Countryside Stewardship offer

[Farmer T]

When they inspect have some one with them at all times to show that they are being watched
If you use an agent get them to be with the inspector

I met with the inspector several times to make sure this kind of situation wouldn’t happen.

What he put in the report that led to the fines was not discussed at all. In fact he made a call to disallow a certain option but has been overruled since. However this had all taken a lot of time just to get where I am now.

I wish I had never entered the scheme. 10 years in the ELS and I wish I had just ploughed up all the margins, let alone the thousands spent on drilling, rent, labour and seed which I have had no payment for.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

What also worried me enough to not apply, was the way you have to 'sell' your environmental credentials.
I rather fear that declaring your land is environmentally valuable enough to attract payment will be used against you in the future. Who regrets getting their house listed?

 

[farmerm]

What also worried me enough to not apply, was the way you have to 'sell' your environmental credentials.
I rather fear that declaring your land is environmentally valuable enough to attract payment will be used against you in the future. Who regrets getting their house listed?

I regret the grandparents row with the neighbour that allegedly resulted in this house getting listed

You are spot on though. low input grassland could be forced to remain as low input grassland forever...!

 

[Hereward]

I think anyone that has applied successfully to CSS deserves a medal and an honorary degree in form filling.

I applied for an application pack last year, got through all the maps, HERRs response etc.

Spent most of the time shaking my head, thinking this is just crazily complicated, that combined with the almost daily updates on TFF regarding non-payment and the application is now filed in a folder under even more folders.

It seems that the only reason people put up with it all the BS are for the very large capital items like new tracks and concrete yards etc., without these cherries I cannot see how it stacks up.

 

[Brisel]

There has to be a financial benefit or there's no point. For taking out the least productive parts of your farm that won't otherwise earn their keep CS is a no brainer.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

There has to be a financial benefit or there's no point. For taking out the least productive parts of your farm that won't otherwise earn their keep CS is a no brainer.

You are obviously lucky to have a large and productive enough farm for that to be the case.
I would have agreed with your statement 100% under ELS and other schemes but it just isn't the case now.
You can not get any payment for the most environmentally valuable but unproductive areas that you have always maintained.
The payments are simply not enough to make it worthwhile to include small areas.
There are too many restrictions to put larger areas of marginal land which become unmanageable.
I fear you will also be on here in a few years, complaining that you can't take advantage of higher grain prices because Mr Gove has sent you a map of your farm telling you where you are no longer allowed to till or spread fertiliser, even though it won't be attracting payments anymore.

 

[Goatherderess]

I think anyone that has applied successfully to CSS deserves a medal and an honorary degree in form filling.

I applied for an application pack last year, got through all the maps, HERRs response etc.

Spent most of the time shaking my head, thinking this is just crazily complicated, that combined with the almost daily updates on TFF regarding non-payment and the application is now filed in a folder under even more folders.

It seems that the only reason people put up with it all the BS are for the very large capital items like new tracks and concrete yards etc., without these cherries I cannot see how it stacks up.

I applied last year, had a letter saying they couldn't decide until 28 Feb (therefore losing me 2 months of the best hedge laying/clearance time) and now I have an email with queries on - mainly photos needed, confirmation of this and that and just 10 days to reply to it - lucky I'm not in the middle of kidding. It is only worth doing IMHO because of the capital works I've put in - tracks, hedges mainly otherwise I'd bin it today.

 

[Brisel]

You are obviously lucky to have a large and productive enough farm for that to be the case.
I would have agreed with your statement 100% under ELS and other schemes but it just isn't the case now.
You can not get any payment for the most environmentally valuable but unproductive areas that you have always maintained.
The payments are simply not enough to make it worthwhile to include small areas.
There are too many restrictions to put larger areas of marginal land which become unmanageable.
I fear you will also be on here in a few years, complaining that you can't take advantage of higher grain prices because Mr Gove has sent you a map of your farm telling you where you are no longer allowed to till or spread fertiliser, even though it won't be attracting payments anymore.

Large, yes. Productive, less so (don't we all say that?). 10 years of combine yield maps really help identify what isn't performing.

I don't get what you are saying about "You can not get any payment for the most environmentally valuable but unproductive areas that you have always maintained?" There's a reason they are environmentally valuable - because we've accepted that it's too steep/thin/heavy/wet/dry to be productive so have wound back the inputs which results in the better habitats establishing. In that respect the CS options can be money for old rope and will more than cover the small changes & record keeping required. I've put arable reversion on some marginal field parts and where field shape is awkward for big modern kit. Yes, they are permanent in terms of arable land - the goal posts have been moved on HLS agreements despite initial promises to the contrary. There was some useful work done on a couple of farms under the original Countryside Stewardship that resulted in a SSSI creation that stops a lot of farming operations. That was a spectacular own goal - both those farms are no longer in stewardship in protest. They created a monster that put others off. The issue of moving goal posts is an interesting one, but if you don't take risks occasionally, you don't get anything done. The environment will be the big winner from Brexit and even CAP reform if we don't leave. Why not cash in?

