Peakland Environmental Farmers: the farmer-led approach

A voluntary movement of farmers and land managers have come together to form Peakland Environmental Farmers (opens new window), with an ambition to write and deliver a Conservation Plan over their landholdings for gains in biodiversity, carbon sequestration and storage, flood management, clean air and water.

Almost all of the 80-plus members have participated in environmental schemes since the 1980s, but frustration has been mounting, with members’ experience and knowledge being increasingly ignored or challenged in ways that are perceived to be unscientific or dishonest. The cooperative is a means of working together to create a plan owned and led by farmers and moorland managers:

• to conserve and enhance the unique biological, environmental and heritage assets of the Peak District within the context of a changing climate and emerging threats to energy and food security.
• to engage with scientific and executive establishments in a respectful partnership.
• to explore the potential for trading conservation outcomes on biodiversity and carbon markets.

Relations with planning authorities and developers in neighbouring areas have started to reveal demand for Biodiversity Net Gain credits, which could be supplied by farmers. To instigate supply, full biodiversity baseline assessments and headroom calculations for Biodiversity Net Gain have been carried out on six trial farms, with funding from members and Farming in Protected Landscapes. Peakland Environmental Farmers are also working with science and technology partners at LandApp and Game and Wildlife Conservation Trust to extrapolate the results digitally across the 100,000 acres (40,468 hectares).

Joint applications to the Environmental Land Management Landscape Recovery scheme have proved highly inaccessible due to short timescales from announcement to application deadline, particularly problematic to a group who do not have dedicated professionals within their structure.

Trying to gain participation in local landscape, nature and species recovery plans has also been problematic, again due to the lack of dedicated staff available to represent views of members as a whole, but also through historical mistrust of schemes and strategies that have created burdens without due recognition.

With carbon audits next in line and membership continuing to grow, political interest in environmental farmer groups is gathering momentum, and Peakland Environmental Farmers are keen to continue the farmer-led approach to delivering nature recovery and other public goods in return for fair acknowledgment and reward.