The landscape is changing in Herefordshire. Commercial cider apple orchards which were once a mainstay of the countryside are on their way out. This is due to a change in demand for newer varieties of fruit.

This has resulted in us taking an orchard that we had previously let out back in hand, as the apples are now out of contract.

Thanks to the Sustainable Farming Incentive (SFI), some of the trees in our orchard have been spared. Instead of pulling all the trees out we have taken a punt and opted to leave 25% of them in place.

See also: Changes arable farmers are planning after tough season

About the author

Billy Lewis

Billy Lewis farms 140ha in North Herefordshire in partnership with his parents. They keep Hereford cattle, sheep and grow combinable crops. He also contract farms an additional 110ha. Cropping includes wheat, oats and spring beans.

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In a stroke of luck, by leaving every fifth row of trees standing we have been left with perfectly spaced 24m alleys. This means we will be able to grow cereals as well as graze our livestock between the trees.

We are hoping we will have enough trees/ha to access payments for maintaining a medium density agroforestry system.

Like many other SFI schemes, final details are painfully slow to be released by Defra, making any sort of forward planning rather tricky.

As well as this, new actions are getting released in constant drips and drabs which makes it virtually impossible for anyone to keep up-to-date with what’s going on.

Thanks to some fairly hefty compaction left behind from 20 years of apple harvesting machinery, the next step is what could be described as a factory reset.

Rotavate, plough and shakerate is the plan, before whizzing in a mustard, buckwheat and phacelia catch crop which will also be included as part of our next SFI application.

We shall then direct-drill wheat straight into this in the autumn and grow no-till cereal crops between the trees for three years, allowing us to also access the no-till SFI payment.

Once you start getting creative and stacking some of these options up, the payments on offer become very attractive.

The best thing is that those willing to think outside the box are being financially supported. It’s a real shame that accessing this support is becoming overwhelming.