Recognising farms that do their bit for conservation
A FARMER who has created an inland salt marsh on one of England’s most important nature reserves has been named winner of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society’s Tye Trophy, which recognises the contribution of commercial growers to conservation and environmental improvement.
Now in its 10th year, the award has been extended to farms in Cumbria and Lancashire, as well as Yorkshire and the North East.
Nigel Pulling, the society’s chief executive, said the award helped to counter the negative publicity sometimes attached to modern farming.
Giles Mounsey-Heysham, whose Rookcliffe estate is on the Solway Estuary, was named winner of the trophy, with six other farmers taking regional awards.
The judge, John Fenton, whose work at Yokefleet Farms, near Goole, earned him a previous Tye Trophy, said the aim had been to find highly commercial farms which “more than meet their obligations” on conservation.
He said: “The issue is that if conservation work is going to take place then farming has to be profitable. If it’s not profitable, people can’t afford to put money into conservation.”
Mr Mounsey-Heysham farms 4,000 mixed acres and runs an intensive beef and sheep operation on land that includes a site of special scientific interest.
He said: “We try to get the right balance between agricultural output and conservation output. We’ve got one of the most important wetland marshes in Europe and so we do whatever we can to increase the flora and fauna in that. And we use areas of the farm that are not good for agriculture, for conservation.
“But our USP is the inland saline lagoon. We have just had two pairs of avocet adults producing five chicks, which is a first for Cumbria.”
Nicholas Wrigley, whose Ganton Farm operation near Scarborough, on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds, was among the regional winners, is also creating a wetlands scheme on 200 acres, pumping water out of the Derwent in the spring and letting it dry out over the summer.
He said: “When I was a child it was a wet, boggy area. Then it was farmed and I’m putting it back into wetland.”