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SAC’s Yorkshire Road Trip Success
Cut grass ready for bailing (opens in new window)
Jim Campbell and Carole Christian, SAC Environmental specialists based at Bush Estate, recently completed a series of nine farmer meetings in Yorkshire. The meetings were funded by Natural England and were designed to increase farmer knowledge of climate change, to encourage uptake of Entry Level Scheme measures and improve farm business sustainability.
The audiences were mainly farmers in farm discussion societies and farm clubs but included agriculture students and college lecturers. Each society or club chose to learn about on-farm renewable energy or about reducing agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.
York based SAC Consultant James O’Gram said,
“SAC was contracted to reach 100 farmers and we actually spoke to 217. Of those, all of them stated that they knew more about the subject after the meeting than before, and, at 7 of the 9 meetings, 100% said that they would recommend the meeting to others. SAC already has an excellent track record of delivering outreach projects for Natural England and this project has helped us broaden that portfolio”.
In winning the tender, James had stressed SAC’s track-record in practical farm greenhouse gas emission reduction work and our expertise in renewable projects at farm scale and above. James Hadwin from SAC in Kendal facilitated some of the meetings and commented that the project demonstrated the breadth and depth of SAC’s expertise to the farming community in the North of England.
Jim Cambell’s renewables talks were very well received, Jim said,
“There was a great deal of interest from all the audiences and a healthy amount of participation from the floor; Many farmers were already developing their own projects and offered first hand experience of the many pitfalls to avoid. Many others were actively thinking about doing something. Wind turbines were the most popular topic although other technologies also received a lot of interest.”
In discussing the reduction of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions, Carole Christian covered some of the background to climate change science as well as looking at practical ways to reduce emissions through cultivations, vegetation and livestock management.
“The content of each meeting was tailored to the local agriculture”, said Carol. “The discussions afterwards were very varied and ranged from tree-planting policies and food self-reliance to minimum tillage and crop rotations. The potential for money savings through greater efficiency and the potential for ELS funding for some of the measures will help promote uptake”.
The meeting locations were very varied – village pubs and golf clubhouses, hotels and agricultural colleges. Jim and Carole were keen to support the project’s overall environmental objectives and most of their travel to and from Yorkshire was by train.