Every year we are reminded in various ways about the fact that there are some really fantastic farmers – out there. And it’s so much easier to believe that now that we don’t hear the NFU spouting anti-environment nonsense every few days.
This year there is a new farming award on the block – the Conservation Grade Fair to Nature farming award.
The short-listed farmers all look like great guys (and they are all guys) and any of them would make a deserving winner, of course.
Have a look at the list and make your own mind up. I chose Graham Birch. His sounds like a wonderful farm and if I lived anywhere near it I’d certainly visit on Open Farm Sunday, in the hope of seeing some of his orchids, even though it would be a bit early for the best of his butterflies, I guess.
Make your own mind up and vote here – the more votes, the more we are showing that we support those good guys in the farming industry.
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From the information given, I don’t see how it is possible to choose fairly between them but it sounds as though they are all doing a great job. Maybe they should share the prize!
Incidentally, I would think that 83 species is a huge underestimate of the true number of moths occurring on Graham Birch’s farm.
Yes, all these farmers, and in fact all our other Fair to Nature farmers, are doing great work for the wildlife on their farms. It is very, very difficult to choose between them.
Easy peasy.
Japanesey.
Wash your face with lemon squeezy.
Andrew Elms gets my vote.
I’ve voted for local man Charles Porter. Not just because he’s local, but because he seems to have more of an all encompassing approach. But, good luck to all of them!
It’s good to see Conservation Grade still going strong – in the ’80s it seemed like a thinking farmer’s alternative to the religious zeal that sequestered the word “organic” for its own use.
The terminology is still odd. “Organic” is still set against “Conventional” – whereas Conventional is the NKOTB net result of the intensification following WWII, Organic and Conservation Grade are in fact more aligned with traditional agriculture and it’s odd to find them regarded as “new”. Ho hum, whatever …
NKOTB? Clear as ever, Filbert.
JCL – Johnny come lately
This is great isn’t it. Farmers get a lot of bad press when it comes to wildlife – and in a lot of instances quite rightly so, but if all those comments were matched by positive ones for those that give a damn and do some good, now that would send a message wouldn’t it?
Gives us all some hope
Dear Mark,
This is a great thing to promote – I’d never heard of it. Thanks for giving it a wider audience. Thanks too for your blog, tweets etc. Always find much to enjoy and find provocative, often agree, sometimes don’t.
Just wanted to make a quiet plea on behalf of some of those who work in the game shooting industry. Like farmers, it is absurd to bracket them all together. There are good guys there too, and many who hate being associated with those who commit wildlife crime.
Yesterday you re-tweeted a tweet from someone who, among many other very strong adjectives, called grouse shooting ‘evil’. I know it’s only a tweet, but this is going too far. There are bad people doing illegal things on grouse moors, but there are also honest, hoard-working men and women who love the land and who care about wildlife. They have families, they have mortgages, they have livelihoods. To call the activities of all these people ‘evil’ strikes me as exactly the kind of intolerance that is so unpleasant in other areas of modern life. It sounds a bit Tea Party, frankly.
Wildlife crime is a disgrace and not nearly enough people are being caught and the game shooting industry needs to stop this urgently. I support a lot of what you and other campaigners are trying to achieve, but I find some of the language is getting alarming and it turns me off some of these very noble goals.
Can we have a little bit less of the viciousness and more of the reasoned debate that you’re so good at?