Horizon blog: Landscape Recovery scheme begins

On Monday 5^th September Defra announced the successful projects that will receive funding through the Landscape Recovery scheme. The 22 projects are across England and aim to restore rivers, and protect species and habitats. The different projects are a collaboration between groups of farmers and land managers, and cover areas of between 500 and 5,000 hectares to deliver the intended outcomes.

Initially there will be grants distributed to the 22 projects to help finalise the delivery plans, with further support planned to help complete the development phase and start to implement actions. As the implementation phase of the projects starts, the projects are expected to source private funding to supplement the government support.

At AHDB we have begun a new project in collaboration with Harper Adams University to look at the actions farmers are taking with regard to new agricultural policies, similar to the Sustainable Farming Incentive project. The intended outcome is to develop case studies exploring whether farmers are engaging with the new scheme and why, what they expect the financial benefits to be, their views towards collaboration, and how the partnerships are managed. We will also be exploring the views of farmers who are not taking part in the Landscape Recovery scheme.

The initial step is to gather information from both participants and non-participants of the Landscape Recovery scheme through a short online survey. This is to help us understand more about what farmers are doing, and their knowledge on ELMs and Landscape Recovery. It will also help us identify those who would be open to being interviewed and part of the case studies. The survey should take about 10 minutes; the links to the Landscape Recovery participants survey, and the non-participants survey are below.

Landscape Recovery participants survey

Non-participants survey