves yields and is also more cost effective in the medium to long term.
An interesting and inspiring visit and a blueprint for the future of farming in this country.
For more information on the Nature Friendly Farming Network, please visit: https://www.nffn.org.uk/
