Our managing Director, Christ Bright, talks about Bright Seeds’ recent decision to become a partner of the Farmers Weekly Transition – and why initiatives like this are so important…
As custodians and caretakers of the countryside, farmers and gamekeepers have always understood their responsibility to enhance, maintain and protect the environment. The work that we undertake, often on a daily basis, improves biodiversity, air quality, soil quality, and generally secures a better, cleaner and more sustainable future for the next generation.
But, with the government turning much of its attention to the environment, and with farm payments having also moved towards environmental work, it felt like an appropriate time to join the Farmers Weekly (FW) Transition.
What is the Farmers Weekly Transition’?
The Farmers Weekly ‘Transition’ is an initiative that was launched to secure a more financially and environmentally sustainable future for farm businesses. Even though farmers are – and always should be – food producers first and foremost, it is important that other income avenues are available.
Let’s face it, if farmers had to reply solely on money from the supermarkets or milk cheques, it would be even more difficult to survive than it already is!
So, the Transition was set up to pool the knowledge of farmers across the country and make the transition to a more environmental approach a little easier – ensuring pitfalls are avoided and success is achieved.
The scheme has both Transition farmers and Transition Partners who have agreed to share their experiences, expertise and advice.
Areas covered include biodiversity, soil health, finance, carbon and air quality.
Why Bright Seeds Joined?
Despite the changes in farm payments, receiving money for growing stewardship crops is not new; as most reading this will know. Before ELMs (Environmental Land Management schemes), Countryside Stewardship (CSS) schemes were popular among gamekeepers, farmers and landowners – which means Bright Seeds have been supplying seed and expert advice on all of these schemes since they were created in the early 1990s.
More recently, we have assisted customers on making the transition from CSS to SFI schemes, whilst also working with farmers across the country who haven’t entered into stewardships schemes previously.
A key reason that we became a Transition Partner with the FW was that we see Bright Seeds as well positioned to bridge any gap between farmers, landowners, gamekeepers and conservation, because what we provide ticks all of these boxes; and therefore we work with organisations across the board.
We feel that – with our expertise and experience – we are in a good place to assist in steering the programme successfully alongside farmers and stakeholders from other sectors.
Environmental Stewardship
Almost all of our specialist stewardship mixtures can be utilised as successful game cover, meaning it ticks boxes for various schemes whilst being practical and effective.
And, thanks to the blending plant at Bright Seeds HQ, we are able to produce bespoke mixtures that suit all of our customers environmental and cover crop requirements. We also have a large storage facility and comprehensive demo-site allowing us to trial everything that we provide our customers.
We’ve also started a recent venture into hedging, so those wanting to partake in the BN11: Planting New Hedges scheme can now get stewardship hedging bundles from a trusted source.
The Future of Farming
As we are all aware, food security is essential. Therefore, growing world-leading British produce must continue – with those who do the growing being paid properly. At a time when environmental damage and global warming is at the forefront, growing crops to help the environment, only to import food from abroad (costing far more in emissions) makes little sense.
And this is why we want to be involved with the Farmers Weekly Transition. To help make sure that the decisions effecting farming, and the initiatives surrounding sustainable farming, are moving in the right direction.