I think we're both on the same page frankly. Nothing's new under the sun.Better pesticides allowed you to get away with continuous mono cropping for a while. It was never a sustainable system.
I think we're both on the same page frankly. Nothing's new under the sun.Better pesticides allowed you to get away with continuous mono cropping for a while. It was never a sustainable system.
Link invalid Janet
Sorry me again...We won’t be using Red Tractor to perform them.
In the SFI document we explain that each SFI farmer will submit an annual declaration to confirm progress in delivering the agreement.
This primarily self-assessment approach will be backed up by site visit checks on a proportion of agreements each year.
We’ll also look to increase our use of remote monitoring (such as satellites) to increase efficiency and ease for farmers and Defra.
The problem with scientific evidence in farming, is that quite often is agenda based.
Farmers are seen as unqualified peasants and so their years of practice knowledge and experience in real world is ignored in favour of a officially qualified person , often doing research to prove a result they wish to see.
Data and info can be manipulated how they want. Real life results can not.
Example from a environmental side.
Early HLS i was having problems getting flower mixs to grow well. Did well enough to pass inspections, but thought could be better.
I did a couple of small blokes of my own outside the scheme my own way.
Worked great and inspector/ case manager was very impressed with them.
When I said it was my own method and asked if I could do it on the official HLS , o was told no, as its not best/proper way to do it as quantified by the experts...
You probably seen with many of my posts, I am deeply sceptical of defra/rpa.
To many times I have knocked back for wanting to do better than the official way.
Experts won't take note of farmers as if they do, it shows they not really experts and don't know their stuff.
So we end up with schemes that don't work great as made up by non farming folk who are trying to justify their job.
Been their...I had an inspection under the old scheme with 2m margins against watercourses, I measured them on the map, then used the defra online calculator when it first came out, both the same. The inspector came with a measing wheel and decided I was 40% short, apparently asking him for the calibration certificate for his wheel and asking him to test measure in the field over rough ground is not the thing to do. Luckily I just had enough points with hedges and a few field corners to scrape through, but it makes me reluctant to enter any more of their schemes
Hi Janet thank you for your reply, unfortunately "no plans" doesn't really overly inspire confidence as plans as we know seem to have a habit of changing rather quickly under this government, I would only be interested in considering committing to a fixed term contract if it was confirmed in the terms that monitoring would not change part way through, if there are as you say "no plans" I can't see why there would be any objection to this being inserted into the terms of any contract?The Rural Payments Agency will deliver the SFI scheme, including monitoring arrangements. There are no plans at all to outsource any of that to private companies.
I think it is really funny how farm contractors like Clive who probably were not in Enviroment schemes for the last 15yrs or more are now going to learn about Bureaucracy that makes Red Tractor look like a picnic! Yes Clive you will find by the end of the pilot that if time is money you will be below the minimum wage after you finish the pilot... have fun as it is a great badge of honour to help design a scheme. Those of us with CS and HLS schemes joined them with money and time as a secondary consideration.. enjoy your journey and please dont winge when it becomes too bureaucratici guess i will find out soon - committed now !
What’s it done to soil OM levels and water infiltration rates?A lot depends on the soil type.
Local to us had spuds in a big field other year. With the wet weather it looked wrecked when they were done.
Had a tractor towing harvester at times.
Water filled ruts, right mess.
They ploughed it early spring and looked a cracking spring barley crop.
Their WW this time looks good as well.
would never know it looked like a swamp couple years ago. Looks way better than ours!! They got nice soils, we got Outcrop...
Starting to sound abit communist, forcing people who at significant risk, cost and hard work over many years to give up land that is integral to their business.i am sure we could have come up with some rules, now we can now set rules any rules we like now we are outside of the EU, to stop fake split ups. The old system and it’s rules had to please 27 counties now we only have to make it work for the UK.
the reality is while stopping cheats would be an ongoing problem the reality is if it only worked with 90% of farmers it would still have been a vast improvement and those 10% would be taken to task with new rules over time.
Fake fragmenting of big business Can be made very difficult with a few rules, and if they don’t work then add more to block the fake breakups.
The reality is no one tried, and what we have now will weaken farming if it’s not done correctly.
