Future Facing - With Peat at the Heart of Things
‘What’s the future of a hill farm?’ is one of the most pressing questions for upland farmers in England, with uncertainty around environmental policies and payment schemes, and calls for changes in practice that help to drive nature recovery and carbon storage. And it’s one of the questions Simon Bland asks, and begins to answer, when we meet at Dalefoot Farm.
‘Peat needs to be in the ground, as part of healthy functioning peatlands - in the ground, permanently, to lock carbon in, for thousands of years.’
Simon Bland, in a shed with piles of peat-free Dalefoot compost
Simon’s father and grandfather farmed here before him, so there’s a family tradition of living in and with this part of Cumbria. The farm sits high up against Bampton Fell, and comes with rights to graze on Bampton, Helton and Askham Commons, between Ullswater and Shap. We meet in a portacabin office before heading out around the farm. And from the start, Simon’s passion for a healthy landscape is clear, and he refers a few times to the philosophy of his father and grandfather, that if you have a healthy landscape, you have a healthy farm. Over the years, practices have changed, and in the last few decades the flock of sheep has got smaller, and the use of chemical fertilisers previously incentivised by governments to improve grass firmly in the past. Simon smiles as he tells me how it feels to walk through one of his wildflower meadows: ‘every step you take, you hear a bee or a bug - but in neighbouring fields of rye grass, there’s nothing.’
In Simon’s opinion, upland farmers have a crucial role to play in looking after precious uplands, where careful choices around practice can make a huge difference to the quality of vegetation and associated wildlife. But it’s not all about boosting biodiversity on a farm’s inbye fields - it’s also about caring for upland peat.
Simon and his wife Jane Barker combine their sheep farming enterprise with their two other business strands. They produce peat-free composts (Dalefoot Compost), and they carry out peatland restoration (Barker & Bland Ltd), delivering restoration projects around the country.
Their focus on peat is integral to a vision of the future that, Simon believes, could involve a lot of farmers. Simon isn’t suggesting that everyone makes compost: but he is keen to see how hill farmers can bring peatland restoration and the growth of sphagnum moss into their practice, to store carbon and to bring in money.
“What is the future of a hill farm? Our costs are going up, our production is fixed, and our income is pinned by Environmental schemes. It is a business that’s surviving, but people need to diversify. We’re looking now at the next evolution of agriculture: it’s all going to be about reversing climate change ...”
Looking across to Bampton Common from Dalefoot Farm, early spring 2023
“... and surely, that change is about carbon farming. Hill farmers are probably the most important group to engage with, if you’re going to create healthy, functioning peatland. And if you’re going to start thinking about carbon farming, think about growing sphagnum: farmers with crops of sphagnum, that can be looked after, that can be harvested.”
Sphagnum moss is the fundamental building block for peat. Peat restoration projects across the country rely on the introduction of sphagnum to help regenerate degraded sites, but much of this sphagnum is grown under glass, and there’s not enough of it to bring about rapid change. For restoration projects they have been leading, Simon and Jane have introduced sphagnum harvested locally to each site in a way that increases, rather than depletes sphagnum growth at the harvesting sites. ‘We have experience on many sites,’ says Simon. ‘The one thing you learn is that if you harvest sphagnum properly, it doubles. When you take off the growing tip, it grows on from two points: you end up with two plants. You can probably cut it every three years, and you can turn that into an income source that can be on a rotation.’
Farming for the benefit of spaghnum, peat, farmers and community
Bringing a practice of sphagnum growth into hill farming, and making it pay, is not a straight-forward equation; or at least, not yet. Payments for carbon sequestration, whether through governmental environmental schemes, carbon credits, or a public-private blend of finance, are not yet standardised. One of the sticking points is that upland farmers who have rights as graziers on a common do not own the land; if payments for improved bogs and carbon storage go to landowners rather than commoners, there’s not just an imbalance, there’s less incentive for the farmers, and a knock-on effect for communities.
‘There's no conversation at the moment how graziers can benefit. We have a good idea of what kind of money is there, but it’s not just about the benefits that’ll go to the landowners - in our case, to United Utilities, RSPB and the Lowther family - it’s about social-economic benefit. It's about having income that is going to flow down into the local shop, the pub, that stays in the community. We need to encourage people to think about schemes that are going to stop the loss of carbon, and we need to think about investing in the way we care for all the shallow peats, in a system that includes the graziers.’
