Case Study
Central Chilterns Farmer Cluster
Conservation agriculture project, equipping farmers to drive long term change, delivering habitat and nature recovery
(Above) Photo Credit: Chilterns National Landscape
Fund and priority area: Strategic Fund – Environment: Nature friendly farming
Who: Chiltern Conservation Board (CCB) is the public body established to conserve and enhance the Chilterns National Landscape.
What:
Building on funding received from the RF in 2021, a grant was awarded to the Chilterns Conservation Board (CCB) in 2023 to the Central Chiltern Farmer Cluster—covering approximately 6,500 hectares across 18 farms. The aim of the funding was to support farmers in achieving long-term, scalable changes to their farming practices that benefit both their businesses and broader environmental goals.
CCB’s knowledge exchange programme for the cluster was designed to be flexible and responsive to the varying levels of understanding among farmers, fostering connections to share ideas, best practices, and deliver nature-based outcomes at scale. Through this facilitated approach, farmers will become better informed, more skilled, increasingly engaged, and more confident, as well as better prepared and equipped to adopt and expand conservation agriculture within their operations.
Support for the Central Chiltern Farmer Cluster continues to increase the number of hectares in active management. In year one the project has built on nature and soil health by
- Building farmers knowledge and understanding of best practice e.g., attendance at Groundswell
- Collaborative projects e.g., worm surveys helping farmers better understand their role as indicators of soil health
- Specific advice e.g., helping farmers work up plans to deliver across their farms via AES opportunities
- With UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, designing and delivering a collaborative project with a focus on increase diversity and abundance of insects as led by farmers interest – including ‘Demo plots’ 1 acre donated on a local farm, high quality seed mixes specifically for the Chilterns soil types, planting of 18.6 ha of new wildflower margins, and surveys of species to monitor project impacts.
Learning
- Understanding individual and collective themes and priorities for the cluster members can take longer than expected, this a vital process that needs sufficient time to steer and engage the group with projects of interest.
- Learning from the Central Chilterns cluster has formed a model of best practice for farm clusters which is being rolled out across four other clusters.
Impact
- Early findings indicate the positive impact this work is having on habitat and nature recovery, with field surveys for cornerstone species such as the Yellowhammer showing an upward trend in the local population since 2019. Yellowhammers are important as indicators of farm health and control pests.
