How can nature-friendly farming provide delicious food and beautiful flowers in the midst of a climate crisis while also restoring nature and protecting the future of our rural communities?
As part of Nature Friendly Farming Week, we’ll be exploring the power of this approach with two farmers who are putting these ideas into action.
Louise Skelly and Roisin Taylor are very different farmers - Louise and her family run a sheep farm in Northern Ireland, while Roisin is a flower farmer in North East England - but both champion the principle of working with nature rather than against it. They’ll talk about how it all starts with healthy soil, why we need to reduce chemical use in farming and how on-farm diversity is crucial. Along the way we’ll bust a few myths about nature-friendly farming and find out how much you know about it. The evening will be led by our host, NFFN Cymru sustainable farming officer Ifan Davies, and will include a Q&A session.
If you love good food, have a passion for nature or simply want to rediscover a deeper connection to what you eat, this event will show how nature-friendly farming is the way to a better future which provides the solutions our climate and communities urgently need.
Speakers:
Louise Skelly - Shanaghan Hill Farm, County Down, Northern Ireland
Louise Skelly took on the running of her family’s 80-acre sheep farm at Katesbridge after taking early retirement from a high-profile career in Northern Ireland’s NHS. Together with her son-in-law Timothy and daughter Esther, they are now steering it in a more nature-friendly direction.
Attending a workshop on soil health proved a significant turning point, as they began nurturing the farm’s soil to ensure its long-term viability and working within the land’s natural limits to find the sweet spot where they are able to produce food while reducing input costs.
The farm aims to finish more of its lambs on grass and is building resilience against increasing winter flooding and summer droughts by increasing the diversity of grasses and planting more trees along the riverbank. For Louise, farming is about being a steward of the land and working in harmony with nature.
Roisin Taylor - Verde Flower Company, Northumberland. England
Roisin developed a passion for all kinds of outdoor work, including farming, as a teenager in County Durham and joined her mum’s flower business during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, her experience working in conservation and climate change meant she wanted to grow cut flowers in as nature-friendly a way as possible.
She is now establishing the flower company in a walled garden in Bellingham, where she focuses on soil health, chemical-free growing and diverse cropping. She also ensures her flower growing is peat-free.
Roisin is passionate about the role cut flowers can play in nature-friendly farming, founding an association to raise the profile of the sector and its small, independent growers. She believes nature-friendly flower growing can provide profitable, low-input crops which are excellent for biodiversity.
Host: Ifan Davies - NFFN Cymru sustainable farming officer
Ifan works for NFFN Cymru on projects which increase the use of a wide variety of nature-friendly farming practices on farms across Wales, working in partnership with other conservation and environmental organisations.
He also runs his family’s remote upland sheep farm in mid-Wales, where he works with native breeds, has eliminated the use of fertiliser and prioritises soil health. Ifan is passionate about restoring the balance between nature and food production on farms and ensuring the long-term viability of the agricultural industry.
