Potato and vegetable growers have been urged to join the Campaign for the Farmed Environment (CFE) with the launch of an explanatory leaflet, designed for their specific needs.

The CFE for Horticulture and Potatoes leaflet contains tips on the best voluntary measures to help growers achieve the aims of the campaign.

The leaflet includes advice on practical in-field options to implement on high-cost cropped land for vegetable and potato production.

It also has information on how to enter the Entry Level Stewardship (ELS)scheme, which complements the campaign, as well as contact details for CFE co-ordinators.

NFU horticulture board chairman Sarah Pettitt said: “The CFE is an exciting integration of high value production with responsibility for farmland bird, farm wildlife, and resource protection.

“Its voluntary approach is just like the Voluntary Initiative – it’s a win-win for the industry and it’s about avoiding blunt regulation.

“If we don’t make CFE work, compulsory set-aside with no flexibility, more record-keeping and on up to 8% of land, will be imposed on us.”

Ms Pettitt was speaking during a combined launch and growers’ farm walk event at speciality leaf producer, JE Piccaver and Co’s Norfolk House Farm, in Gedney Marsh, near Holbech, Lincs.

JE Piccaver and Co’s production director Phillip Hubbert told how environmental measures already in place on the company’s farms have had a positive effect on the business.

Although some of the farm’s area was rented to a neighbouring farmer for potato and combinable crop production to aid the salad crop rotation, the environmental features remained a high priority for both businesses, he explained.

“It’s important that growers don’t get bogged down by thinking that CFE is yet another scheme,” added Mr Hubbert.

“If you’re already in the Assured Produce, Leaf Marque, or Tesco Nurture schemes, you’ll be doing most of what the CFE aims to achieve.

“By recording what you’re already doing in terms of field margins, uncultivated land or by making slight alterations to game cover seed mixtures, the CFE’s options aren’t difficult.”

Copies of the new CFE for Horticulture and Potatoes leaflet, launched this week, will be available both online and in paper form from the campaign’s partner organisations.

For more details of CFE and how you can contribute, visit www.cfeonline.org.uk