He writes:
To get a pun out of the way early on, hedges are a bit of a thorny issue in farming at the moment.
Many farmers are trying to get their heads around the logic behind the new cross compliance hedge cutting rules. Many more are considering whether it is worth including hedges as part of their greening requirements.
But hedges can also help farm businesses in a range of ways, as our CFE coordinators discovered last week.
I was joined by around 30 professional advisers at Loddington in Leicestershire to look beyond the contentious issues and focus on the thorny shrubs you find in hedges.
These shrubs make hedges fantastic for bees and other pollinators by providing pollen and nectar. In the ‘hungry gap’, when crops aren’t flowering, hedge plants such as willow, hawthorn and blackthorn provide a vital source of food.
And of course the hedges are important breeding sites over winter.
But why should farmers care about this? Growing and producing food is full of its challenges already, without having to worry about protecting the environment and wildlife too.
Here’s my top three reasons why well-managed hedges can help your farm businesses.
More of our staff blogs...
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Amy Gray, NFU Horticultural Adviser for Ornamental Plants, Fruit and Covered Edibles - Stockbridge’s LED4CROPS High Wire Facility, Yorkshire
Richard Bower, chairman of the NFU Next Generation Policy Forum - Insider blog: What does 'CAP simplification' mean?
Gail Soutar, chief economics adviser - CAP simplification - what's on the agenda?
Controlling pests: Ground beetles, spiders and hoverflies are a very useful ally to protect your crops. But they all need good hedges for homes.
Energy: Brash from hedge cutting can be chipped and used to heat buildings… and cut down on bills
Increasing efficiency: Hedges can minimise the waste of resources by helping to stop pollutants reaching watercourses, capturing soil particles and storing carbon
It’s amazing to hear some of the stories from the CFE team, who obviously know their stuff.
On one farm in Devon, more than 2,000 different species were found (including fungi, lichens, plants, insects, vertebrates and invertebrates). I was told that because flies visit three times as many flowers as bees, they may be more useful pollinators than their celebrated counterparts . And, apparently, 600 solitary bees can pollinate as well as 30,000 honeybees. Sometimes it pays to be a loner.
NFU branch chair Phil Jarvis, who is the farm manager at Loddington, led a tour of the farm to discuss various management regimes for the different types of hedges. CFE coordinators are an experienced lot, so the discussion was lively and robust, as you would expect from people genuinely interested in the subject.
These days are important for CFE coordinators as they will now go out onto farms and hold events to bring farmers across the country up to date. This can now be done with the latest details and practical methods to get the job done correctly and more importantly farmers can rest assured that they are getting the best advice.
MORE INFO: CFE have produced a new guide on Managing hedges for pollinators.