
THE PARLIAMENTARY REVIEW
Highlighting best practice
2| ENVIRONMENTAL CROP MANAGEMENT
this article 100 people will have died
of starvation. Most likely, their loss will
be a tragedy for a family we will never
know in the developing world. Closer
to home, food poverty is becoming
more prevalent, with over 500,000
people reliant on food banks, while
more than two million people in the
UK are estimated to be malnourished,
with many more at risk. Providing an
expanding population with enough to
eat is a huge challenge that we must
meet while respecting biodiversity and
taking into account climate change as
matters of the utmost importance.
How we can help
The Integrated Crop Management
System adopts a whole-farm, long-
term strategy rather than providing a
quick fix that can be applied to one
field for one season, striking a much
better balance between business
imperatives and best environmental
practice. We have developed an
approach to ICM, in response to
the many issues currently facing
UK agriculture, which has been
successfully adopted by our farmer-
clients. Our practice safeguards the
environment and the quality, quantity
and price of produce; the profitability
of the farm and the adoption of new
techniques are essential to preserving
the overall stability of agriculture.
Issues such as crop protection, wildlife
and landscape management, directed
use of fertilisers, waste avoidance,
enhanced energy efficiency and
minimised pollution exemplify ICM.
We have piloted and developed many
successful schemes, for example
selectively controlling pernicious
weeds in hedgerows while leaving
the native flora intact and helping
re-establish the barn owl in Cheshire.
We received a lifetime award from
the mid-Cheshire barn owl group for
the latter. Moreover, we continue to
protect beneficial insects in crops while
removing pests that would destroy
them by ensuring that field margins
are protected.
We undertake many collaborative
research projects and partnerships to
investigate how best to produce food
safely with minimum environmental
impact and try to share our industry-
leading applied research and
practices with our buyers’ group. We
collaborate with a research group at
the Centre for Global Eco-innovation
at Lancaster University, investigating
how to increase crop yields and
reduce greenhouse gases. Our work
at Manchester Metropolitan University
continues to look at how stress can
be minimised to improve yields and
maximise the efficiency of fertilisers.
In the past five years we have won
another five Green Apple World
Ambassador awards for pioneering
work on hedgehog conservation, bee
protection, techniques to encourage
plants to defend themselves against
disease and for our education
and training of farmers, university
students and fellow agronomists in
farming approaches that protect the
environment.
Help the Hedgehog –
an ECM conservation
initiative
Farmers
produce our
food and
provide one of
the very
foundations of
our society
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