FEATURE
FEATURED FARMER MARTIN LINES
PAPLEY GROVE FARM, ST NEOTS, CAMBRIDGESHIRE Farm Facts MANPOWER: 2 full time plus part time in office FARM TYPE: Arable OTHER TENURE INFORMATION: Owner, tenant, share farmer, contractor REGION: South East England RAINFALL: 559 mm ALTITUDE: 65 m SOIL: Chalky boulder clay APPROACH: Regenerative agriculture KEY FARMING PRACTICES: No Till Soil monitoring Minimum Tillage Undersowing Biological control Cover crops Direct drilling Diversified rotation Habitat creation Integrated Pest Management Intercropping I am a third-generation farmer and contractor and grow mainly arable crops on the family farm and rented land. The farm is just over 400 acres. Our rented land and contract farm agreements bring the farm area up to 1334 acres. We mainly do combinable cropping growing commodity crops of winter wheat, winter and spring barley, winter beans and oil seed rape (OSR). We always try and find a human food home for the products or, as with beans, they go to an animal feed home to replace imported feed. I am Chair of the Nature Friendly Farming Network (NFFN) and have a particular interest in farm conservation management. I am currently running an ELS and HLS agreement on the home farm and Countryside Stewardship schemes on land I rent. For over 10 years our farm was in the old Countryside Stewardship Scheme to try to improve the natural habitat for wildlife on the farm. We replaced many hedges around the fields which had been removed, improved the few that were remaining and planted new ones. We also established grass strips alongside hedges and ditches and on our field boundaries. Over this time, we saw a significant increase in both flora and fauna on the farm. RSPB volunteers undertook several surveys which identified a wide range of species, including birds of high conservation concern such as turtle doves, yellow wagtails and corn buntings. In the last 8 years we have been in both an ELS and an HLS scheme, planting areas of wild bird seed mixes and creating wildflower areas (see the two videos below) and flower 6 DIRECT DRILLER MAGAZINE
enhanced boundary strips, as well as leaving an area of fallow land as a food and nesting source.
We have over 40 skylark plots distributed throughout our fields (see video footage below) and continue to sympathetically manage our old ridge and furrow meadows.
I hope to continue and extend our conservation work and link up wildlife habitats on neighbouring farms. We have made many wildlife corridors across the farm to help the wildlife move about. Other nature friendly farming practices we carry out on the farm are following an integrated pest management (IPM) approach, using chicken manure to help improve soil and replace artificial fertiliser, and cover cropping and direct drilling. We have started to bring in sheep to graze cover crops in the winter and are trying to use a crimper to kill cover crops. Talking to other like-minded farmers as part of the NFFN has given the opportunity to share best practice and understand that the best way we can farm is farming with our environment
ISSUE 11 | OCTOBER 2020
