High-yield nature-friendly farming at Nonington, Canterbury

In the 9th episode of Talk on the Wild Side, Rob Smith talks to Emma Loder-Symonds about Nonington Farm (near Canterbury) and their regenerative approach to farming. They have managed to cut costs AND fertilisers and pesticides, while keeping yields high. Rob also talks to Liz Milne, the Natural Environment and Coast Manager for Kent County Council about the Local Nature Recovery Strategy for Kent.

 

Rob: Now, you remember the famous poster of Lord Kitchener in the First World War pointing at you and saying, “Your country needs you.” Well, if you're a landowner, then the collective finger of nature is currently pointing at you and saying, “Your countryside needs you.” The Local Nature Recovery Scheme is being led by Kent County Council in Kent. In fact, all local authorities in England have been tasked with setting up an LNRS under the Environment Act of 2021. And there is now a huge exercise underway to figure out what that actually means and how landowners can be persuaded to make space for nature.  

Kent Wildlife Trust is a key partner in the project. The bottom line is to try and reach the target of thirty percent of England's land and seas to be protected for nature by 2030 which really is a colossal challenge. Especially as farmers,, of course have a dual responsibility; they have to make sure that we have enough food to eat as well as protecting the countryside and they have to try and not go bust in the process. Well, is that even possible? 

I've been to visit a place where they say it absolutely is: Nonington Farm near Canterbury. They have some three thousand acres of mostly arable land. Emma Loder-Symonds and her husband James have been moving away from high-input intensive farming towards a more regenerative model for over a decade now. In fact, they are a LEAF farm (Linking Environment and Farming) and they say they've managed to see a huge increase in wildlife on their land while cutting the use of pesticides and fertilisers and also keeping their yields high.  

I met Emma in one of their barns standing next to a 900-ton mountain of wheat waiting to be taken away to be milled into flour. 

So Emma, we've come into one of your barns and there's a pretty impressive pile of - is this wheat is wheat? 

Emma: This is wheat, yeah, this is some pretty low-grade milling wheat that we obviously cut last August and this has actually been sold. We're just waiting for them to collect it.  

Rob: How much - I mean, I'm looking at it, it’s quite a big pile. It's, what, 15-foot tall, something like that, and goes right back to the back of this huge barn here. So there's, I don't know how many, how many tons? Hundreds of tons?  

Emma: Yeah, there's about 900 tons in this bucket here. 

Rob: When you say bucket, this is a digger bucket, which is - it's not one you can carry! 

Emma: It’s one where that fits about 25 children inside it. 

Rob: It's a big bucket.  

Emma: It takes two tons. So, a lorry will take 30 tons or 29 tons. So you, you know you fill it up.  

Rob: Yeah, it's a lot of wheat in here. And so, this has all been grown on the on the farm obviously. Just talk me through a little bit about why this wheat, I know you said it was low grade milling wheat, but how is this different to wheat that you would be grown on an intensive farm? 

Emma: It's exactly the same, same varieties, but I - the reason I said it was low grade is because last year the summer was wet. And so cutting the milling wheat at the right time is crucial for getting the protein levels high enough. and the Hagberg high enough.

And it was wet, so we didn't cut it at the right time. So we had to watch it deteriorate in the field until it was dry enough to cut it. 

Rob: And - because you just mentioned the protein there, it's crucial isn't it the amount of protein for producing bread. The big bakers, they have some pretty - kind of like the supermarkets isn't it – they've got some very stringent demands.  

Emma: Yeah, there's always a bit of argy-bargy there but the millers tend to want a particular level of protein and full spec would be thirteen percent and it helps with the sort of elasticity of the dough. So it's the stretchability of it which obviously makes it rise. But, having said that, in a in a poor year they tend to accept lower grade probably because there's not much choice. 

But in order to get the high-grade stuff, one of the ways you can do it is to put nitrogen on, more nitrogen on and protein dressings and we have moved away from that with our regenerative approach to agriculture.  

