Farming

Without farmers to maintain our countryside, familiar landscape features such as hedgerows, drystone walls, pastures, meadows, woods, and traditional barns - all of which contribute to the unique character of the English countryside - could disappear.

Livestock farming is particularly important to the countryside, as a key part of local food networks and for maintaining landscape character and wildlife habitats.   

• What next for Set-Aside?
• New central crop storage scheme for East Midlands 
• Apply for funding for your farm initiative
• Three more successful funding bids in the region
• Farmers risk an environmental own-goal

Want to visit a local farm? The annual Open Farm Sunday scheme offers the chance to get to know your local food producers face to face, see how they work, and ask direct questions. Find out which farms in your area are participating on 13 June 2010 - and keep an eye on the Open Farm Sunday website ready for 2011 and beyond!

CPRE 2010

 

  What next now that Set-Aside has been set aside?

Following the abolition of the set-aside scheme, CPRE is lobbying for a small percentage of farmland to be managed for wildlife. The discontinued scheme aimed to prevent the oversupply of arable crops but also, albeit unintentionally, provided a number of environmental benefits. CPRE will be pushing for new safeguards to be introduced for farmers in return for European farm payments.

 

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Rural Round-up from the East Midlands Development Agency (emda)

  An ambitious plan to develop a large collaborative central crop storage facility in the East Midlands was awarded almost £1.5m from the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE)

Woldgrain Storage Ltd, a not-for-profit cooperative based at Hemswell, Lincolnshire, will create over 26,000 tonnes of additional crop storage taking the total capacity to over 50,000 tonnes.

RDPE funding will also enable the plant house to be upgraded, incorporting innovative technology to control the drying, cleaning, sorting and grading of a variety of combinable crops including wheat, oil seed rape and malting barley. 

Richard Milligan-Manby, chairman of Woldgrain Storage, said: "The RDPE funding gives us the opportunity to expand our membership and develop a facility which, we hope, will secure a better future for a larger number of arable farmers in the East Midlands."

Research commissioned by emda has highlightedthe need for central storage facilities to replace individual on-farm storage. The report found that many of the region's on-farm storage units are becoming outdated and may be difficult to upgrade to meet the increasingly strict product quality controls set by purchasers. 

  LEADER Approach update                        Back to top

emda has announced a further three Local Actioin Groups to have successfully bid for RDPE LEADER Approach funding. They bring the total within the East Midlands region to seven, with a combined budget of just under £13m.

The new groups are located in the Wash and Fens area of LIncolnshire, North Northamptonshire and the Bassetlaw and Newark and Sherwood areas of Nottinghamshire.

The LEADER Approach is a way to use local knowledge to enable a community led approach to deliver RDPE funding in rural areas.

   If YOU would like to apply for a grant from the regional RDPE or from a LEADER area, visit the emda website, drop them an email, or call 0115 947 1797. 

Reproduced from emda News, Spring 2009

Fiona Cowan 
2 September 2009                                         Back to top

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Regional Farming Volunteer Role Description
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