Landscape Matters Issue 4 FINAL - Flipbook - Page 20
development of the Environmental Land Management system
design coming on line in 2024 worth £3.5 billion of public
investment today. The Cholderton Plan delivers numerous
public goods in addition to great food. Essentially delivering
a set of multi-functional outcomes for us all. Using the
Department’s own calculations on valuing assets, the value
of food production over 60 years is £5.4 million but the value
of public goods is set at a minimum of £125 million (net of £5
million attributed to methane emissions from farm animals)
over the same period.
Henry Edmunds, the farmer and the
true hero of this story
Harvesting on the Cholderton Estate
On climate change specifically, the estate applies no inorganic
nitrogenous fertilizer to improve fertility of a relatively
infertile shallow chalk soil. Instead the estate takes surplus
nitrogen out of the air by using plants that fix nitrogen for slow
release into the crops and grassland. In 2019, 1.5 million tons
of nitrates were applied to farmland in England and Wales.
Despite all the promises of technology around precision
farming, only 50% of applied nitrates gets to the crop. 25% is
lost to the aquifer – there are many places in Southern England
that have to import water to dilute the drinking water because
nitrate levels are too high. But at least 25% is lost through
nitrous oxide – emitted from applications on fields, water
courses and eventually the sea. Nitrous oxide is 300 times more
powerful than carbon dioxide as a climate change gas. I will
leave you to do the calculation.
The carbon being sequestrated in Cholderton’s trees,
woodland and hedgerows is estimated to be 8,000 tons but
the carbon sequestrated in the soils is estimate to be 128,000
tons - double that of most farms on chalk soils. This level
of sequestration has taken DEFRA by surprise and the soil
laboratory results are still being carefully scrutinised. Henry
Edmunds, the farmer and the true hero of this story, has
adopted a thoroughly scientific approach to the management
of the estate – instinctively refining his system over the
last 30 years. The organic matter in his soils depends on a
sophisticated form of rotation over a 10 year cycle. 6 years of
herb rich grassland, including very deep rooting species, for
grazing followed by a very shallow plough, leaving a mass of
roots and microbes untouched. Then 4 years of Spring Barley