Rob: So you don't bombard it with protein-enhancing nitrogen at the end of the growing season? That means that the actual wheat grains themselves are less valuable or how does that work?  

Emma: No, it's all it's all sort of within the within the grain itself we just put less nitrogen on than we ever used to do.  

Rob: But does that affect the price that you can sell it for? 

Emma: It depends how - it depends on your contracts. It's hard, it's there's sort of a lot of muck and mystery about right about that. It's not direct. I mean last year there would have been farmers who put on a lot more nitrogen than we did and still ended up with the same crop. 

Rob: So this is the crucial thing in my head that for you as a regenerative farmer, you are - I mean there's a big yield here, you were saying the other barn had another 900 tons in it. You've got how many tons in total on the farm – 3000-odd?  

Emma: There’s another store of 3000. 

Rob: Right, OK. So, we're not talking about small yields here. We're talking about proper commercial farming and you are making your regenerative farming work commercially.  

Emma: Yeah, I mean if you're talking about years, we average I suppose about 10-ton. Last year was a bit lower than that, but that's because of the year it was. But even having changed to go to regenerative farming over the last five/ten years, our yields haven't dropped. Our yield average – five-year average - has not dropped, but our inputs have dropped significantly. So, the amount of stuff that we're putting on the crops has massively gone down. We've cut nitrogen inputs by about 30-40 percent and still has - 

Rob: And that has a massive bottom-line impact doesn’t it because buying nitrogen is expensive? 

Emma: Yeah, especially in the last couple of years, buying nitrogen has been incredibly expensive. So, by buying less, you're saving a lot more money. 

Rob: Right OK, so yields haven’t dropped, but your profits have actually gone up and you're doing less harm to the land.  

Emma: Yeah. It’s a win-win on every single level. And why more people aren't doing it, I don't know.  

Rob: Also taking a look around Nonington Farm with me was Liz Milne, who is the Natural Environment and Coast Manager for Kent County Council. And she's in charge of drawing up the Local Nature Recovery plan for Kent, which is a pretty big job.  

Tim Horton

Liz: The thing that's different about this strategy is that we want to work with the delivery partners right from the outset in terms of developing it.

So, we're working with landowners and farmers to understand what priorities they might like to see and what actions they could deliver on their land to recover nature. We're speaking to community groups, friends of groups, we're speaking to the likes of Kent Wildlife Trust, of course, RSPB, all of those environmental charities. And we also want to hear from the public as well what they want to see. And also, our local planning authority’s a key part of it as well because the Local Nature Recovery Strategy will have a mandatory requirement within planning that it actually has to be considered as part of planning decisions and local planning and development.  

Rob: So, in terms of how you're going to make this happen, because there's so many different kinds of landowner doing so many different kinds of things and you don't own the land. So, you're just trying to do this through the powers of persuasion?  

Liz: Well, the purpose of the strategy is to identify where in the county our efforts and resources and finances would be best directed. So, both in terms of return for nature - benefiting biodiversity - but also where it might also deliver environmental benefits such as flood water management, air quality improvements, and the like. 

And sitting underneath that is a framework for delivery of financing funds in an investment. And effectively as we understand it, the strategy will help direct the funds and investment. And one of the things that is going to be directed by the Local Nature Recovery Strategy is the new Environmental Land Management Scheme. So that's the new funding approaches for farming and land owning. 

Rob: OK so from your point of view then, what will success look like in five years' time? What will have been achieved? 

Liz: Well, five years’ time, that's quite a short sort of time frame for nature recovery. But I suppose what we will have is a Local Nature Recovery Strategy that has been endorsed and adopted by all of those that we need to make it happen and make it work. That we will have the resources to deliver on that strategy. And that we'll have some really key big landscape-scale projects working with multiple partners and actually moving forward to working towards the priorities that we want for nature in the county. 

