Countryside Management Association News

Half the uncropped land in the country has been ploughed up this year, in what conservationists have warned could be one of the worst disasters for wildlife for 40 years.

Stone-curlew threat from farm land set-aside
Scrapping set-aside 'threatens farmland birds'
The skylark, stone curlew, English partridge and brown hare were predicted by conservationists to suffer further declines as a result of the ploughing up of land as the result of higher prices for wheat and the demand for biofuels.

Conservationists said that the extent of the changes, identified in a survey for the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, came as an "unwelcome shock."

The survey showed that this growing season there has been an 85 per cent decline in stubbles left out of production for one year and a 30 per cent decline in non-rotational set-aside, as farmers respond to demand and the EU minister's decision to set the mandatory level of set aside at zero last autumn.

In an indication that the scale of the changes had taken the Government by surprise, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, said that the figures published by Defra's Farm Business survey would provide "a firm basis for informing any future action."

Mr Benn was asked last summer by Natural England, the Government's conservation advisers, to introduce a mandatory green farming scheme to compensate for the loss of tracts of habitat as a result of the ploughing up of set-aside, introduced as a measure to control EU grain mountains.

www.telegraph.co.uk