4 minute read
GOOD EVANS
GOODEvans
This month, Roger Evans discusses the perils of field margins in organic farming and gives his thoughts on footpaths and the importance of visitor experience when it comes to farm diversification success.
Imake a conscious e ort never to advocate anything in these columns. I tell you what I do and why I do it, but I never say you should do it as well.
If what I do goes wrong you hear about that, particularly.
We are organic. I’m not saying you should be too, but it suits us and we are glad we are organic. But there are two issues which don’t seem to go together and I don’t think they have been thought through. Firstly, people, so we are told, just love eld margins. ere are six-metre margins which are optional and the 2m margins which are compulsory.
People don’t talk about margins, they talk about wildlife corridors, as if these area are full of all sorts of wildlife going about their business and they couldn’t do that if it was all le to farmers. Never mind that wildlife can and does cut across any eld under the cover of darkness.
We park that and turn to organic farming. People seem to like that as well. It ticks lots of boxes.
It doesn’t use any chemicals, which are a bad thing. It’s sustainable, whatever that means.
Fight against weeds
I could go on and on, and some organic enthusiasts do. But I have learned that the only weapons we have in our ght against weeds is to chop them o before they go to seed. So what do you do if you have a margin which is full of weeds, and I’m thinking particularly of thistles and docks here. It’s a dilemma; it needs thinking through and to my mind someone needs to choose if you want wildlife corridors or organic farming.
On our rented land there is a good stone track which gives you access to all the elds. e trouble is that at the start of the track there are two smallish elds. ey are about ve acres altogether and we always graze these. If you are on your own it is usually impossible to open the gates, drive through and shut the gate without the ca le ge ing out. So everyone drives up the silage elds and now there is a clear track up through the grass.
But it isn’t as bad as it rst looks. at is because there is a public footpath which runs about 500 yards up these elds. I have mixed feeling feelings about spraying o footpaths. I don’t mind so much if the footpath is used. is one is, but years ago there were people going about walking obscure footpaths just to make sure you had sprayed them. ey don’t seem to do that anymore. I used to hate spraying o a good crop, especially if you had never seen anyone using it.
Opportunity
Anyway, we have these two tracks going about 500 yards up these elds. e one track follows the footpath exactly so we would have had to spray that o anyway. ere is one wheel mark which obviously runs parallel which is not really needed. I explain that by saying that this gives walkers the opportunity to walk side-by-side and at the same time remain socially distanced.
As far as I am concerned this puts me ahead of the game. I bet there aren’t many farmers o ering that. If I could I’d close this particular footpath and charge people to look at the views; these are spectacular and worth anyone’s money. It would be a good diversi cation.
We recently took another couple out for a meal in the pub. She is my good friend, the singing orist, and he is also a best friend. It is he who sources our turkey for us at Christmas. e trouble is that he will never tell you how much the turkey is. We take them out every year hoping that goes some way towards paying for it. It must do because the turkey keeps turning up. We had a really cheap turkey last year because when we took them out that subsidy of £10 a meal was on. I don’t know if the chancellor
intended to subsidise Christmas dinners, but he subsidised ours.
While we were out we talked about her ower shop. She is a bit of a character and I always think that you pay so much for the owers and so much for the experience.
Her shop is quite small so she is o en to be found in the doorway and talking to passers-by. She loves dogs and most of the passers-by have dogs on their leads and she makes a fuss of them.
She always carries doggy treats in her pocket which she gives to these dogs. She reckons that a er a few treats the dogs drag their owners into the shop where they invariably buy something.
ere are lots of lessons here for farmers, especially if you are considering some sort of diversi cation. If you are dealing with consumers make their visit to you enjoyable, so enjoyable that they want to come again.
Making a difference
I suspect that those people with dogs in the shop know exactly what’s going on, but they don’t mind because their dog is an important member of their family and they just love to see their dog made a fuss of.
It’s all so simple, obvious, stu , but it can make such a di erence.
