Farming News

Rewetting our peatlands

Running a family farming business, you would think, would be a straightforward affair. Follow the seasons, grow grass, grow sheep, grow cows, sell them, repeat! This is obviously a large part of what we do but as a result of the farming activity which has taken place on Dartmoor for generations, we have created some pretty special landscapes, full of history, habitat and beauty. For the past 25 years or so we have been able to enhance what we have, through environmental agreements of various incarnations. Across the farm on our various blocks, we are currently involved in eight different projects or environmental agreements, doing all sorts of things to enhance and improve things.

Although farming has had a bad press at times for its environmental record, here on Dartmoor I think we have done a fair job of working hand-in-hand with our environment. There are lots of things we can improve but because it is such a harsh, wet place, at times the only option is to work with nature. Trying to work against it on a bleak, wet rock just will not work! One of the bigger projects we are involved with is at Dartmoor Prison farm in partnership with the Duchy estate and South West Peatland Partnership (SWPP). Over the past year we have been rewetting about 200 hectares of peat. In the past, peat on this site was drained and harvested as fuel for the prison and the local community, and the land was dried out to grow more edible forage. Our ancestors made use of a valuable resource available to them at the time, but as understanding of our natural world has changed, we now know that functioning wet peatlands are great at locking away carbon and slowing water down. SWPP has been awarded a grant to rewet our peat and peatlands all over the South West. The process uses specialist equipment to minimise ground disturbance and create numerous small leaky dams in the drainage channels across the landscape. This slows the flow, raises the water table, and allows the sphagnum moss to grow and regenerate the functioning peatbog, thereby trapping carbon, slowing the flow of our rivers and allowing peatland habitats to thrive.

It is a bit of a leap of faith on our part as we are one of the first farms to rewet part of our land on Dartmoor, but we believe in looking after our natural capital and doing what we can to help mitigate climate change. There is a question over commercial value to the farm. Currently the money available only covers the mechanics of the project, and we are not yet sure how it will affect our cattle and sheep, and their grazing patterns on a wetter landscape. I am sure the next generation of environmental agreement will reward this positive management, assuming the government has the stability to make decisions about the future of our industry, and the ability for agricultural policy to find that sweet spot between feeding people alongside maintaining a thriving environment and landscape. But that is a whole other subject!

Winter sees all the cattle come into the barns to protect them from the Dartmoor weather. Let’s hope we have enough feed to see us through. Cutting out the use of artificial fertilizer saved us money this year, but our harvest was down as a result, and not helped by the dry summer. We will have to be careful and manage what is available as best we can!

I wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous new year, from all at Greenwell Farm!

Mat Cole, Greenwell Farm