How Regenerative Farming & Carbon Credits Are Shaping Our Future

After a poorer harvest than anticipated this season, where average yields for our cereal crops were down by 2t/ha & the sale price of our cereals down too, we move into October 2024 with optimism having made some major changes to our farming arrangements for the next season. 

Changing farming arrangements

The Estate is made up of 1,000 acres split into two farms, roughly 400 acres in Burrough on the Hill & 600 acres in Pickwell, Leicestershire both of which have been arable farmed for many years. We are going to be managing the two farms differently for at least two years, Pickwell will be let out on a Farm Business Tenancy and Burrough on the Hill is to be kept in hand.

Regenerative farming and carbon credits

The Burrough on the Hill farm will be put down to grass and grazed by sheep on a grazing license. Our focus on this farm is to improve the condition of the soil and to increase the soil organic matter, which we hope will sequester carbon and then earn an income from selling our carbon credits.

Baseline soil samples were taken last year while the farm was in an arable rotation of wheat, barley, oil seed rape & beans. We are now moving towards a regenerative type of farming, with low input and minimal cultivations, enabling natural assets to regenerate themselves. The sheep provide natural manure & will be grazed less intensively to accommodate this way of farming. The soil is sampled each year moving forward with the improved soil organic after 3 or 4 years giving us carbon credits to sell, helping towards the national goal of reaching net zero by 2030.

Countryside Stewardship Scheme

In November, we are commencing a large capital project of hedge and hedgerow tree planting on both farms to further help with restoring the landscape which since the 1970’s has been depleted of hedges, a time when farmers were paid to take them out due to the policy being focused on intensive food production to provide our nation with cheap food. 

This will not only be good for our biodiversity on the farm giving better habitat for birds and small mammals, but it will link these wildlife corridors to our woods which we started planting 25 years ago when we took over the management of the farm from the previous generation. This also works well with the Countryside Stewardship Schemes that we have been part of for the last 8 years.

So now we are focused on getting the balance right between having a profitable less volatile farming business that is doing the right thing for the climate, wildlife & the natural environment, and a more reliable income that dove tails into our other diversified areas across the Estate. Something we have gradually been adding to over the last 20 years.

Arable farming is not profitable

We realise that arable farming on its own on our type of heavy land is no longer profitable with the government reducing the subsidy paid to us to zero by the end of 2027, so we need to do things differently.

Blog post written by Dawn Wilson, 3rd Generation


Dawn Wilson
Director

dawn@burroughcourt.com