Mid-Tier Stewardship planning is well on course at Bradford Estates

There are plans to make and options to consider carefully as we map out the direction to take over the next five years.

The protection and enhancement of our natural environment is extremely important and we view MTS as essential in supporting us to meet our obligations and commitments successfully.

Over the coming months we will be organising and planning out the agreement – collating and mapping it out before making the information available for everyone to view. It’s important that as we progress through this process we ensure that all the chosen options will definitely work.

This is obviously important in terms of the ultimate success of the programme but also because the five-year contract with the RPA needs to meet certain criteria and so we need to guarantee as far as we can that goals can be achieved and every contingency has been fully explored to help negate any potential penalty being incurred.

We have worked out what areas we need to leave out of crop production over the summer to make room for MTS options. We must make sure that the autumn sown options are drilled before winter and we are also planning the spring drilled options, all of which is increasing our farm workload.

We are getting quotes for capital works such as fencing and hedging – something which is extremely important to keep on top of as these prices seem to change daily and supplies are short.

These are very busy and exciting times on the estates and our MTS planning is well on course – which is just as well because we have just two years to implement all this work and will probably be in line for a RPA inspection at some point.

Oliver Scott is farm manager at Bradford Estates