More Greening Thoughts

In our article of the 13^th June (‘Further Greening Points’) we gave some thought to the detailed rules for Greening.  It is not expected that the official DEFRA/RPA guidance will emerge anytime before August, therefore we continue to give our views of how we think implementation will work.  We would caution that all this remains unconfirmed, but it is based on discussions with those setting policy, so at least is informed speculation.  It is provided so that those making decisions on-the-ground are best placed to do so. 

Many of the questions relate to field margins and buffers.  Firstly, there is a question whether margins put down under a Stewardship scheme will still be counted as ‘Arable’ land and thus be eligible for EFA, even if the (grass) margins have been in place for over 5 years.  The clear presumption is that such land will be classed as Arable. 

Even if the margins aren’t currently in a scheme it looks likely that it would still be arable land.  An example would be if the margins were part of a classic scheme (CSS), or ELS which has since expired but the farmer has simply kept them in place.  In most cases in recent years, the land would simply have been coded on the SP5 form under the main (arable) use of the field.  The coding seems to over-ride what the actual cover on the land might have been.  An exemption to this might be where the margins have been separately identified on the Rural Land Register (RLR) – for example under an ‘A’ and ‘B’ field number.  Depending on the age of the margins and the way they have been coded, the area might lose its Arable status in this case. 

There have also been questions around cross-compliance strips.  This is currently GAEC14 under SPS – the number will change, but the basic rule will remain.  Cross-compliance requires uncultivated and unsprayed/unfertilised strips 2m from the centre of a hedge or watercourse, or 1m from the top of a ditch-bank.   It appears that the 1m margin against a watercourse can count as a ‘buffer strip’ under the EFA rules.  In fact, there is a strong possibility that there will be no requirement for buffer strips to be wider than 1m.  Therefore, each metre run of 1m cross-compliance margin would actually generate 9m² of EFA due to the conversion factor of 6 and weighting of 1.5.  To us this seems almost too good to be true, and it is perhaps a little dangerous to rely on until confirmation is received. 

One final point is a clarification.  Many people seem to believe that it is not possible for the same area to count towards both EFA and Crop Diversification.  This is not true – the same land can do both jobs.  For example, if a farmer has two crops and 5% fallow he will be compliant with both the EFA requirement and the ‘three crop rule’.