Phil
Lyth from Yorkshire Farming and Wildlife Partnership talks about what ecosystem
services could really mean for farmers.
The talk now is very much about paying farmers for
ecosystem services, but I suspect many are put off by this term. Basically it means paying for the things
which farmers can, and sometimes already do, produce which are not crops or
animals. Examples include farming systems which store carbon and therefore help
to combat global warming; practices which help to conserve biodiversity and
maintain an attractive landscape; and activities which help to reduce flooding
by “slowing the flow” of water though the land.
The latter is particularly topical in the area where Yorkshire Farming and Wildlife
Partnership is working on an Environment Agency funded project (www.farmingandwildlife.net/projects.html) following
last Boxing Day’s floods, which had major impacts on the Aire and Calder
rivers, causing damage in towns including Hebden Bridge and Leeds. The cost of dealing with this flooding
justifies the idea of paying farmers to “farm water”, as long as the benefits
of this natural flood management are, well, “watertight”. Natural flood
management interventions have, in some studies, been shown to reduce the flood
peak by 40%.
As a result, our work with farmers in the Upper Aire over
the past six years, which was instigated to benefit the river water quality,
has started to also encourage natural flood management interventions on
farms. These include planting woodland
to reduce runoff and increase the rate that rainwater will soak into the soil; planting
hedges (50m of hedge can for example store between 150 and 375m3 of water); creating
leaky dams in headwater streams to provide temporary storage in times of high
flow; and promoting operations such as grassland aeration, which help to reduce
runoff, as well as improving grass growth by alleviating surface compaction.
Paying farmers for natural flood management benefits will be
a key theme as the government thrashes out the future of agri-environment
schemes following Brexit. Woodland
creation incentives which target areas where NFM benefits can be achieved are
already available. Several other
significant funding opportunities are currently in the pipeline, so the message
is watch this space. In the meantime, if
you would like to know more about how you could be involved on your farm, feel
free to get in touch for a chat via the contact details below.
