Source: BBC Radio 4: Farming Today
URL: N/A
Date: 28/08/2010
Event: Farming Today, on Radio 4 with Anna Hill in Blakeney.
People:
Presenter: Now on BBC Radio 4, it's Farming Today This Week with Anna Hill.
Anna Hill: Good morning. This week, Farming Today has joined the great August Bank Holiday exodus to the seaside. I'm at Blakeney on the North Norfolk coast, to get some sea air into my lungs. For the first time in what seems like weeks, the sun is shining, which is a little odd, seeing as it is a Bank Holiday. Now all this week on Farming Today, we've been out to meet those working on the land on the coast. Farming near the shore's edge is filled with challenges. The coast is exposed to crashing waves and rising sea level, and the weather is not always sunny and calm like it is today. The coast is often exposed to driving rain, howling gales and biting salty spray. This morning, we'll hear from farmers who farm literally on the edge, those that benefit from the light, the wind, even the salty sea spray. And we'll also hear from farmers facing a constant struggle as the sea threatens to swallow their land and their livelihood.
[Reports from various places on the British coast.]
Anna Hill: Moira Hickey with William Simpson on the island of Stroma. While his flock are doing well, for many, farming on the coast offers plenty of challenges, particularly if your farm is in an area that's at risk from rising sea levels and climate change. For Farming Today This Week, I've come to Blakeney on the North Norfolk coast, which is busy with holidaymakers. But here there are poignant reminders of the power of the sea. Above my head is a plaque on the wall next to the quayside, which says "Flood Level 1953". Now I'm about 5 foot tall and that is double my height or even more, about 11 foot up. A terrifying prospect if you happen to be living here then. The great storm that devastated the east coast in 1953 inundated the coast here and raced inland. And since those storm surges, the power of the sea has been eroding away parts of the east coast of England. Around 30% of England's coastline is eroding and it's a significant problem in Wales and Scotland too. Some of the larger coastal towns have sea defences, but the rest is left to the elements. Richard Caley's 200-acre farm is perched precariously on the edge of a stretch of cliffs on the Holderness estuary. This is the fastest eroding coastline in Europe, due to its soft clay cliffs and the powerful North Sea waves that crash against them. Sarah Falkingham met Richard on his arable farm at Aldbrough.
Richard Caley: We're on the field which we refer to as Clifftop Field, for obvious reasons. It is cropped but not right up to the edge.
Sarah Falkingham: It's within about 20 feet of the edge though, isn't it, Richard. It's as close as you'd probably like to get, with a combine.
Richard Caley: Erm, yeah. I think.
Sarah Falkingham: Can we just get out and have a look? [Pause.] Just making our way through lots of thistles here. Looking over a vast expanse of the North Sea. Richard's going, well, right up to the edge. And as I look down the coastline, it's all jagged edge of soil, where every week soil is falling into the sea. Your father bought this property 40 years ago.
Richard Caley: Yeah.
Sarah Falkingham: Since then, how much land are you losing?
Richard Caley: The average, I think, is around 2 metres per annum, but in recent years it probably has exceeded that. As a child, when I grew up here, I can remember it being sort of 50, 60 metres further out than it is here.
Sarah Falkingham: Is there anything you can do to protect your land?
Richard Caley: We are not allowed to try and protect your own land.
Sarah Falkingham: How do you farm safely, right up on a disappearing coastline?
Richard Caley: Carefully.
Sarah Falkingham: Carefully. [Laughing.]
Richard Caley: You've got to be careful what you do. Obviously you can't go with very heavy machinery this close. We had a calf go over once, escape from the farmstead and went over. Our neighbours had a machine with a driver in it, a tractor go over the edge. Remarkable, that he survived. And the other thing is there have been landslides, and people actually on the beach, tourists, they've been caught in it.
Sarah Falkingham: You mentioned earlier about salt damage. So how does that impact on your farming?
Richard Caley: Yeah, the salt, it's kind of shot-blasting whatever grow, whatever plant matter that is there. The hedgerow there, you can see it's all one-sided. They've just killed plant matter that it comes in contact with. Basically, as a farmer, you sow it thicker, and give it a bit more fertiliser and hope that it manages, but in a bad winter you can lose crop.
Sarah Falkingham: And what do you see the future here, for your land, as it slowly erodes? And for your farm, and your business?
Richard Caley: The future, and we've diversified into a bit of tourism, so you have to adapt.
Sarah Falkingham: Your house is set back from the cliff, but there's a farm I can see over there, probably 300 metres from the cliff edge.
Richard Caley: They will all go. Under current legislation and the current approach that's been taken by government, central and local, these will all go. Actually, government actually earns money from extracting sand and gravel at the mouth of the Humber. All that sand and gravel comes from this coast, it comes from here. Now that sand and gravel actually is like a bookend. The sand and gravel moves southward all the time...
Sarah Falkingham: So it's stripping your natural defence...
Richard Caley: Yes. Now I know that times are hard. But when they're making money out of it, it's a shame. Over the last 20, 30 years I think, they've been doing it. Now that money could have gone into defending this coastline. And I think that's wrong. That's very wrong.
Anna Hill: Richard Caley with Sarah Falkingham, perilously close to the edge of the Holderness estuary. So what can be done to protect farmers from rising sea levels and coastal erosion? Nicola Currie is from the Country Land and Business Association, which is asking the Government to look at new ways of protecting the fragile coastline from sea level rise. Earlier this week, she told Cath Mackie that the CLA believes the government-maintained sea walls and groynes along this coast just aren't offering enough protection.
