The Spedan Lewis Trust is based on the Leckford Estate, and Leckford Estate is home to the Waitrose & Partners Farm, the only supermarket-owned farm in the UK. The farm produces a number of products for sale through not only the farm shop (https://leckfordestate.co.uk/farm-shop) but also through the 300+ Waitrose branches around the country. However, the farm’s role is not solely about producing food products. As farm manager, I am proud that my team is not only producing high quality food (like our Leckford Estate flours and our coldpressed rapeseed oil) but is also doing so whilst enhancing the natural resources that we rely on – specifically our soils and our farmland biodiversity. Over the last 10 years, we have increased the organic matter level within our arable soils by 0.1% per year. In essence, we are re-building our soils and enhancing the health of the fundamental resource that supports global food production. Our target is even more ambitious: to increase soil organic matter by 0.15-0.20% per year over the next 10 years. We will do this through adoption of the principles of ‘regenerative agriculture’, and one of these principles is ‘year round soil cover’. What does this actually mean in practice? Traditionally, if we included a spring-sown crop in our crop rotation, the stubble from the crop harvested in the summer would remain largely bare between August and the following spring. The weathering of the bare stubble would increase the risk of soil erosion and nutrient leaching, causing damage not just to the soil but also to water quality. Nowadays, we avoid leaving bare stubbles through the winter by sowing ‘winter cover crops’ immediately after harvest. These are multi-species mixtures of fast growing crops such as buckwheat, clover, linseed, phacelia, radish and vetch. Each species brings different benefits to the mixture: nitrogen-fixation, stabilising soil structure, reducing nutrient leaching, etc. Of course, the winter cover crop is also doing what all ‘cash’ crops do: they are intercepting sunlight, and, through photosynthesis, converting carbon dioxide into food. However, this food is not used directly by us. Rather, it is incorporated back into the soil to feed the microbes, to enhance soil health and allow us to grow healthier crops with fewer artificial inputs. Furthermore, these cover crops also help to sequester more carbon in the soil, ensuring that what food we produce on the farm for human consumption is ‘climate-friendly’, being better than ‘carbon net zero’. As farmers, we are working in partnership with nature for a happier world! The images show us sowing the cover crops in early August, immediately after harvest, and then what these cover crops look like 3 months later.
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