Margin management ‘worth a look’

FIELD MARGIN management is an option worth investigating – despite DEFRA‘s controversial decision on compulsory 2m field margins under cross-compliance.

Increasing the width of strips under the entry level scheme could be a good opportunity to gain “easy” points towards the target required by the scheme.

Richard Barnes of Peterborough-based Kings Game Cover said this would pay farmers for adopting conservation measures on their units.

Under the pilot scheme for entry level, 30 points for every hectare were required to release the proposed £30/ha payment.

Every 100m of additional 2m strips accounted for 10 points, while adding an extra 4m was worth 20 points for each 100m.

“People are very wary but the scheme is quite straightforward,” said Mr Barnes. “Using buffer strips is a common sense way of scoring points.”