Rob: OK. So we're on Nonington Farm today. What do you make of it, what have you you've seen so far? 

Emma: Well, it's wonderful isn't it? It’s so great seeing sort of - traditional, sort of, you know land use in the county. I mean, we are the Garden of England in Kent and we're renowned for our farming, but it's brilliant to see where farming can work alongside nature recovery and environmental improvements just so beautifully.  

Rob: And there's loads of different acronyms involved in various things. So, this is a LEAF farm - which stands for, what is it, Linking the Environment and Farming. And you need landowners to kind of buy into this as a concept, don't you?  

Liz: Yes, absolutely. So we, we need them to see the benefits of it and the returns that can come. And having spoken to Emma this morning, you know, it sounds like it can be done. Which is, you know, what farmers need to know. Farmers are. We're very much aware that we can't ask farmers to change their farming practices for the benefit of nature without there actually being, you know, a return on it or certainly that it's viable. You know, a lot of farmers are really struggling and we need to make sure that this is something that is viable for them. And that's one of the reasons why we want to involve the farmers in the development of the strategy. By doing so we can make sure that any of the priorities, and also the potential measures - to you and me that's actions - that will sit underneath those priorities can actually be delivered by the people who own the land and have the, you know, the opportunity to help nature recover.  

Rob: And on a personal level, how does it make you feel? Because presumably you do the job you do because you want to see things be different in the future.  

Liz: Absolutely. And well, I've worked for KCC for twenty years now and various jobs, and I honestly think that this is the first time I've really felt that we could be seeing a genuine step change in the way nature recovery could be tackled. We've done a biodiversity strategy before and there hasn't been the delivery framework that's necessary to make it actually turn from aspirations into action. And I really think it could do this this time. And I think one of the reasons it could be really successful is, quite often at sort of strategic levels, we like to do our strategies in a dark room and then we go out and consult on it and say to people, “What do you think?” Well, this time round we're saying to people, “What do you want? What do you want the strategy to cover?” And so, I think that, you know that in itself means that this will be a really meaningful, realistic, pragmatic, but hopefully also ambitious and deliverable strategy that sees nature get back on its feet because we know that nowhere needs it more than Kent. 

Rob: Now over the last few years, Emma and James started taking their environmental protections really seriously. They've committed to planting and restoring a kilometre of hedgerow every year going forward, and to using old fashioned hedge-laying techniques rather than just cutting them back by machine, which has been the standard practice on most farms since the 1950s. And they've already seen a boom in the numbers of birds and insects across the landscape as a result. They've also started milling some of their own flour on the farm and all the farm's power comes from solar panels that are mounted on various barn roofs, so no additional land is being taken up by them.  

Now, Nonington is in fact one of only eight arable farms in England that are accredited as being a LEAF demonstration farm (Linking Environment and Farming). And it's the only one currently in the South East. But that is something they are really hopeful will be changing in the near future.  

Tim Horton

Emma: The environment is front and centre of everything that we do. No environment, you’re a bit stuffed trying to trying to form anything. And at Nonington Farms we have three sort of strands if you like. One is Grow, one is Learn, and one is Protect, and the Protect element is the environmental sustainability. Grow obviously being the production and the economic sustainability and Learn is the education and social responsibility. And if all those three are sustainable then you work together in perfect harmony.  

Rob: So why is it important to you? 

Emma: I think most farmers would say that nature is really important to them. But I think increasingly over the last 50/100 years we've sort of lost sight of that. I remember once working with a farmer back in 2010 I think it was and he said, “You know what, this just feels right, it feels right that we're putting back stuff where we've previously been paid to take it out.” And this guy is maybe sixties now I suppose. And the fact that he was saying that, it really resonated with me back then that this was an unusual thing. And I don't think it should be an unusual thing. And I think increasingly in the last 5/10 years everyone, everyone regardless of whether they’re in farming or not has thought more about this and has thought, “Gosh, we need to put the environment back into farming.” And if you don't, you are always fighting against it and that cost is getting too high on a farm level, on a landscape level, and on a world level. 

