Conservation

From 1 March 2010 for a period of ten years, the Farm is now in what is known as the Higher Level Stewardship Agreement with Natural England. This is a successor to the Countryside Stewardship Scheme (CSS), which the Farm had been part of up until recently. It is fantastic news, as we are the only farm in London to be in the scheme, which aims to create habitat mosaics for specific Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) species at the field and landscape scale, and to protect soils and watercourses. This will allow vegetation to develop naturally for a set period of time, depending on the species being targeted. There are prescriptions which we need to apply, but it will allow for both the farming and conservation of the land to work holistically.