Environment Agency Wales and Farming Connect, the Welsh Assembly Government’s support service for farmers, have joined forces again for the second year running for the ’Simple Solutions Award’. An award that recognises and rewards farmers who make small scale changes to their farms in order to benefit the local environment and improve profits.
The winner will receive professional advice (to the value of £1,000) from a Farming Connect approved consultant, along with £1,250 from Environment Agency Wales to carry out further environmental improvements on the farm. A runner up will receive a £750 grant for works on their farm.
Examples of the schemes that could apply for the Simple Solutions farming award are:
• Improvements to cattle tracks to reduce lameness and reduce run off
• Covering slurry stores to increase slurry storage and improve nutrient content
• Creating a roof over yards to keep rain off and reduce the amount of dirty water
• Collecting rainwater to use as drinking water for stock
• Composting green waste
Entries need to be received by Friday 24 June and the winners will be announced at the Royal Welsh Agriculture Show.
Last year’s winners were John and Anna Booth, dairy farmers from Rhual Farm in Mold and runner up Gareth Richards a diary and sheep farmer from Carmarthen.
John and Anna Booth won for making changes to the way they managed their slurry. After putting together a comprehensive nutrient management plan, they put in place a number of small solutions to reduce the amount of effluent going into their slurry store.
These included harvesting clean rain water to use for watering and washing down yards, building sleeping policemen to separate clean and dirty yard water to reduce slurry volumes and redirecting and fixing guttering to keep rainwater out of the dirty water system.
These changes reduce the amount of slurry they have to dispose of and enables them to use it to the best effect at the best time of year. This saves money on fertiliser costs, gives them a better crop yield and means less labour, fuel and machinery costs.
Since winning the award at the Royal Welsh Show last year John and Anna have put their prize money to good use. They said:
"We were very pleased and happy that we won the award. The prize money has really helped us in being able to take the business forward and improving efficiency whilst safeguarding the environment.
We used the Farming Connect part of the award to get Kite Consulting to do a Whole Farm Business Plan. This then enabled us to go for the Young Entrants Support Scheme (YESS) as we wanted financial support to buy a trailing shoe slurry spreader to maximise use of the nutrients available in the slurry. Our application is with Welsh Assembly Government so we will hear soon how much support is available.
We also asked FWAG to undertake an assessment of our options for entry into the Glastir Agri Environment Scheme and have subsequently submitted an expression of interest in the scheme."
The award is open to all farmers with no restrictions placed on size of farm and/or type of farming. Applicants only need to tell us what simple and innovative changes they have made on their farm which have resulted in improvements not only for crops and livestock, but the environment as well.
For full details and an application form, please contact simplesolutions@environment-agency.gov.uk or phone Joanne Marley on 02920 466123.
