Campaign for the Farmed Environment July 2, 2013 12:00 am The Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE) launched a new booklet at this years Cereals Event. The booklet contained advice for farmers on how to to protect soil and water, and benefit wildlife using 8 simple measures. A second leaflet ‘Conservation Management for your Livestock Business‘ will be launched at the Livestock Event. Copies of the leaflet can be found on the CFE website at http://www.cfeonline.org.uk/news/ This month also saw the release of results from the DEFRA survey of ‘land management voluntarily in 2012/13’. The survey, completed in March found that 80% of lowland farmers considered ‘efficient use of inputs’ and ‘protecting soil and water’ very important. 66% of lowland farmers had some understanding of CFE, the levels of understanding were greatest on cereal farms. Overall 45% of lowland holdings managed land under one of the 22 voluntary measures, uptake increased with farm size and was significantly lower on predominately grassland farms. In March 2013 the area under unpaid environmental land management totalled 677 thousand hectares, of this 266 thousand hectares was in overwintered stubbles. Off the 55% of holdings that had not implemented any voluntary measures half stated they ‘were already doing enough for the environment’ a further 25% suggested there were no appropriate measures.
