Engaging farmers on soil management

Four half-day soil management workshops were held in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire and Nottinghamshire, in early March 2015. The aim of the workshops was to make the link between healthy, resilient soils and farm business resilience, in the face of severe weather and climate change. Around 60 participants attended in total, and the majority were farmers.

The workshops followed the successful format that we've developed over the past couple of years:

• All the workshops were hosted on farms, and began with engaging introductions from the host farmer or farm manager. This gave participants the full context, and the opportunity to understand exactly what practices, crop rotations and cultivations were used on each farm.
• Each workshop was facilitated by a Farming Advice Service (FAS) advisor, who was also able to answer questions and provide advice on Cross Compliance in relation to soils.
• The main highlight of each workshop was an in-field demonstration of soil structure using soil pits. Soil expert Philip Wright led these sessions. He focused on three main issues in relation to soil health: drainage, soil organic matter, and compaction caused by heavy machinery.
• We finished off each workshop by sharing Climate East Midlands' Weathering the Storm guide for farmers and land managers, which draws together a summary of how the climate is likely to change, how this will affect farm businesses, and what steps can be taken to increase resilience, with links to further resources.
• In Lincolnshire we also had a speaker from the NFU: Anna Simpson, Environment Policy Advisor, who gave a presentation on policy developments affecting soil management.

We received very positive feedback from the participants, with 100% rating the workshops as "good" or "excellent". Most participants indicated that they would go on to take action based on what they had learned at the workshop, including:

• digging holes to check whether there is compaction and at what depth, before sub-soiling
• growing cover crops to improve soil structure
• considering adopting a no tillage approach
• checking tyre pressure for different jobs
• increasing the percentage of soil organic matter.

Read a summary of key messages from our soil management workshops.

Climate East Midlands delivered these workshops as part of our Land Management Business Resilience (LaMB) project, in partnership with the Farming Advice Service (FAS), the NFU and the Environment Agency.