Your land provides an abundance of habitats and foraging for British wildlife. However, without quality soil and water resources neither your crops, farm animals and the wildlife around you would profit.
Soil is your most valuable resource, whatever type of farm or land management you are involved in. Erosion and run-off can result in valuable nutrients and environmentally damaging sediments, pesticides and disease organisms reaching water.
The Campaign's voluntary measures and key target ELS options complement your need to protect your valuable natural resources, for example:
- sowing cover crops to reduce nitrate leaching
- grassing field corners to slow down overland flow of water
- establishing buffer strips to slow, filter and trap pollutants before they enter watercourses on your land.
You can support the Campaign by putting the following buffer strips in place to protect water courses on your farm:
Campaign voluntary measure C1 – Grass buffers (6m) alongside temporary and permanent watercourses
ELS options - EJ9 (12m buffer strips for watercourses on cultivated land)
EE9 (6m buffer strips on cultivated land next to a watercourse)
EE10 (6m buffer strips on intensive grassland next to a watercourse)
Refer to ‘A farmer’s guide to voluntary measures’ and the ELS third edition handbook to find out how to establish and manage these buffer strips.
If you farm in a Catchment Sensitive Farming priority catchment area you can benefit from the services provided, to view their success to date read their evaluation report
For more information on what you can do to protect your natural soil and water resources please view the documents to the left of this page.
If you are in one of the 22 target counties, please contact your local campaign co-ordinator first. Visit theYour Area pages to find out who to call.
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