The cornerstone of CS is to protect and enhance land that may or may not have a designation. I automatically qualified for Higher Tier because I have lots of SSSIs and Scheduled Monuments. For the most part, the management prescriptions for the SMs and SSSIs mean I'll run at a net loss for the work I have to do vs the payments, especially when it comes to capital works like fencing, water and scrub removal. No work on the designations meant no CS offer, though I could have had a simpler arable MT offer on a smaller area if I'd applied a year later.

There are large parts of the farm with a higher cost of production thanks to lower fertility. At £80/t for wheat they will not be farmed viably and if I can I will restructure to take those out of arable cropping until I can forward sell wheat futures for £180+ at which point I will rip up the legume leys for a few crops. I'll take shorter term options, if any are available. The tricky part will be paying the rent on those areas and reducing the overheads to compensate. There are 3 of us full time on 2800 acres, so it's not like we're overstaffed if I take another 100 acres of the worst and not already taken out (currently around 300 ac of margins, corners, wet clay and woodland edge receiving both BPS and CS payments).What is done in permanent features like arable reversion is done - there's a reason I've taken those areas out & that's because even at £200/t they are still marginal. That won't change. I can still put livestock on them and grow wild flower meadows which for now certainly look a better option than struggling with arable machinery for no net return. If the farm were mine I wouldn't act differently.

 

[Jackov Altraids]

Large, yes. Productive, less so (don't we all say that?). 10 years of combine yield maps really help identify what isn't performing.

I don't get what you are saying about "You can not get any payment for the most environmentally valuable but unproductive areas that you have always maintained?" There's a reason they are environmentally valuable - because we've accepted that it's too steep/thin/heavy/wet/dry to be productive so have wound back the inputs which results in the better habitats establishing. In that respect the CS options can be money for old rope and will more than cover the small changes & record keeping required. I've put arable reversion on some marginal field parts and where field shape is awkward for big modern kit. Yes, they are permanent in terms of arable land - the goal posts have been moved on HLS agreements despite initial promises to the contrary. There was some useful work done on a couple of farms under the original Countryside Stewardship that resulted in a SSSI creation that stops a lot of farming operations. That was a spectacular own goal - both those farms are no longer in stewardship in protest. They created a monster that put others off. The issue of moving goal posts is an interesting one, but if you don't take risks occasionally, you don't get anything done. The environment will be the big winner from Brexit and even CAP reform if we don't leave. Why not cash in?

The cornerstone of CS is to protect and enhance land that may or may not have a designation. I automatically qualified for Higher Tier because I have lots of SSSIs and Scheduled Monuments. For the most part, the management prescriptions for the SMs and SSSIs mean I'll run at a net loss for the work I have to do vs the payments, especially when it comes to capital works like fencing, water and scrub removal. No work on the designations meant no CS offer, though I could have had a simpler arable MT offer on a smaller area if I'd applied a year later.

There are large parts of the farm with a higher cost of production thanks to lower fertility. At £80/t for wheat they will not be farmed viably and if I can I will restructure to take those out of arable cropping until I can forward sell wheat futures for £180+ at which point I will rip up the legume leys for a few crops. I'll take shorter term options, if any are available. The tricky part will be paying the rent on those areas and reducing the overheads to compensate. There are 3 of us full time on 2800 acres, so it's not like we're overstaffed if I take another 100 acres of the worst and not already taken out (currently around 300 ac of margins, corners, wet clay and woodland edge receiving both BPS and CS payments).What is done in permanent features like arable reversion is done - there's a reason I've taken those areas out & that's because even at £200/t they are still marginal. That won't change. I can still put livestock on them and grow wild flower meadows which for now certainly look a better option than struggling with arable machinery for no net return. If the farm were mine I wouldn't act differently.

Thanks for the comprehensive reply!
I would say you were relatively large and productive compared to many of us livestock farmers. I probably shouldn't have interrupted this thread as I hadn't noticed it was in 'cropping'. [ I just got here from 'activity stream'.]
I would agree with what you have said.
I have several acres of natural areas on the farm for which I have never received a penny. If I put it to grass I could claim forage area and then claim a lot to rewild it.

 

[Goweresque]

I don't get what you are saying about "You can not get any payment for the most environmentally valuable but unproductive areas that you have always maintained?"

I think what @Jackov Altraids is saying is that schemes only pay people to take land that is in production now (even if not very productive) and remove it from production. Thus any farm that has already done that won't get paid on those areas.

