On my farm, Abbey Farm, one of our aims is to conserve wildlife. We are one of an increasing number of farms who are trying to re-create the right living conditions for animals and plants that have disappeared from much of the UK countryside. Most farming here is intensive with high levels of mechanisation and chemical inputs. Many landscape features have been destroyed. Since 1945, 25% of UK hedges, 95% of flower-rich meadows and 30% of ponds have gone.

Agriculture has contributed to pollution through spray drift and contamination of watercourses. Agrochemicals have resulted in less diverse wildlife in fields. Herbicides have reduced weed populations, which in turn (along with other pesticides) has reduced the numbers of insects and birds that live on weeds. Bird species that were common 35 years ago, like Tree Sparrow (Passer montanus) and Grey Partridge (Perdix perdix), have declined by 90% and 75% respectively.

At Abbey Farm we started to reverse this stream of loss by protecting the richest remaining areas of wildlife habitat. Our best sites were wetlands and flower-rich dry grasslands, which formed the last refuges for many species. In some of these areas where use of agrochemicals stopped ten years ago, uncommon plant species are already returning and water quality has improved. Elsewhere, we have created new habitats through tree planting, wetland creation and sowing new herb-rich grassland. The new grasslands are on land that was intensive arable. They were sown with seed we collected by hand from sites within three miles of the farm. These seed mixes contained up to 110 native species, and so preserve genetic material that is locally appropriate. On the cropped land, we have made more resources available for wildlife by changing our chemical inputs and the timing of some farm operations. Crop residues are left for several weeks before ploughing to allow birds to feed on fallen seeds or fragments of root crops. After harvest, the sugar beet fields become the feeding ground for up to 20,000 wintering geese.

With these measures, we are having some success with wildlife conservation. However, in December 1998 I visited India with a group of farmers from the UK and the USA. This trip highlighted an area of biodiversity where we are not making progress: crops and crop varieties. In Southern India we saw one 9 ha farm growing various beans, cotton, tumeric, lentils, and fruit trees among other crops. By comparison, crop diversity on a UK farm is typically very low. On the 320 ha of cropped land at Abbey Farm, we grow just three crops (sugarbeet, barley and linseed). In the north of India, we met a group of communities in the Himalayas who had collected 130 varieties of rice and 160 kinds of bean from their region. The varieties are grown each year to ensure the collection remains viable. They have become distinct over many generations of selective breeding for different purposes - eating quality, need for irrigation, use in religious rituals, whether they can withstand hail etc. By UK standards this is a huge diversity of crop varieties. For example, on over 1.5 million hectares of wheat (75% of the total area used for wheat in the UK), just 10 varieties are grown; on the 175,000 ha of sugarbeet, just 18 varieties. It is also very rare for farmers to develop or preserve varieties themselves. They are all from nationally recommended lists produced by plant breeding companies. The varieties we grow are determined by our customers (grain merchants and British Sugar).

UK farming has seen a simultaneous loss of crop and wildlife diversity. At Abbey Farm, we are seeing some wild plants and animals returning. But, clearly we have a long way to go - our range of crops and crop varieties is low, and many wildlife species are vulnerable or still missing. So, more change is needed to improve biodiversity, while continuing to meet the challenges of providing for human needs and of staying in business.

Edward Cross (Farmer's Link, UK)
[F.L Abbey Farm, Flitcham, King’s Lynn, Norfolk PE31 6BT, UK]

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