Farm of the Week: Cricket bat willow growers who have sacrificed land as floodplain to save the town below

Richard Murray Wells of Ness Hall, East Ness near Nunnington is an arable farmer who farms a cropping area of 4000 acres under a variety of arrangements with around 1500 acres of his own land but, whilst he has suffered a similar fate as many of his colleagues since autumn, he is feeling positive about developments being made to the SFI schemes, particularly the managing of floodwater, an area he has long been championing and doing something about at Ness.

“There are premium options coming that cover managing floodwater this summer and that’s exciting. It means there’s good news out there or at least glimmers of light. I think finally we’ve got some ministers at the helm who might know what they’re doing even though with a General Election approaching their time may be limited.

“We have created 150 acres of new floodplains. It took us a number of years, using massive kit and is 10 per cent of our owned land, which is a large proportion given over to floodplains, but it’s because I’m interested in what the right answers are.

“I’m really pro environmental sustainable farming and for us the best use of the land we designated as floodplain and have worked on is now holding up water from the Holbeck and River Rye so that hundreds of houses downstream in Malton don’t flood. That’s got to be the right answer.

“We did it to hopefully avoid Malton being flooded and have effectively created a lung that fills up. When the levels get to a certain height our fields with ponds and lakes take in the water and hold it there, and then when the level goes back down it gently flows into the river. There can be no doubt that holding up thousands of cubic metres of water has to be beneficial.

“We completed it a year ago and it now has wetlands, water and fowl, looks amazing, and is delivering both environmental and wildlife benefits.

“The Wildfowl and Wetland Trust undertook a feasibility study and we moved forward from there. We knocked out old floodbanks and built new ones, and undertook flood plain widening. It has created an amazing habitat for fowl. It’s where we need to be going and everyone’s a winner with it.

Richard believes what has taken place at Ness is a step along the way to a better understanding of how farming can create something useful, appropriate and with very real purpose, but he’d like to see greater news in other areas too, with a focus on wellbeing of all walks of life.

“I would welcome SFI options that push food production and capture carbon. There’s this big push saying we’ve got a climate emergency and that as farmers we’ve got to join the SFI schemes and, it seems the focus has been skewed towards biodiversity. I’m all for birds, but birds don’t capture carbon. Not in any significant way.

“Recently the SFI on wild bird feed crops was reduced. I’m so glad with that direction because putting a farm 100 per cent into wild bird mix isn’t farming, whether sustainable or otherwise. And we’re all trying to do sustainable farming.

“I think the other problem we’ve got at the moment is that the people have been confusing biodiversity and carbon capture. The SFI has so far largely been aimed at the former but has not been delivering an awful lot for climate change.

“The SFI is doing nothing as far as I can tell for food production. You could argue that the push towards legume fallow is for food production but that only comes if you rotate it and at the moment it’s not required that you do so. It’s all well and good fixing nitrogen, breaking up the soil with a legume mix but you’ll only reap the benefit if you put a wheat crop in after a year or two.

Other than Richard’s feelgood coming from news of floodwater management options in the SFI he tells of a challenging past eight months of arable cropping that has proved a real mixed bag.

“Some of the heaviest land never came right, so we didn’t get it drilled. We were waiting for a window that never came and in a way that delay turned out to be an advantage to what we would have sown, because it would have failed anyway.

“The better land actually looks okay and there’s potential, but there are plenty of fields that have either flooded or crops have been washed away. We’ve also had the oilseed rape nearly obliterated by flea beetle. We are coming out of it for next year and replacing it with a legume mix under the SFI scheme. We had always planned to go into the SFI. We’ve already quite an extensive Countryside Stewardship Scheme.

Richard pays tribute to his farm manager Max Ward and his team that includes Dave Bowes and Jim Hartley.

“Nothing happens here without Max, Dave and Jim. We start boosting the team up in numbers from hereon in and through summer.

“In addition to our own land at Ness we have three major clients and a pea vining operation that sees us working closely with Hartleys. Our largest single cropping acreage is 1800 acres of winter feed wheat. This year’s varieties are Dawsum, Champion, Parkin & Saki. We have a further 340 acres of Crusoe milling wheat which goes into crumpets for Warburtons. Other big crops include 470 acres of winter barley variety Kingsbarn; and what should have been 365 acres of oilseed rape.

“We grow 320 acres of our own vining peas, but overall we are contractors for 1000 acres. The rest of our acreage is made up of rye, potatoes, temporary grass leys and some wild bird mix. We have around 1000 acres of grass overall.

Cricket season has just started and that’s another source of income at Ness.

“We’ve been growing cricket bat willow for manufacturer Gray Nicholls for some time,” says Richard. “We’re over 50 Not Out now as Gray Nicholls have been working with for us at least half a century. It’s a fantastic crop for us that has done better and better.

“We grow the willow for between 16-18 years to achieve the ideal diameter. We started in a relatively small way. We were regarded as very far north at the time, but that has changed over the years and our climate changing has got better and better for growing cricket bats.

Richard says green energy is another priority at Ness.

“We’ve covered all our sheds and grain stores with solar panels and the dryers and conveyors run on solar energy though the day. We’ve gone for it as much as we can – all we need now is the sunshine for the crops.