The Need for Greener Farming


Practice Biodiversity

Planting of meadows helps, so select steep fields or locations less efficient to farm conventionally and just top it with your mower set high once a year!

Shallow ploughing, manuring and crop rotations including nitrogen fixing plants are used to maintain soil fertility without the use of soluble fertilizers.


Plant Miscanthus

Miscanthus is a perennial grass, and an ideal energy crop for combustion to generate heat and electricity. The criteria for the ideal energy crop are high dry matter yield, perennial growth, and efficient use of nitrogen, water, other resources, and pest and disease resistance. Miscanthus satisfies these criteria, and the result is a crop that is both profitable and environmentally friendly.

Established once, the crop yields for over 10 years, without replanting. BICAL have developed efficient and profitable systems for all aspects of crop production and onward processing. For more, e-mail Bical at sales@bical.co.uk or find out more at Bical.


Solar Farms?

Surprising as it may seem, most food and fibre is not "solar-grown". Agriculture is a big user of fossil energy, and as David Coley at Exeter University says, "we all eat oil", because 6 calories of fossil energy are used to make one calorie of food. This energy is used by tractors, fertilizer manufacture, food processing, chilling, storage and distribution.

A farm that used biodiesel or bioethanol tractors and only sold its produce locally would be significantly better than an identical farm selling to conventional channels. It's even possible to use pure rapeseed oil like in this tractor converted by VEG-tuning in Sweden.

spreading well-rotted manure

Better Use of Manure

Manure is to farmers what compost is to gardeners. Farmers stand to save money (and reduce pollution) by making better use of their farm manures: used efficiently, the slurry off a typical 150-cow dairy herd is worth £3,000 to £4,000.

Fertilise a crop with Fibrophos: a dried and treated chicken manure. Pig muck also works well.

Hedgerows

margin alongside a hedge

Hedgerows play an important role on farms: apart from helping to prevent soil erosion and water run-off, providing shelter, controling livestock and protecting crops from the wind, they also provide an important habitat for wildlife. Find out more about funding, legal issues and maintenance here.

Create grassy field margins adjacent to hedgerows. In arable fields, sow a 2 or 6 metre-wide field-edge margin with perennial, tussock-forming grasses (eg cocksfoot and timothy).

Lined Biobeds

Biobed with metal grill

Pesticide pollution originating from the farmyard can be reduced by as much as 99% when biobed based handling areas are used. A biobed is a lined structure filled with biomix, a mixture of topsoil, peat (preferably a peat free substitute) and straw.

Install lined biobeds according to the Environment Agency (EA)’s guidelines.

Organic Farming

Find out more from ukagriculture.com.

a beetle bank under electricity lines

Farming Tips

Agro-Ecology and Greener Pastures

Greener Pastures

Recently published (2008) "The Carbon Fields" by Graham Harvey is a book promoting the return to better grasslands, pastures and meadows, grass-fed food and free-range milk.

QUOTE: The global trading of grains will lead to catastrophe. It’s robbing everyday foods of the health-protecting nutrients we need, while insidiously damaging our farmland so it’ll be incapable of feeding future generations. As if this weren’t bad enough, it’s adding to our climate change woes. Who would believe our food supply could be responsible for 18% of our greenhouse gas emissions?

Find out more from Grass Roots website.

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Soil Improvement

Seedling grown in Biochar-amended soil (right)

Create Carbon-Negative Soils

Burning agricultural wastes (biomass) in the absence of air leaves a charcoal composed of almost pure carbon, which can then be crushed and dug into the soil. As a soil amendment, Biochar can sequester or store the carbon in the soil for hundreds of years. Biochar is produced by pyrolysis by stoves/kilns, or by gasification systems. Find out more about Biochar.

Innoculating Soils

Everywhere on earth life on land depends on soil microbes and the service they provide. Soils are the key players in the process of storing (sequestering) and recycling carbon.

The best agricultural lands have loamy topsoil in which there is a high concentration of organic matter. History shows civilisations have tumbled due to excessive irrigation, deforestation, erosion and soil depletion.

Try innoculating farmland soils with mycorrhizal fungi! Organic farming with help from mycorrhizal fungi can take massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air. Micorrhizal innoculants are available in liquid, powder and granular forms and can be sprinkled onto roots during transplanting, banded beneath seed, used as a seed coating or watered via existing irrigation systems. Furthermore, Biochar can have positive effects on the abundance of mycorrhizal fungi.

Farming Links

Natural England works for people, places and nature to conserve and enhance biodiversity, landscapes and wildlife in rural, urban, coastal and marine areas. There is much information for farmers and land managers.

Please visit the DEFRA farming section.

Environmental Stewardship is a new agri-environment scheme which provides funding to farmers and other land managers in England who deliver effective environmental management on their land. For details on this DEFRA scheme in your region, click here.

Learn more about Environment-Sensitive Farming in your region (England).

Plan for nutrient management techniques and workshops in your region here.

Contact ADAS, UK’s largest independent provider of environmental solutions, rural development services and policy advice.

Support responsible farming by joining LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming).

Get ideas for your farm from Thrales End Farm which uses sustainable farming techniques that encourage biodiversity. Or visit Somerset County Council Countryside Services.

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