Rewilding

Often thought of as simply ‘shutting the gate’ on a piece of land, farming consultant Jim Bliss explains why rewilding requires an active approach in the UK, while regenerative agronomist Hugo Ellis describes it as driving for balance and diversity in habitats and farm enterprises. And livestock, they say, are essential.

On his Nuffield travels, Jim Bliss saw some spectacular examples of what he calls ‘passive’ rewilding, where stock had been removed from the land and nature returned – Patagonia National Park being one. But the UK doesn’t have the space to take this approach.

“So, it's much better to have active rewilding, which does involve farming, just in a more nuanced way, where it's all about diversity,” says Jim.

Active rewilding

During his time working on the Lowther Estate in Cumbria, Jim was involved with the first release of beavers in the county for 400 years. It heralded the start of the estate’s transition from sheep and arable to outwintered English Longhorn cattle and Tamworth pigs stocked at one pig per 1000 acres.

“We wanted scrubland to naturally regenerate and have the animals that could work alongside it as a proxy to ancient species,” explains Jim. “We have to use domestic animals to deliver our environmental aims.”

He says it’s not as radical as it might sound: “All they've done in essence is a higher tier stewardship agreement. It's no more extreme than that, a woodland pasture project across the whole estate.”

But active rewilding doesn’t have to be all or nothing, it can involve small pockets of land taken out of intensive production, suggests Jim.

Many of the best examples he’s seen are where income streams are being diversified through rewilding projects, such as nature tourism, and all leading to environmental recovery.

With higher intensity production becoming more uncertain due to market volatility, diversification is almost a necessity, and by taking an active approach it’s a catalyst for change.

Rewilding and circular farming

Alongside active rewilding, circular farming shares many of the same attributes says Hugo Ellis.

“Circular farming is an agricultural practice which aims to increase profitability, resilience and reduce environmental impact mainly by trying to reduce waste and reusing waste materials or outputs on the farm to function as inputs in other areas,” he explains.

“I think they both strive for a balance. One being a balance of an ecosystem and the other a balance of a business or farming system.

“Diversity is a theme that runs between the two as well. A circular farming system means you need a diversity of enterprises to be able to share resources between them and in rewilding it’s about having diversity of habitats, wildlife and plants.”

Hugo also believes soil is at the heart of a circular farm: “If we can get our soil right on farm, a lot of other things can follow.”

And that requires livestock, he says. “They produce waste but also consume by-products and waste. And so, I think in terms of circular farming, livestock play a massive part, whether you are a thousand acres or a hundred.”

For large arable farms, where the introduction of livestock can be harder, bringing smaller enterprises into the business might provide the best opportunity – like a joint venture – putting ‘corn and horn together’.

Using the Sustainable Farming Incentive

Any farming transition brings a degree of risk and is one of the biggest barriers to change. This is where Hugo and Jim believe the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI) comes in.

Designed to support environmentally friendly farming practices, SFI offers payments for changing the management of what Jim refers to as ‘everyone’s got a bad corner’.

“You could take that field corner out of management or go once step further and actually do a creation of scrub and open habitat,” he suggests. “You've really got to weigh up, is it worth putting your livestock or your arable into that wet corner or is there more things you could be doing with it?”

He believes more farmers could be using the scheme. “There's very easy wins to be had from something as simple as a herbal ley, just to get more florally rich species back into your grasslands.”

He also sees SFI supporting the creation of corridors between bigger areas of environmental focused management, reducing fragmentation: “We could have this linkage going through a complete mosaic of habitats, which is what we need.”

With this comes the opportunity for farmers to work collaboratively on reintroducing nature and improving habitats, something he’s seen work in other countries.

“You need that linkage across multiple farms in a district to create serious scale. But I think more excitingly is the market access, market power. Suddenly, this whole valley or catchment can say, look, we're farming differently, here's our product, we're proud of it, come and get it.”

Hugo and Jim’s advice on SFI

Engage, engage, engage: if you haven’t already made an application, now is the time to do so. We don’t know how long SFI will be available
Expand your application: even if you’ve made an application, it’s worth going back to see if you can add more
Look for those who can help you apply: Natural England can advise on suitable advisors or consultants

Concluding quotes

“I can only see that there are going to be more opportunities to engage in landscape recovery and rewilding projects. I think SFI is a really good opportunity for people to start to move away from a high-input system into a more regenerative farming system. Now is the opportunity to really get stuck in and make that transition.” Hugo Ellis

“I think we will see more nature on farm. I think we have to. And whether that's because I like to be an optimist, one of my motivations to do rewilding is I don't want to be that generation that lost a species. I think we will see more and more corners of nature recovery on farm, not only because of the government subsidies, but I think in probably five, 10 years’ time, we will see that regulated market through private finance.” Jim Bliss

Rewilding Showstoppers: Boundaries

We’re on a precipice. It’s far easier to work with nature now, with what remains, than before we lose it altogether.
Think beyond the boundaries of your farm and engage more widely and embrace circular farming.
Use the SFI to expand and extend the boundaries of traditional/conventional farming incomes and help use the less productive areas of your farm.

Listen to the full episode at https://www.cornishmutual.co.uk/news-advice/farming-focus-podcast/ - also available via Spotify and Apple podcasts.

Jim Bliss runs the farming consultancy ‘Blissfully Wild’. He worked at the Lowther Estate in Cumbria before doing a Nuffield Scholarship researching the links between rewilding and marginal farming.

Hugo Ellis is a regenerative agronomist with soil health specialists Terrafarmer. He has worked as a trials manager across a broad range of crops and lectured in agronomy and crop science.