Farmers in the Peak District putting down roots for 14 miles of new hedges to help nature thrive

The new hedgerow will create valuable habitat corridors for wildlife, sequestering carbon and enhancing the landscape.

This is on top of 10 kilometres that has already been planted and a further eight kilometres that is planned for next year – making 24 kilometres in just four years.

The PEF is an environmental co-operative of farmers and moorland managers who have come together to achieve ambitious outcomes on a landscape scale in the Dark Peak and Southwest Peak.

It was set up last year, with help from the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust and the NFU and represents 77 farmers, covering 40,000ha, who believe that, with the right support, collaborative action for the environment by farmers can achieve nature recovery.

The idea was also to help farmers access emerging natural capital markets, blending public and private sources of funding to replace the loss of Basic Payment Scheme subsidies and deliver nature recovery, carbon neutrality and clean river catchments.

This latest project fits in with plans by PEF for biodiversity recovery and net zero carbon by 2040.

Tom Noel, local farmer and chair of PEF said: “Our upland farms are a rare haven for several very rare species so by linking habitats with new hedgerows our members are committing their own time and effort to create wildlife corridors.

“As a farmer-led environmental cooperative we plan to plant more hedgerows each year as part of a broader conservation plan, thereby hopefully meeting and beating government targets on biodiversity, carbon, clean air and water.

"We will achieve this at the same time as welcoming over 13m visitors to our farms each year and contributing to national food security and thriving village communities in the Peak District."

The hedge plants and trees were supplied by the Woodland Trust which has provided plants for the last five years to farmers in the Hope Valley and Bradfield.

Mark Priestley, is a dairy farmer in the Hope Valley Farmers and has been creating new hedges across his farm for several years now.

He added: “We have created over 700m of new hedgerow in the last two years with Hope Valley Farmers. Ours is a former dairy farm so there was limited wildlife habitat across it, but we are gradually putting it back for nature.

“The boundaries on the farm were mainly fences before so it is a great opportunity to plant hedges and create a network of wildlife corridors across the farm. We would not have been able to afford to do everything we have without this project.”

There is a growing movement across the country, and in the Yorkshire region, of establishing farmer cooperatives.

Since it was launched in 2022 by farmers in Hampshire and Wiltshire, the original Environmental Farmers Group has undergone a rapid expansion. More groups or ‘clusters’ of farmers in Northants and Northern Lincolnshire have joined, and it is set to expand west to Dorset, Somerset and Devon, south to the Isle of Wight and east to West Sussex.

PEF became a sister environmental cooperative and another, the Swaledale & Wensleydale Environmental Farmers, is in the process of being established in North Yorkshire.

The Hope Valley Farmers group was formed in October 2017 and now has more than 50 members across 18,500 acres, while Bradfield Farmers was formed in September 2019 and has almost reached 35 members who farm 18,750 acres.

Farmer groups now cover more than 580,000 acres, which is 2.9 per cent of England’s farmed area.