Nicola Currie: Not all of these are working any more. Some of them are very expensive to maintain and not at all effective. We feel it's very important that we come up with cost-effective solutions. And part of this is looking at how you can use offshore reefs, and by a reef I mean an elongated collection of rocks that are built up to look rather like a barge actually, offshore. This is used at the moment to trap sediment between the shore and the reef, and therefore protect the coastal community behind it. Now because it runs parallel, it traps all the sediment. we've discovered from our research, that if you are to change the angle of that reef by 20%, so that it no longer runs exactly parallel to the coast, some of the sediment is freed up and so it flows on down the coast, and therefore helps the communities below that area which is being protected.
Cath Mackie: It sounds expensive. The engineering sounds expensive. Who would you expect to meet that cost?
Nicola Currie: Well, I think we should be looking at both public and private partnerships with that. The option of getting planning permission on nearby farmland and using that money to fund coastal defence, that's already happened. Another option might be wind turbines, for a limited period of time. They might be able to raise the necessary money to look after another patch of coastal defence. We have all the estuaries along the Suffolk coast are suffering at the moment from funding cuts, but those landowners are clubbing together and coming up with solutions themselves. Landowners have been keeping the sea off their land since Roman times, and it's good that we should carry on and try and do that now, and not let ourselves get bogged down in government finances.
Cath Mackie: Well, Defra's budget for flood and coastal risk management is £609 million, that's pretty much a quarter of their budget. Even if they spent all of their budget on coastal defence the erosion will continue, so aren't you really on a losing battle?
Nicola Currie: Well, you say that, but actually if you look at North Norfolk, the majority of the coastal settlements along there, were actually mentioned in the Domesday Book. Which means that they've survived for a very long time. All right, with climate change, we've now got more pressure on the coast. But I'm sure that really if each generation can do what it can, we can come up with solutions to protect both our rural communities and our historic buildings, because there are a number of those on the coast. And of course our important environmental habitats and our valuable farmland.
Anna Hill: But for farmers such as Richard Caley there, perched precariously on the North Sea coast, the future does look uncertain, as climate change and coastal erosion take hold. Recent plans to leave certain areas to the sea here in East Anglia in particular - what some have called "managed retreat" - will bring fresh challenges to those who may already feel they're fighting a losing battle against the power of Nature. Lewis Baugh farms both dairy and arable on his land, right on the edge of the Norfolk Broads. The farm is within sight of the regular flow of pleasure boats and sightseers. I joined Richard Hirst from the National Farmers Union, and Lewis, on his farm. He told me that farming on the Broads is a constant battle between land and water. And he showed me where he'd recently lost a field because a protective bank had been breached during renovation work.
Lewis Baugh: It is a bit of a mess. It's more like a bomb site than a farm.
Anna Hill: And we're just walking up to the bank, which is new, and has just been rebuilt to protect the land here. This area, this body of water, which is basically a new Broad, this used to be dry land.
Lewis Baugh: It was grazing marsh, yes. An area, actually, quite favoured by our cattle, because it was relatively sheltered. But...
Anna Hill: They've lost it. It's gone under the water.
Lewis Baugh: It has indeed, yes. It's environmentally sensitive area, grazing marshes. It's a coursing ground for barn owls, and a nest site for lapwing and skylarks. Because we got rid of the water fairly quickly, the damage was limited. It's when the water lies on the marshes for long periods of time that the damage is done.
Anna Hill: With me is Richard Hirst, who's the county delegate of the NFU. There was a big document launched recently called Why Farming Matters in the Broads. And I suppose here is where the coast and farming actually intermingle.
Richard Hirst: The reason for the report was we felt it was very important to highlight the importance of this area, particularly from the agricultural point of view, but the way that farming and the farming industry over the years has shaped this wonderful scenery we see here. And it's having the intensive areas of farming that we have to have, to make money, [indistinct] against the lower-intensity areas which are farmed for the environment, and I think it's a classic area, the whole Broads area is a classic case of that intensity and extensity working together.
Anna Hill: Lewis Baugh, what is the danger of saline influx of water, from salty water, for your cows and for wildlife?
Lewis Baugh: We have salt surges. The fish will actually sense it and swim in front of the saline. Unfortunately they take refuge in boatyards which technically dead ends, and then the salt will actually kill them. If saline gets into a fresh water system, the [indistinct] marshes, the dykes the cattle drink out of, if they're not accustomed to saline water, it can kill them.
Anna Hill: So your cows are actually under threat if there is a saline surge.
Lewis Baugh: The other saline risk is breaches of salt water over the sea defence, which happened about 18 months ago up at Walcott. It came over the sea defence and then into the land drains.
Anna Hill: Some people might say "Well, why farm in this area?"
Lewis Baugh: Well, we have to farm the marshland, the grassland, it's a pastoral landscape, an environment man-made, but it's an incredible place to live and farm, and you have some of the most productive farmland sitting next to the most environmentally sensitive places in the country. And it's a question of balance.
Anna Hill: Richard Hirst and Lewis Baugh in the Norfolk Broads. Well, that's about it from Farming Today This Week, here on the North Norfolk coast at Blakeney. I think I might join the queue for the ice creams now.