Paul Millard of the CLA writes...

Dorset is one of the key counties in a new campaign which aims to encourage farmers and landowners to adopt land management practices that will provide positive environmental benefits.

The Campaign for the Farmed Environment is a voluntary scheme which has sprung out of a partnership of rural organisations, headed up by the CLA and NFU offering an ‘industry-led’ approach to retaining the environmental benefits formerly provided by set-aside.

The campaign, which will run until June 2012, has three key themes – farmland birds, biodiversity and soils and water resource protection. In total there are around 25 different measures – including skylark plots, beetle banks and field corner management – all of which benefit one, two or all three of the campaign themes.

It has been put together to replace set-aside – which was a means of limiting food production abolished in 2007 – but which had also provided considerable environmental benefits for the three target themes. Defra proposed to ‘recapture’ these benefits by requiring farmers to manage a minimum area of land in certain ways to mitigate the loss of set aside.

Industry bodies did not favour this ‘regulatory approach’ and, instead, took the view that the environmental benefits of set-aside were site specific and dependent on the management undertaken by the farmer.

The best approach, therefore, would be to engage farmers to voluntarily manage relatively small areas of their land in ways that benefited the environment but which fitted in with their farming system – ‘the right management in the right place’.

After much lobbying by the CLA and others, the minister agreed to shelve the regulatory approach and back the voluntary idea, which is the Campaign for the Farmed Environment.

The campaign partners believe that this approach can act as a model for future environmental challenges facing the industry and argue that every farmer should be participating to help meet the national campaign targets - because if these are not met by June 2012, then there is a risk of regulation with far more red tape and expense for everyone.