In England, there has been a historic lack of financial reward for farmers providing flood management on their land. Despite Defra announcing in January 2024 that more generous options were being made available to farmers for letting land store water and growing species-rich flood meadows, there remains lingering frustration and suspicion that these kinds of ecosystem services are not properly valued by either the market or government.
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Is flood management something all farmers can do?
United Kingdom
Farm Practices
flood management
natural flood management
We need to support farmers through this interruption to our business of growing food and use funding to ensure that changing farming practices doesn’t impact on food production.
Martin Lines, CEO, NFFN
“I haven’t been paid anything for putting my fields into grass for flood management,” farmer Debbie Wilkins says. “Although now I’m putting some of them into the SFI scheme. It has been frustrating for me that my floodplain meadows are species-rich, great for nature and protecting people downstream, and I don’t get as much funding as I think they are worth. We are meant to be supported for public goods.”
Farmer Sam Kenyon has also faced barriers to obtaining investment for nature-based flooding solutions in Wales, and in the end, she relies on crowdfunding for some of the projects on her farm. She says that farmers looking to carry out this kind of work can also face hurdles when getting schemes licensed by Natural Resources Wales (NRW). Across the border in England, James faced similar difficulties getting natural flood management through the processes of permissions and quotes, which would be required for the work to be supported through stewardship schemes. With rural skills in decline, there are worrying shortages of people able to do work, such as altering watercourses to re-wiggle them.
Farmer Ruth Ashton-Shaw in Scotland says authorities in southern Scotland are facing increasing public pressure to invest in costly engineering solutions to flooding, such as dredging rivers. However, the Environment Agency says dredging can negatively impact nature and the environment and increase the risk of flooding downstream as water flows through the wider channels faster. Ruth agrees dredging around her would be ineffective. “We’re a farming community, and a lot of people could all be doing little things that would make a massive difference. Retaining water on our land is incredibly positive. Our fields are still green after horrendous downpours, and our livestock are thriving.”
Is flood management something all farmers can do?
Farming styles can also mitigate against flood management. Planting winter crops on floodplains or areas earmarked for water storage will likely lead to crop losses and major financial penalties. The NFFN encourages farmers to focus on developing soil health, working within the capacity of the land and eliminating inputs such as fossil fuels, fertilisers and other chemical products. Farmers who have not yet begun this journey and are still having to maximise yields to stay financially afloat may currently struggle with how nature-friendly farmers can work around these issues.
One solution to this could be landscape-scale flood mitigation projects. Debbie in Gloucestershire is involved with one such group, the Severn Vale Guardians, which is attempting to bring farmers together to implement sustainable land management strategies which will ensure the Severn floodplain continues to act as its name suggests, food is still produced in the area and the recovery of biodiversity and nature is supported. Landscape-scale projects enable farmers to pool their resources and achieve aims jointly in keeping with what is their best for their land. In Cumbria, the Resilient Glenderamackin project hopes to prevent flooding in Keswick by involving more than 40 farmers and land managers and deploying an array of nature-based interventions in the catchments, including installing leaky dams, creating new ponds, rewetting peatland and building earth bunds and hedgerows.
Debbie has also acted as a farmer liaison for the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG), talking to her fellow farmers about meadow restoration. Throughout the Oxford Real Farming Conference 2024, NFFN delegates emphasised that many farmers have been trapped in intensive systems by a prevailing culture prioritising intensification and yield increases, and they need support to move to a more nature-friendly farming model.
Climate change is not going away
Despite these issues, and regardless of which of the many options for natural flood management farmers choose to adopt on their land, the necessity of changing agricultural practices to slow the flow remains, as Martin Lines makes clear.
“We are not going to stop this rain falling any more than we are going to be able to stop the sun beating down during periods of drought, so we need to build landscapes and farming systems that are resilient for the future.”