For example I have lots of bits of game cover that are precisely the areas you mention, field corners, fiddly bits, wet bits etc etc, and they used to be in arable but I voluntarily removed them from production. I didn't get paid for that, nor will they pay me to keep them as they are under a scheme. But had I continued to plough, fertilise and spray them for the last decade or more, then they'd pay me to take them out of production. So the people who have already done something to aid the environment are penalised, and those who did nothing and kept farming are rewarded.

I hold a special place in hell for the people behind the Campaign for the Farmed Environment, encouraging farmers to voluntarily remove land from production. Anyone who did would now have lost out and those who ignored it will be able to apply for money to do what others did for free.

 

[Brisel]

Can you define what you mean by "removed from production?" Are you talking about Permanently Ineligible Features now?

I fallowed a few wet and awkward corners as EF1 in ELS. Now not eligible for CS really as no option is really worth it. Nectar Flower wasn't possible due to a SSSI next door but I've made sure it cross complied for BPS so I can claim on it & I use it as EFA fallow too. It was naturally regenerated and gets mown once/year after harvest. Quite a lot of couch grass in it but natural grasses gradually moved in from the edges.

 

[Goweresque]

Can you define what you mean by "removed from production?" Are you talking about Permanently Ineligible Features now?

I fallowed a few wet and awkward corners as EF1 in ELS. Now not eligible for CS really as no option is really worth it. Nectar Flower wasn't possible due to a SSSI next door but I've made sure it cross complied for BPS so I can claim on it & I use it as EFA fallow too. It was naturally regenerated and gets mown once/year after harvest. Quite a lot of couch grass in it but natural grasses gradually moved in from the edges.

Removed from production meaning stopping growing crops on it (or grass for grazing/fodder) and putting it down to some sort of bird and wildlife friendly cover crop, or even letting it become scrub/proto-woodland. Anyone who has farmed every single inch of his farm since the year dot will get far more money now by going into a scheme than a person who has voluntarily stopped production on areas without a scheme, as the latter won't get paid for his voluntary actions, and has less odd bits left to put into a scheme.

The only way around it is to spray off, destroy and rip up all the cover crops I've created, and return them to production for a year or two, then apply to 'create new habitats' under an environmental scheme. How good for the wildlife and the environment is all that?

 

[Brisel]

I still don't quite understand. What land use codes have you put on your BPS forms for these areas?

 

[Goweresque]

I still don't quite understand. What land use codes have you put on your BPS forms for these areas?

Some fallow, some permanent crops (canary reed grass/ artichokes). But regardless of what code is on the BPS form, the cover thats there now does not qualify under any of the enviro schemes for payment as is. I'd have to plough them all up, and crop them for a season, then apply to put them into a scheme, and plant the correct seed mix etc.

 

[Brisel]

Ok. I'd argue that most things other than recently established perennials like canary grass wouldn't last much more than 5 years so you'd want to reseed anyway. I've entered some 6m reed canary grass strips carried over from ELS into my HT as SW1. You haven't described anything excessively onerous so far. Why crop them for one year? Are they not in an arable BPS code now?

 

[Goweresque]

Ok. I'd argue that most things other than recently established perennials like canary grass wouldn't last much more than 5 years so you'd want to reseed anyway. I've entered some 6m reed canary grass strips carried over from ELS into my HT as SW1. You haven't described anything excessively onerous so far. Why crop them for one year? Are they not in an arable BPS code now?

I might get away with going straight to a scheme, but I've still got to destroy whats there now first, which in my view negates the whole purpose of being 'green'. Using chemicals and fuel to destroy an existing green cover, then more fuel to plant something else, which will then be full of weeds is not my idea of helping the environment.

 

[Wooly]

I might get away with going straight to a scheme, but I've still got to destroy whats there now first, which in my view negates the whole purpose of being 'green'. Using chemicals and fuel to destroy an existing green cover, then more fuel to plant something else, which will then be full of weeds is not my idea of helping the environment.

When we went from our old 10 year HLS agreement to CSS, I had to take out all our 6m margins. These were originally required to be sown to buffer our SSSI land against spray and fertilizer drift.

The new CSS literature wouldn't allow buffer strips against SSSI land. However hard the Natural England team tried to add them to our agreement, the more their computer programme rejected them, so we ended up without them !

 

[Brisel]

Odd. NE insisted on buffers against SSSIs and SMs in mine.

 

[mountfarm]

The powers that be put in for this across all their farms and got accepted but are in a similar boat in that they are not sure. As the manager of one of the units implementing it would not be to hard work as we have roots so lots of overwintered stubbles. The average expected income across all the farms is £130,000 per year including capital payments but they are concerned about payments and what the future holds and being stuck in it.

 

[Extreme Optimist]

Bear in mind that the "contract" is totally one sided and NE appear to be able to adjust their side at will. Even if you win a case against them they have a wonderful fall back (at the moment at least!) and say they had no choice and they were only acting under European rules and if you want to take things further, you have to go to the European Court.
At least Dick Turpin wore a mask!!!