Our family farms produce high-quality food in innovative ways that build back nature, create resilience to climate change, and deliver clean water into our estuary and sea.

We have trialled the input of herbal leys on four farms. Each farmer has chosen the best herbal ley mix to suit their land and documented how they have sown; from direct to min-till. On each of these farms we have commissioned Farm Carbon Toolkit to measure the soil carbon in three situations; newly-sown herbal ley, established herbal ley and species-poor permanent pasture to give us, and the farmers, an insight into the sequestration ability of a herbal ley. Farmers can use this data to inform their own Countryside Stewardship or Sustainable Farming Incentive applications and it provides us with useful evidential data for future funding applications.

We worked with Dr Grace Twiston-Davies, University of Exeter, to apply the BEE Steward programme to the field parcels where the newly established herbal leys have been sown. The BEE Steward programme uses the Bumblebee as a proxy indicator species for pollinators and demonstrates the impact of diversification for invertebrates.

We also worked with Farm Carbon Toolkit to assess soil health and carbon across four farms in the project. This provided valuable understanding of the current status of the soil in permanent pastures, and established herbal ley (2-3 years old) and a new herbal ley a series.

Sharing learning and knowledge has been at the forefront of this project and as such we have created a regenerative farming film with David Wilson and hosted events with Young Farmers and the farming community.

This data will be collected and used to apply for further funding to begin delivery of the full Landscape Management Framework for the Lizard, Section 08 Cornwall AONB.