A new dawn for farming on the Fens
The Water Works project could not be more timely. When we came together to form this exciting, innovative project and apply for funding most people didn’t have agriculture and soil carbon high on their list of concerns. The loss of peat from farmland in the fens was a relatively unknown problem with little relevance to everyday life.
Fast forward a few months and the country has declared a climate emergency, a new Agriculture Bill is published, DEFRA and the farming industry is focused on the challenges of farming, soils and carbon and we are at the cutting edge of a new way of saving our environment.
Nine months into our funding and machinery is just about to begin preparing the growing beds where we will be planting a series of wetland plants which have potential as farm crops. These new crops can grow and thrive when the water levels in the soil are high – protecting the carbon that is locked up in the peat, and helping to clean the water while providing food, building materials, and medicines.