We need land in production we need food production increases over the next 20-30 years if we don’t see a big world population drop then we will need far more food than we produce now, so anything that reduces an already dwindling farming industry and reduces its ability to manage the land as actual agricultural land will not be a good thing long term.
I actually worry most about the animal sector, they seem to be under failure pressure from fake climate claims and the vegan brigade, and now with these new schemes, once animal populations drop bringing them back is no over night job neither is creating new farmers to farm them once they are gone, while I am arable, that doesn’t say that I am blind to the mistakes threatening my livestock brothers.
All these are reasons to allow smaller farmers to thrive and that also encourages more small farmers to start up especially in the livestock industry where slow scale up of farms is more possible unlike arable at this time.
With bit of encouragement from govermant new entrants using what is currently farmed by big growers to setup new farms for new entrants with incentives to either rent, tenant blocks out, sell small blocks, with the ability for the buyer to rent or tenant blocks to go with the sold block.
A lot of big farms include rented land even if only that was dropped by the big farmers it would change the industry.
Industrial food production and environmental protection will always need to find a balance as they are different activitiesThat's a really fundamental point.
The evidence is growing just how damaging intense cultivation, as required for root crop and veg establishment, can be to soil biology. However, as you rightly say, the country needs a supply of these foods so they have to be grown somewhere. The best we can do is to try to minimise the impact of what we do.
I can recall fields looking like the Somme after we harvested sugar beet and getting forage maize off caused horrific damage some years.
Some folk are successfully direct drilling forage maize into retained ground cover but beet and veg crops just wouldn't compete.
Maybe growing them only as a single year in a long rotation is the best we can do? They are never going to fit into an SFI soils standard imho though.
DEFRA have made it clear that food supply security has nothing to do with ELMS. That could be its downfall in the end as it forces a choice between farming for the environment or for food production.
I'd like to see you spread at 100kg/ha!appologies if asked already but was does "add organic matter to 1/3 of the land in the standard each year" mean in practice? If I have access to 10T of OM I could put 1T/ha on 10ha or 100kg/ha on 100ha Spreading OM excessively thinly is just going to burn unnecessary diesel and cause unnecessary compaction.
Well thats me out. Have had enough of remote monitoring from the Forestry Commission, total dick heads. Same with the annual declaration which you have to sign upto to get payment yet they have changed the contract so you would be stupid to sign. But if you dont sign you lose all payment as your deemed as a late application with 100% penalty. Totally no redress as their also Judge and Jury. Looks like the same system is now being extended to the rest of farming.We won’t be using Red Tractor to perform them.
In the SFI document we explain that each SFI farmer will submit an annual declaration to confirm progress in delivering the agreement.
This primarily self-assessment approach will be backed up by site visit checks on a proportion of agreements each year.
We’ll also look to increase our use of remote monitoring (such as satellites) to increase efficiency and ease for farmers and Defra.
How about using the GCHQ spy satillites to spot weed invasive species like naughty farmers using a lazer and then get a high resolution image to prove that the pest has been eliminated? This could be sent as a live feed via the DEFRA Blog so that well behaved farmers will meet or exceed the standards? Just an idea?We won’t be using Red Tractor to perform them.
In the SFI document we explain that each SFI farmer will submit an annual declaration to confirm progress in delivering the agreement.
This primarily self-assessment approach will be backed up by site visit checks on a proportion of agreements each year.
We’ll also look to increase our use of remote monitoring (such as satellites) to increase efficiency and ease for farmers and Defra.
A weed is just a plant in the wrong place!! Its still green coverDoes "mulit species green cover" on 20% of the ground between December and Feb includes weeds in an autumn sown crop that has no Autumn herbicide? Failing that the extra £18/ha seems pretty derisory. Spring cropping, especially without frost weathered furrows, rarely gives a positive margin on our heavy soils.
Well I was just using simple numbers to illustrate my point! If I set the discharge speed slow and drive fast and write applied 10T on 100ha in my diary.... Not all OM is cattle manure, it does say any kind of OM... 100Kg/ha might not actually be a silly rate if the material was sewage sludge pellets being applied through a fert spinner...I'd like to see you spread at 100kg/ha!
Let's not waste people's time on impossible scenarios.