The Great Yorkshire Show: Farming for food and protecting and enhancing the environment

‘Changing the farming narrative and delivering more than just food’ was the theme discussed by farmers and industry experts at the 165^th Great Yorkshire Show.

As chair of The Future Farmers of Yorkshire’s Breakfast Meeting 2024 event, for which Armstrong Watson was the headline sponsor, it was pleasing to see 180 people turnout to hear from this year’s speakers and share their thoughts in the Q&A session that followed.

We heard from a fantastic line-up of presenters who, like me, aside from their industry roles, all hail from farming backgrounds or are active farmers themselves.

Joe Stanley is Head of Sustainable Farming at the Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust’s Allerton Project and a farmer who has dedicated his career to promoting sustainable farming practices, while Knepp Estate’s Head of Natural Capital Molly Biddell works part-time on her family’s farm in Surrey. Jodie Bolland, who was brought up on a North Yorkshire dairy farm, is Woodhead Brother’s UK Agricultural Sourcing Director, and Professor John Gilliland OBE, Special Advisor to the AHDB, is a livestock farmer from Northen Ireland.

Between them they conveyed some valuable messages to the farming community about the need to farm our land to produce the highest quality of food, whilst making changes to benefit the environment.

Sustainable Farming Incentive schemes could deliver for you 

Every farm is different, and every farmer has different objectives but there are some things everybody can do without majorly altering their farm to protect and benefit the environment, whilst producing food and improving efficiencies. Even some of the basic schemes through the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) will produce some extra income or will save some costs elsewhere in a farming business.

As Molly Biddell perfectly put it, the environment in which we farm is our greatest asset. We should recognise that and use the asset we hold to help in some way to help limit climate change, and look to introduce such nature-based solutions for an income. If farmers keep fighting and running away from environmental, carbon and biodiversity schemes we will miss the opportunity to generate income from them.

As an example, a farm in the SFI herbal leys scheme will get paid a hectare rate for establishing clover on its land. It can still graze the same amount of cattle but also saves the business money as it won’t need to buy thousands of pounds of carbon based fertiliser, which in turn is better for the environment.

Struggle for upland farmers 

The biggest difficulty, and it was acknowledged at the event, is for upland farmers. The new SFI scheme doesn't have a lot of options for them and that is a concern. There are a lot more schemes within the SFI for lowland farms, and DEFRA must look at the options for upland farming. While a lot of upland farmers have been in good quality, higher level steward environmental schemes, if these schemes are not rolled on again, the opportunities under the new schemes are much more limited. BPS is rapidly coming down now and once it's gone they may struggle so this must be addressed.

Find the right balance 

If you are able to strike the right balance between introducing sustainable schemes into your farming practices and continuing to produce good food, then it’s a win-win as it will benefit the environment and your bottom line. You can do both – it doesn’t have to be one or the other!

For those who have hit that sweet spot, they are starting to build up some decent income to replace some of the BPS they’ve lost and it’s a lot better than it looked a couple of years ago for lowland farmers.