Farmer Focus: Do people presume farmers wreck the environment?

We have half a dozen or so sheep left to lamb at the end of the coronation weekend. These sheep have been ostracised to fields with only once-a-day checks and luck wished upon them.

As we do our daily checks, it’s always a nice surprise to see a ewe has lambed alone, unaided and content. Maybe this should be the norm, rather than the relentless checking.

See also: 3 ways to reduce use of antibiotics at lambing

While lambing has sort of ended, work has turned to our arable enterprises, where we grow wholecrop silage to feed our cattle throughout the winter. 

I’ve spoken before about how much we value this crop, as it not only provides us with a good source of feed, but also contributes towards our rotation across the farm.

We have also identified a pinch point in our system where we go short of grass in October.

This is caused by the number of lambs we still have waiting to go out on tack and ewes needing to be flushed at this point.

So we have decided to grow more brassica crops this year – 10 acres of swedes –  to try to bridge the gap until the lambs go away.

Recently, as I was scrolling through social media, I saw a picture of one of our ploughed fields with comments accusing us of damaging the environment.

I usually ignore posts like this, as it’s unproductive to argue. However, it touched a nerve with me because of the amount of environmental work we do.

I listed the work we had done, not only through Welsh government environmental schemes, but also by working with local charities such as the Welsh Dee Trust.

We don’t claim to be perfect, but we are trying to do something to help nature through our actions.

The key point is that the person who took the picture of our field was trying to highlight environmental damage without having any context and with no accountability for their brazen inaccuracies.

My reply was picked up by some fellow farmers, and I was pleased with the response it got and messages of support I received – thank you. The original poster also apologised and took the post down.

It’s no wonder farmers get nervous about engaging with environmentalists if their attitude from the outset is that farmers must be causing damage to the environment.