Setback for farm wildlife initiative

AS many as one in five farmers are still doing nothing to help a campaign to improve wildlife and conservation on their farm it has been revealed, with concern mounting that the initiative to improve farmland biodiversity will miss a key target.

Figures published this week by the Campaign for the Farmed Environment show that 130,374 hectares of cultivable land not in agri-environment schemes is currently out of production in England. This has declined sharply, compared with nearly 156,000ha in the February 2010 survey and over 157,000ha in 2009.

The Campaign for the Farmed Environment was set up in 2009 after the industry successfully argued farmers should be able to manage improving farmland conservation by themselves, rather than be regulated by Whitehall. It set itself the target of keeping the baseline level of 179,000ha of uncropped land by June 2012. However, this target now seems to be out of reach, with high cereal prices thought to be one of the factors in pushing farmers away from leaving land uncultivated.

Farming minister Jim Paice is understood to be concerned at the lack of progress and CFE leaders have said that while some 60 per cent of farmers who have renewed or joined Entry Level Stewardship it still needed to improve and acknowledged that “work on the ground needs to increase”.

CFE Delivery Group chairman Jim Egan said: “In addition to retaining uncropped land and putting in place key target options in ELS, we need to see more than 200,000 hectares in voluntary measures.

“Over 20 per cent of farmers are currently not doing anything for the CFE, however the survey has revealed that they have now agreed to take action to support the campaign.”

More positively for the campaign another of its key targets appears to be within sight, with nearly, 189,000ha now shown to be in “unpaid environmental management”, up from of nearly 174,000ha in 2009/10.