Behind all the bitching and moaning about Brexit, there are good things bubbling under the surface in the UK:

“My farming friends think I’m nuts – I can’t remember when that hedge was cut last,” says Richard Thomas. Cutting is usually an annual event, but the bushy, 3-metre-wide hedgerow is now home to yellowhammers, his favourite birds.

“Thomas has laid about a kilometre of hedgerows in the past few years on his 250-hectare (617-acre) cattle and sheep farm in Herefordshire, where his family have farmed since 1893. But he would like to do more and hopes the fast-approaching revolution in the government’s use of the £3bn a year in farming subsidies is going to help.”

This is a hedgerow:

You’ll know about hedgerows if you’ve read Isabella Tree’s fantastic book on the rewilding of the Knepp estate farm near Brighton (order it today, it’s great!). They’re biodiversity hotspots, havens for wildlife hiding out from other wildlife (including humans), and natural corridors that can be scurried through from A to B.

I digress.

The interesting point made above is that the UK has used Brexit to rethink agricultural subsidies by reorienting them towards farmers who want to bring parts of their farms ‘back to nature’, plant trees (or let wild trees flourish), and so forth. We’re talking three billion British pounds a year of hard cash.

This is usually the point in a blog post where it turns out that farmers are totally against such meddling and wish to be left in peace to degrade the soil as the like.

Well.

You and I would be well wrong on this one, in the UK at least. I did some falling off my chair at where this article and an accompanying article headed next.

“More and more people are seeing other farmers doing it [regenerative farming] and are happier for it,” said John Cherry, who founded Groundswell, the UK’s flagship event for regenerative agriculture, on his farm in Hertfordshire. “People may be getting a higher yield with conventional approaches, but it is costing them more too with all the inputs, so they are not making more money.”

“When Groundswell started six years ago, there were just a couple of hundred attenders. This year, more than 3,500 people turned up, including environment secretary George Eustice, who told the crowd that Brexit was a chance for the UK to lead the world on supporting regenerative agriculture. Under new subsidy plans announced by his department, farmers will be offered up to £70 per hectare to take up regenerative techniques, including mixed farming systems where crops are cultivated alongside livestock to help boost soil health.”

As well as shows like Groundswell, membership of regenerative farming groups has soared. The Landworkers Alliance, set up in 2014, represents more than 1,500 farmers and landworkers across the UK promoting more regenerative approaches to farming. While the Nature Friendly Farming Network and Pasture-fed Livestock Association have more than 1,500 farmer members between them.

This is all fantastic news.

Back to Richard Thomas:

“Thomas is one of 200 farmers taking part in a National Farmers Union’ programme to explore how the government’s aim of paying “public money for public goods” translates into action on the ground. Before Brexit, subsidies were largely based on simply how much land a farmer owned or rented. Over the next seven years, the goal is to switch the money to boosting wildlife, reducing floods and, crucially, storing the carbon emissions driving the climate crisis in soils and trees.”

How many farmers are truly on board with giving it a go in the UK? 20% 50%?

“Farmers say they are up for the challenge, according to a new NFU survey of 400 randomly chosen members. It found that 84% of farmers were interested in applying for the environmental land management schemes (ELMs) that the government will use to channel public money into public goods.”

Fantastic.

Before I go, today’s recommendation: check out the film, The Biggest Little Farm about the first seven years of a regenerative farm being started from literally barren earth in California. You can rent it on Google Play for peanuts; here’s the trailer:

Sending off the duck army to war with the snails was a personal highlight!