‘For things to work, we need a balance’
I’m curious to know how sheep work alongside peat restoration. Can you have sheep as well as sphagnum - a mixture of wet peat and grass for grazing? Simon believes you can.
‘All the time we're getting told that sheep are a problem, and there’s an emphasis on rewilding. But we need to be careful that rewilding doesn’t become the dominant argument. For things to work, we need a balance.’ One of the challenges Simon is concerned about is the impact of schemes that require sheep to be taken off the commons over winter. Simon says this practice changes the hefts of the sheep (their habits of movement and grazing), with an impact on vegetation. Some areas of the fell are becoming overgrazed, and others are under-grazed; and in many under-grazed areas molinia is starting to take hold. This is a domineering and dense grass that blocks light, so that little else will grow, and it also dries out the land. A dominance of molinia is the opposite of what is needed for peat restoration. ‘Sometimes you have a policy that is damaging an environment,’ says Simon, ‘but in trying to remedy that, you may end up with another policy that potentially could be worse. We keep coming back to the need for balance: sheep, sphagnum and functionality.’
Reinstating sphagnum, functional peatland, and equitable partnerships
Simon brings the conversation back to the land that rises beyond the farm buildings. ‘We’ve got 2000 odd hectares on Bampton Common. The bulk of those peats haven’t got proper vegetation, so they’re not functional. If we want to start reversing climate change, we’ve got to start with these carbon stores: get them back to a sphagnum-based vegetation, which is going to hold water. The way you do that is you reinstate sphagnum that has been harvested somewhere else - and this can be done through the commoners, who need to get paid for doing that, as part of a fair partnership with the landowners.’
This is a strong vision, but how many other farmers see it the way Simon does? ‘We may be a few years off that engagement,’ says Simon, acknowledging that a high proportion of farmers are reluctant to change, and may favour familiar practices that have sheep breeding at the centre. ‘A lot depends on what happens with the new Peatland Code*. It’ll be driven by government policy, to a degree, but we must keep in mind what we have up here on the commons.’
Surveys to assess the depth of peat across Bampton common are underway (as they are in other areas of the country). There’s a lot of work to be done, and while peat takes years to form - around 1 millimetre a year in a healthy, functioning bog - as a contrast, sphagnum can grow quickly, so that exposed areas of peat can be covered, hags can be repaired, and large areas can be rewetted. Simon is advocating for change, and soon: ‘We can’t take a thousand years! We have to be sinking that carbon to be able to go carbon neutral. Have we got time to wait? I don’t think we do.’
It’s hard not to agree with Simon: change is needed, and quickly, and including local communities in that change feels extremely important. His enthusiasm brims over, and continues as we walk around the farm to find out more about the compost business, which currently employs just under 20 local people. Raised beds and whole fields have been given over to the growth of comfrey, dock and clover, which are all important ingredients in compost mixes that include bracken and wool. ‘Weeds are more interesting to me than things we don’t class as weeds,’ says Simon, who talks about their many beneficial functions. Comfrey, as an example, he tells me, has high levels of potassium and pulls up phosphates from the soil.
In a polytunnel, rows and rows of plants at different stages of growth are part of ongoing experiments to improve the compost, whether this is for seeds, vegetables or general use. Around 300,000 bags are sold each year. The compost provides a slow-release formula that’s full of nutrients and helps soil to retain moisture. While a chemical formula gives a quick fix but doesn’t nurture soil, this organic compost can continue releasing nutrients for up to two years, all the while supporting soil health, and helping to enhance the mychorizzal networks within the soil.
‘When we all used the chemical fertilisers, we didn’t realise the climate cost. Now it’s obvious,’ says Simon. ‘We have to change the way we do things.’
This perspective drives the peat restoration business as much as the compost business; and is also aligned with Simon’s attitude to keeping sheep, whose grazing, in managed numbers, helps to balance the variety of habitats on the common, and can support a process of peat restoration. Everything in this multi-stranded family business is connected, and hinges on a deep connection to the land and an incentive to care for peat.
‘Peat needs to be in the ground, as part of healthy functioning peatlands,’ says Simon, ‘in the ground, permanently, to lock carbon in, for thousands of years.’
