Visit to Englefield Estate’s FRP Environment Workshop
February 17, 2022
Tessa, Senior Communications and Events Officer, went to visit the Englefield Estate’s Farm Resilience Programme group for their environment workshop with Sarah Brockless, Ecologist, Woodland and Farm Conservation Advisor at Oakbank Game and Conservation on Tuesday 15th February.
The workshop started with a much-needed lunch as following this Sarah gave the farmers plenty to think about – from current environmental schemes that they could get involved in, to what might be coming through with ELMs – which evoked some good discussion. Sarah emphasised the importance of starting by finding out about what you already have on farm, making sure this is formally documented, and then looking after this and building on it. She also gave the farmers some easy ways to improve their environment such as hedge and ditch cutting rotations.
The topic of public money for public good was also a theme throughout the workshop and discussion took place about how best to prove this. This group already seemed to have some public goods which Sarah was delighted to hear about, with one farmer who had the incredibly rare silver-studded blue butterfly and another who had wild cornflowers.
The workshop ended with a short presentation from two members of the Englefield Estate team, Edward Crookes, Estates Director and Dr Liz Mattison, Education and Environment Officer who spoke about the Estate’s sustainability goals and their work around this. Edward mentioned the importance of looking at the ‘three P’s’ when thinking about sustainability: People, Profit and Planet.
