In March nine hill farmers travelled to London to meet with Defra officials from the Environmental Land Management scheme (ELMs) team and from the Future Farming Team. We had an excellent day sharing knowledge. Hill farmers explained to Defra the challenges of running their farms in a time of uncertainty and Defra explained how they are developing the ELMs programme and the phasing out of BPS.
The costs of this meeting were met by grant funding from the Prince’s Countryside Fund which lunch kindly provided by Defra. The day was facilitated by Nigel Stone and Simon Thorp.
This meeting is being followed up with meetings planned across the nine upland areas of England where the farmer who came to London will bring together 15-20 farmers to meet with Defra representatives.
The report of the London meeting can be found here:
Uplands Alliance: A Network for England's Uplands 