Rob: OK yes, good. And so, you you've embarked on this kind of progressively it's, it's been a thing that's grown over the last seven or eight years, isn't it that you've gone from, let's call it classical intensive farming towards what you're doing now - regenerative farming. And I guess the thing as somebody who's a civilian in this and just looking in from the outside, what I find really interesting and exciting is the fact that you're finding it interesting and exciting is you're going along, that it's genuinely a kind of journey of discovery every year. 

Emma: Absolutely. I'm learning things all the time and everyone who comes onto the farm, it's not a question of us teaching them is very much a shared experience and we learn as much from each other as we do talking and teaching about regenerative agriculture. And I think that's the whole point. Nothing ever stays the same. There's always something going on. There's always something different. If you came back next year, the farm would be in a different place again. And I think that's really exciting and I think to be honest, before we started doing this, farming was quite boring. It was formulaic, it was prescriptive and you just did what you did and you had to do bigger and bigger acreage in order to stay still. And that in and of itself was depressing and there was a point when I think we both thought we would just jack it in and go and do something else that was more fulfilling. And so this, this then completely changed our lives because we suddenly realised that actually farming could be really exciting.  

It's then become like the most cutting edge, most dynamic. You know, you've got politicians talking about farming now and that never has ever happened before, ever. So it's a really exciting place to be and especially I think when you when - as you say - it's a wholesome thing that we're that we're doing that we're carbon negative and that, you know, everything that we're doing is towards making it better. 

Rob: And are your neighbours buying into it as well? Are you an outlier or is this a thing that's genuinely happening across the countryside? 

Emma: I think it is genuinely happening and you only have to go to something like Groundswell to see that there is genuinely a move towards that. I think we're all on this journey together, whether you're still a traditional high input, high output farmer or whether you are more cutting edge and dynamic in terms of what you're prepared to try. But I think that everyone can come on that journey and it is open to everyone. And I think that the more the science proves and the data and all sorts of variables and factors get proved that this is the way forward, we are basically returning to the way it was but with a sort of modern twist.  

Rob: And I'm looking up on the thing that you've got a whiteboard up there, “What we've seen on the farm: crossbills, turtle doves, grey partridge, yellowhammer, broad bodied chafers, brimstone butterflies, red admirals, purple hairstreak.” I mean, it's a really broad spread of stuff that you're seeing here. And I can see from your face as you're looking at it that's the bit that delights you. 

Emma: You know I'm really, really chuffed. We're really lucky because we've got lots of volunteers so someone will be a specialist in bumblebees, for example. Or another one is an ornithologist. And people like to come out and observe what they can see on our farm because they tend to see more than they would on a sort of more boring arable system that we used to be. And it's really exciting. There's nothing, there's nothing better than the beginning of May, hearing the purring of turtle doves and knowing that they've come back year after year. It is a beautiful thing and I really hope that it continues for many, many years to come and that we have sustainable numbers of all of these things and that we can increase them more and more. 

Rob: Many, many thanks to Emma Loder-Symonds for showing me around Nonington Farm. We did walk round the fields and look at the hedges, but it was so breezy and wet you couldn't really hear much over the wind noise. However, take my word for it - the hedgerows really are starting to thicken up and look amazing, and I'm hoping to go back later in the year to hear the turtle doves purring. 

That's why they call turtle doves, you know, because of the sound they make, not because they look like a turtle, because of course they don't. Anyway, it was great to see all the stuff that they're doing there, and if you want to see some of it for yourself, they do actually run various open days and educational programmes, including outdoor school days for young children. So take a look at noningtonfarms.co.uk. And it was of course great to hear from Liz Milne at KCC as well. So, if you want to find out more about the Making Space for Nature scheme then just search for ‘Making Space for Nature Kent’ online and there's loads of information you can find there. 

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