Planning Meeting Report

Thank you to everyone who attended our planning meeting at Barcombe Village Hall on the 3rd March. Below is a short summary of what was discussed and what the group decided to focus on going forward.

Feedback on Autumn-Winter Events

Overall, the feedback following our Autumn-winter series of event was positive. Members mentioned that the meetings that had worked best were those with a practical element an those hosted on member’s farms which generated important peer to peer learning.

There was an emphasis placed on reviewing what the principle objectives of the group were and how this stood apart from other local organsiations. This would help make sure chosen meeting topics reflected these objectives, as well as reducing the risk of duplicating events or efforts that other local players were already focused on such as OART. It was agreed that trying to focus the group around a central theme might help generate momentum. It was suggested this focus center around working towards some form of landscape scale recovery either targeting a specific habitat or species.  Kirstie and Tilly were tasked with scoping some species important to the area that the group could focus on.

Potential Projects

The Group Discussed in further detail what was meant by achieving landscape recovery. Kirstie spoke of how one of the government hopes of the facilitation fund was to push collaborative groups for farmers down the road towards applying for the landscape recovery fund. The fund gave farming groups £750,000 to spend over two years getting landscape scale projects market ready for nature markets to help with their delivery. Despite this, with the first few projects coming to the end of the initial two-year phase, private markets intended to help through the next stage were proving illusive.

Instead of aspiring towards this perhaps overly bureaucratic route, emphasis was placed on how the group could achieve some quick wins at the landscape scale for example through a coordinated approach to birdfeed plots. The idea was also raised of using the extended FIPL fund to address deer control collaboratively. A representative from Kew Wakehurst suggested that their focus on science could marry well with the groups ability to translate what the science was saying into how this played out in the surrounding landscape.

Finally, the age old difficulty of how could the groups success be measured was addressed. Given the meeting focused format of the group it has always been difficult to track what knowledge exchange taken away from meetings has been implemented and benefitted from on farm. As a result, it was suggested that some form of survey and mapping project could be a positive way of bringing together what nature positive farming techniques individual members have implemented on their farm within the group context. 

Events Going Forwards

A number of topics were raised at the meeting along with a meeting format focused on farm walks/visits to take place in late spring (May/June) and then again in early autumn following harvest (September/October).  The topics have been listed below:

-          Deer Control/local abattoirs as a potential topic

-          OART Project walks to look at water quality/ fish diversity and spawning grounds

-          Landscape recovery examples

-          LNRS mapping event

-          An event focused on the growth of viticulture in Sussex/ Kent

-          Woodland/Wet woodland Management at Wakehurst

If anyone unable to attend has any comments/additional event ideas do not hesitate to get in touch with me using the email:

tilly@c-l-m.co.uk.