Since the early 1970s, there has been a move away from
mixed farming and spring sown crops to increased specialisation, early
autumn planting and increased use of fertiliser and pesticide application.
A third of UK farmland is now arable land, in Kent this figure is over
50%.
Although the decline in wildlife once associated with
mixed and arable farms has been well recorded, fewer and fewer of us can
remember or picture what it was once like, and thus perhaps do not feel
the loss directly. Figures speak for themselves however. There has been a
drastic decline in farmland birds such as skylark, tree sparrow, linnet
and corn bunting in the last 25 years. Mammals such as brown hare and
harvest mouse have lost suitable breeding habitat. Attractive arable
plants such as pheasant eye, cornflower and corn marigold are now classed
as rare arable weeds (only the latter has been recorded in the KSCP
project area) and the invertebrate life they supported, including natural
insect predators of cereal aphids has consequently suffered.
Finally this year the Countryside Stewardship Scheme has
been extended to tackle the modern methods of arable farming which have
become so out of sync with the cycle of nature. Already successfully
piloted in East Anglia and the West Midlands, the new arable options offer
farmers incentives to leave overwintered stubbles followed by low input
spring crops or fallows on rotation, create conservation headlands with
restricted herbicide and insecticide use, and to sow plots of wild bird
seed and/or pollen and nectar seed mixes. These measures can help provide
food for birds, pollen and nectar supplies for bumblebees and butterflies,
and essential cover and nesting conditions at the right time of year.
Already KSCP staff have advised on 3 arable stewardship applications in
the project area. Watch out, the nightmare has just begun!
If you think you have seen an attractive and possibly
rare arable weed – most likely to be hanging on in field margins, please
let us know. Such information may help us target our work in the Stour
Valley.
